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�ON
EINSTEIN
t isn't always easy to get alumni out for a chapter event in the dead of
winter, particularly right after the holidays. So imagine tutor Sam Kuder's
delight when the Annapolis chapter drew about 25 participants to a
Saturday morning seminar he was leading on Einstein a week after
New Year's. Annapolis Johnnies aren't the only ones eager to talk about
Einstein and his special theory of relativity during the centennial of
Einstein's anna mirabilis. Several chapters have seminars planned.
In this issue of The College, tutors and alumni describe working through the
paper as one of the most remarkable experiences they've had at the college-one
that stays with them long after they've moved on to other pursuits.
Who isn't familiar with Einstein's struggles in his early education? Born in 1879
to middle-class German parents Hermann and Pauline Einstein, young Albert
frustrated his parents and teachers. His penchant for daydreaming and dislike of
rote memorization are well known, but popular lore mistakenly brands him as a
poor student. At the Institute ofTechnologyin Zurich, he preferred independent
research to the lecture hall.
When he couldn't find an academic job after graduation, he landed at the Swiss
Patent Office in Bern. His undemanding day job gave him the freedom to think. And
his 1905 paper gave him instant fame-something Einstein accepted graciously, but
would gladly have done without. He was more fond of his violin, his sailboat, and his
work.
His unhappy first marriage to fellow physics student Mil eva Marie ended in
divorce. Einstein later married his cousin Elsa, who proved the cheerful hostess and
efficient helpmate Einstein failed to find in his first marriage. He had two sons by
Marie and a daughter born before their marriage who may have been given up for
adoption. He was fond of Elsa's two daughters, who provided great companionship
in his later years.
A life long pacifist, Einstein nevertheless decried the Nazis' rise to power and the
world's failure to stop Hitler earlier. His famous letter to Roosevelt warning that
Germany was likely building a bomb urged that the U.S. move quickly to develop
atomic weapons. He later regretted this and became a proponent of nuclear
disarmament. He died in Princeton, N.J., in 1955, after insisting that his office
at the Institute for Advanced Studies not be preserved, but made available for
someone else.
In his essay "The World as I See It," published in 1931, Einstein described himself
as a "lone traveler." "The ideals that have lighted my way, and time after time have
given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Kindness, Beauty, and
Truth. Without the sense of kinship with men of like mind, without the occupation
with the objective world, the eternally unattainable in the field of art and scientific
endeavors, life would have seemed empty to me," he wrote.
- Rll
' WINTER
THE
e
0
S!JOHN'S
College
2005
VoLUME 3I, IssuE I
THE MAGAZINE FOR ALUMNI OF ST. JoHN's CoLLEGE
ANNAPOLIS
• SANTA FE
ANNAPOLIS • SANTA P'B
(usPs oi8-75o)
is published quarterly by
St. John's College, Annapolis, MD,
and Santa Fe, NM
THE CoLLEGE
Known office of publication:
Communications Office
St. John's College
Box28oo
Annapolis, MD 2I404-28oo
Periodicals postage paid
at Annapolis, MD
POSTMASTER: Send address
changes to The College
Magazine, Communications
Office, St. John's College,
Box 28oo, Annapolis, MD
2I404-28oo.
Rosemary Harty, editor
John Hartnett (SF8g),
Santa Fe editor
Jennifer Behrens, art director
Annapolis
410-626-2539
Santa Fe
505-984-6104
Contributors
Sus san Borden (A87)
August Deimel (SFo4)
Barbara Goyette (A73)
Erin Hughey-Comers (Aos)
Carolyn Knapp (SFOI)
Andra Maguran
Jo Ann Mattson (A87)
Natalie Rinn (Aos)
Roxanna Seagraves (SF83)
Christopher Utter (Ao6)
Robin Weiss (SFGI82)
Roseanna White (Ao4)
··· ·· ·· ············· ·· ···· ·· ·· ······ ····
{CONTENTS}
PAGE
12
D E P A R T M E N T S
2
THE CHAIR
A visit to the Clore factory reveals just
what goes into the famous St. John's
chair.
PAGE
14
EINSTEIN AND THE
PROGRAM
8
PAGE
I2
Alumni and tutors say that studying the
I go 5 paper is an exceptional experience
at St. John's.
PAGE
FROM THE BELL TOWERS
A New President in Santa Fe
The Magnificent Seven
MacGyver Meets the Johnnies
Mellon Grant Supports Tutors
Ringing a Bell for the Annual Fund
Reunion Class Leaders
LETTERS
28 THE FACULTY
29 BIBLIOFILE
A co-editor of a new commentary on
Milton, William Moeck (A8o) once
thought Paradise Lost would be too
boring.
20
ATOMIC JoHNNIES
3I ALUMNI NOTES
Los Alamos National Laboratory has
provided some interesting professional
and educational opportunities for these
Johnnies.
PROFILES
30 Linnea Back Klee (A67) works for quality
child care in San Francisco.
33 Documentary filmmaker Alex Shear
HoMECOMING
(SFoo) encounters baseball fever in
Japan.
36 Ross Mackenzie (AGio3) demystifies the
. Naval Academy.
It was all for Homer in Annapolis.
46 ALUMNI ASSOCIATION NEWS
PAGE
26
PAGE
I4
48 ST. JOHN ' S FOREVER
PAGE
26
Magazine design by
Claude Skelton Design
ON THE COVER
Albert Einstein
Illustration by David]olznson
�{F
R 0 M
THE
BE L ,L
T
0 wE R
s}
A NEW PRESIDENT IN SANTA FE
St. fohns Finds a Leader at the Council on Foreign Relations
BY JOHN HARTNETT
At first glance, it wouldn't
Along with experience in
appear that St. John's College
administration and international
(goo students on two campuses)
affairs, Peters brings to his new
and the United States Military
position a deep appreciation for
Academy (4 ,000 cadets) have a
the ancient world, rooted in his
great deal in common. But
early life as the son of a military
Michael Peters, a West Point
officeT. His father was stationed
graduate and the new president
in Ankara, Turkey, giving the
of the Santa Fe campus, sees
cmious teen the perfect home
striking similarities ben-vccn
base to explore the great sites
the two institutions.
of the ancient world.
Both colleges are founded on
"My first two years in high
principles and missions, and both
school, I traveled all over
have a clear sense of their own
Turkey,Cyprus,andthe
unique identities. Most imporMediterranean," he says. "It
tant, says Peters, St. John's and
really solidified my interest in
West Point are among the few
history. So many of the classics
colleges still concerned with
we read at St. John's are set in
developing the moral character
places vivid in my memories.
of their students.
I've been to Ephesues, Izmir,
"St. John's and West Point
Iskenderun, Athens, and
both believe you can define what
Cyprus. I remember walking
a virtuous life is and what a
through the Cilician Gate where
person of honor is. Both colleges
Alexander marched his army to
believe that through exploration
meet the Persians. As a teen, it
and thought and interchange a
was an incredible experience."
student can come to understand
Retracing Alexander's route
what it means to be virtuous,
kindled a passion for history
honorable, and a person of
that led Peters to follow in his
integrity," he explains.
own father's footsteps. After
Both approach that goal the
high school, he entered the U.S.
same way: "The instructors at
Military Academy at West Point.
West Point give the cadets a
In 1968, he graduated and was
ALONG WITH MANAGEMENT EXPERIENCE, MICHAEL PETERS BRINGS AN
model of what it means to be a
commissioned an officer in the
INTERNATIONAL VIEW TO ST. JoHN ' S COLLEGE.
good officer. Similarly, the
Army, taking command of a
tutors at St. John's give stutank platoon in Vietnam.
After his tour ended, Peters earned a master's in economics
dents a model for learning what it means to be a virtuous person
and a good citizen," Peters says.
from the University ofWashington, then returned to West Point
On November II, 2004, the college's Board ofVisitors and
to teach economics. "At that time every junior had to take the
Governors chose Peters to serve as the sixth president of the
economics course. I had IS instructors including the head of my
college's Santa Fe campus , bringing to a close a 16-month search
department working for me. I was a captain at the time and had a
to replace former president John Balkcom (SFGioo). Peters took
full colonel teaching for me," says Peters.
office January 17, just in time to preside over the January freshAfter teaching at \Vest Point, Peters studied Russian then
man convocation. Prior to joining the college, the retired Army
served as a Soviet military attache at the American embassy in
colonel had served as executive vice president of the Council on
Moscow. Living and working in that city at the height of the Cold
Foreign Relations in New York. A nonpartisan, foreign policyWar was "a true adventure in every sense oftheword," he
oriented membership organization, research center, and publishrecalls. Ronald Reagan had just begun his first term as president,
and U.S. -Soviet relations were rocky.
er, the Council provides programs (over 300 a year) and services
to ;},ooo members around the world and the general public.
It also publishes Foreign Affairs magazine and books on internacontinued on p. 3
tional affairs and foreign policy.
{ THE
CoL L EGE.
St. fohn 's College . Winter 2005
}
{FRoM THE BELL TowERS}
3
entailed managing the research arm of the
Council. His experience supervising
scholars and researchers at the council will
"You could never leave the apartment
make him feel "right at home with the
without coming back with a story," says
faculty and students of St. John's," he says.
Peters. "There was the time I coasted into
Peters had been aware of St. John's
the gas station running on fumes. Even
College for many years . After the executive
getting gas was always an adventure in
search firm contacted him to gauge his
Moscow. There were very few gas
interest in the position, he took a trip to
stations. The ones they did have were almost
Annapolis to visit classes. He was impressed
hidden-impossible to find. Once you found a
by what he saw and heard.
station, you couldn't pay cash-you had to buy
"I sat in on a seminar on Aristotle, then
coupons from the state, give yom coupons to
MICHAEL PE'I'ERS, SANTA FE PRESIDENT
Ptolemy in math tutorial, and a Greek class
the attendant, then wait for the person to set
translating the Meno. The experience really
the pump for the amount of gas you were
convinced me that St. John's was a place I
allowed to buy. In one instance I went to the
window, my car on empty, and one of the coupons I had was torn on would like to be part of. The interaction between students and
tutors, the commitment and enthusiasm of the students, and the
the corner. The woman refused to take it. I kept telling her how
respect that students have for one another, the tutors, and the
badly I needed the gas. I even had the torn corner and offeTed to
books were all incredibly powerful. It convinced me to look
tape it back on, but no matter how I pleaded, she still refused.
seriously at the college and to find a way I could be part of the
Finally I crossed my fingers and coasted off to another station
St. John's community," he says.
that did accept my coupon-even with the tear."
It didn't hurt that in all their travels, Peters and his wife,
PeteTs left Moscow for Berlin, wheTe he wmked as liaison
Eleanor, found Santa Fe and the Southwest to be among the most
officer to the Soviet Army in East Germany, to work as a
beautiful places they have visited. They are particularly keen to
conventional aTms negotiatm in Berlin. Later, during the
attend the acclaimed Santa Fe opera-one of their new homebuildup to the 1991 GulfWar, he led an elite Civil Mfairs
town's many cultural treasures-this summer. "Wherever Eleanor
Battalion in Saudi Arabia. He finished his militaTy career by
and I would go in the world, we tried to take advantage of the
returning to West Point- this time as an administrator.
local operas . In Moscow, for example, we quickly found out it
After retiring from the military with the rank of colonel,
was best to go only to Russian operas. Once you've seen Madame
Peters went to work for the Council on Foreign Relations.
Butteiflyin Russian, you'll never see h again," he says.~
During his nine years at the Council, Peters served as senior vice
pTesident, chief operating of:ficeT, and director of studies, which
(continued)
"The experience
really convinced me
that St. Johns was
a place I would lzke
to bepart if."
MICHAEL P. PETERS
At a Glance
Education: B.S., engineering, United States Military Academy
at West Point; M.A., economics, University ofWas~ington.
Recent Experience: As executive vice pTesident, Council on
Foreign Relations (2002-2004), seTved as the principal deputy
for the council's president in all areas of operations. Directed
the research arm of the council, supervising a staff of IOO,
including 70 research fellows. For seven years (1995-2002),
directed day-to-day operations of the council, including managing a budget of almost $30 million and a staff of over 200.
At West Point: As chief of staff from1992-1995, directed day-today operations of the academy and led a community of over
ro,ooo. Managed a $350 million operating budget. Directed a
strategic review of the academy defining the mission and
purpose of the institution for the 21st century.
{ THE
Co L LEGE .
Military Career: (Ig68-gs) Chief, Conventional Arms
Negotiations: Principal adviser to the Secretary of the
Army and the Chief of Staff, Army, on negotiation and
implementation of treaties to reduce conventional arms
in Europe.
Commander, g6th Civil Mfairs Battalion (Airborne): led
an elite, 200-person, special unit responsible fm working
with local officials and populace in support of U.S. military .
operations. Deployed to Saudi Arabia in the first month of
Operation Desert Shield; coordinated Saudi support for
the lo!-,ristical infrastructure required for the U.S. forces.
Coordinated the initial restoration of government services in
Panama following the removal of Manuel Noriega.
Executive assistant, Office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff. Soviet Foreign Area Officer.
Assistant professor, United States Military Academy.
Platoon leader, executive officer and Armored Cavalry Troop
commander.
Recent reading: Snow, by Orhan Pamuk, a novel set in Turkey.
St. fohn's College . W in t er 20 0 5
}
�4
GILLIAM HALL
DEDICATION
{FRoM THE BELL TowERS}
THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN
G 1 l
The newest dormitory on the
Annapolis campus, Gilliam
Hall was formally dedicated in
a ceremony November rr.
Family members ofJames H.
Gilliam Jr., for whom the
building is named, and trustees
of The Hodson Trust, which
provided most of the funding
for the dormitory, attended the
ceremony and toured Gilliam
Hall afterward.
Gilliam was a trustee of
The Hodson Trust and vice
president ofthe Beneficial
Corporation in Wilmington,
Del., until his unexpected
death in the summer of 2003.
An Mrican-American lawyer
and business executive, he was also a respected civic leader and
philanthropist who believed in advancing opportunities for
others, particularly in higher education. To honor Gilliam's
memory, the first seven Mrican-American graduates of the
college attended the ceremony.
Long before he became a Hodson trustee, Gilliam came to
know St. John's through his service as a director of the Beneficial
Corporation. He was chairman of the Howard Hughes Medical
Institute when the foundation gave St. John's its first grant, for
$r million. "He was proud that we received it, and it showed,"
said Christopher Nelson, president of the Annapolis campus .
The college is honored that the new dormitory will bear
Gilliam's name, he added. "I came to admire Jim as someone
who reflected the ideals of our community: he had a talent for
{FRoM THE BELL TowERs}
thinking through problems and LINDA GILLIAM (RIGHT) WITH
CHRISTOPHER NELSON, AND HER
presenting solutions. He was
DAUGHTERS ALEXIS AND LESLIE
humble and generous; he was
someone who had achieved
success in life and felt compelled to share his blessings
with others," Nelson said.
Finn M. W. Caspersen, chairman of The Hodson Trust,
described Gilliam as an individual with attributes that Johnnies
would particularly value. "He embodied good judgment. Even in
difficult situations, he always had the right answers."
Daniel Russell (Aos) had two reasons to thank the Hodson
Trust for its generous support of the college: He lives in Gilliam
Hall and has benefited from a Hodson-funded internship that
allowed him to experience life in a public defender's office last
summer. Russell praised the dorm's spacious common rooms,
the full-size kitchen, and the views of College Creek and the lower
playing field. But he also noted that the addition of the new
dormitory has enhanced the character of the campus.
"What used to be a dark and foreboding back campus has
now become a much more lively area," he said. "Gilliam Hall
has truly been a wonderful addition to the already wonderful
St. John's College."
Gilliam' s widow, Linda Gilliam, also thanked The Hodson
Trust and the St. John's College community for "this marvelous
tribute to Jim."
"With Gilliam Hall, his legacy lives on," she said.
Work is already well under way on the second dormitory, to be
built next to Gilliam Hall and available to students in January
2006. With eight dormitories, the college will be able to house
about 8o percent of its students on campus . ....
FINN CASPERSEN, CHAIRMAN OF
THE HoDsoN TRusT, PAID
Gathered together for the
happy occasion of dedicating
Gilliam Hall, the first seven
Mrican-American graduates
of St. John's College had a lot
of catching up to do. Many
are retired now; some complained of slovving down just a
little. Some are single, some
married with children and
grandchildren.
Perhaps, since they were
already vvilling to attend a college in a segregated city and
suffer the indignities associated
with such injustice, they were
remarkable people when they
arrived here. Whether the
college made a difference or
not, one thing is clear: they are
certainly remarkable people
now. All went on to earn
advanced degrees. In long and
productive careers, they
worked to improve the lives of
others through education,
advocacy, and education.
Groundbrcaker Martin Dyer
(class ohg52) capped a 30-year
career in public service with
another decade as a fairhousipg advocate. He's still
active as a consultant to the
Greater Baltimore Community
Housing Resource Board, and
serves on the college's Board of
Visitors and Governors.
Mtcr earning his master's in
clinical social work, Everett
Wilson (class ofrgs6) also went
into public service: 33 years
helping youth in the state of
Maryland's Alcohol and Drug
Abuse Administration. Now, he
counsels kids struggling with
Attention Deficit Disorder.
Leo L. Simms (class of
rgs6)has retired from the
business career he launched
after earning his MBA from
Boston College, but he
stays active in his church in
Chelmsford, Mass. Mter
graduation , he served in the
Air Force, studied to become a
Russian translator, and worked
for the National Security
Administration during the
height of the Cold War.
It's the retired life, too, for
Joan Cole (class ofr957), the
first African-American woman
community services and
mediation for many years;
she's currently a trainer for the
city's Children's Services
Administration and involved
in community service in
Queens, N.Y.
Jerry Hynson (class ofrgsg)
has more time for genealogy
and research now that he's
retired from a long career in
Baltimore schools, where he
THE PIONEERS : FROM LEFT TO RIGHT (BOTTOM): JOAN COLE, MARTIN
DYER, CAROLYN BAKER BRoWN. TOP: EvERETT WILsoN, LEo
L.
':After the
jirJt semeste~;
I knew this was
theplacefor me. "
}ERRY HYNSON (CLASS OF
I959)
to attend the college. She takes
the trips she has dreamed of
during a long and successful
career in the New York Public
Library system, where as a
regional manager, she supervised 20 branch libraries.
''I'm so glad I can read during
the daytime," she says.
Carolyn Baker Brown (class
ofrgs8) , another New Yorker,
earned her master's in social
work and has worked in
was a teacher, then assistant
principal. His published works
on Mrican-American history in
Maryland have covered topics
including runaway slaves
and freed African-Americans
before the Civil War. Charlotte
King (class ofrgsg) was
another graduate to spend
her life in public service as
a clinical therapist, social
worker, and social services
administrator.
It wasn't easy to be pioneers
in Annapolis before Brown V.
Board ofEducation made
segregated schools illegal.
Martin Dyer came to Annapolis
in rg48 and found the college
much more welcoming than
the greater Annapolis community. The Little Campus Inn on
Maryland Avenue may have
been an off-campus haven for a
TRIBUTE TO JAMES H. GILLIAM JR.
{ THE
CoLL E G F..
St. John 's College . W inter 2005
}
SIMMs,
CHARLOTTE KING, JERRY HYNSON.
{ TH E
CoLL E GE.
St. John 's College. Winter 2005
}
5
generations ofJohnnies, but
Dyer was never able to venture
inside. Wilson remembers he
couldn't try on a suit in a downtown clothing store. And King
was turned away from a church
in downtown Annapolis , told
that she would find a more
welcoming congregation in
another part of town.
"At St. John's, I was just
another student," Dyer says.
"Mter the first semester,"
says Hynson, "I knew this was
the place for me."
Joan Cole, the librarian,
never regretted her decision
to attend the college-even
though she remembers her
name was left out of the
program of a King Williams
Players production for which
she had made costumes. Her
life-long love affair ·with books
was nurtured here, and she
enjoyed the poetry group in
which she participated. "I
found the education I was
expecting here," Cole says.
Each of the graduates has
remained keenly interested in
St. John's after some five
decades away from Annapolis.
Their attachment was demonstrated by their eagerness to
attend the ceremony and
their ongoing support of the
college's efforts to recruit
Mrican-American students,
helping the college find new
ways to tell minority students
about St. John' s. As Wilson
says, many Johnnies find out
about the college through
word-of-mouth, often from a
relative or friend who attended
the college.
"Our job as alumni is to
get the word out-through
churches, sororities, communities, anywaywe can-that
St. John's provides an education for a lifetime," he says.
There may be no better
evidence of that than these
seven alumni .....
-
RosEMARY HARTY
�6
{FROM
THE
BELL
{FRoM
TowERS}
THE
MAcGYVER MEETS
''I'M READY FOR MY
THE JOHNNIES
BELL
CLOSE-UP' MR. ZLOTOFF''
The St.
John~ Story,
Quick CUTS of 4-5 students &
2 tutors as they open books
and begin reading in various
locations: dorm rooms, library,
etc. Possible FLASH CUTS of
author's names, Hegel, Plato,
etc. CUT to villainous East
German spies racing up
McDowell Hall stairs. CUT to
MacGyver hastily assembling
rocket out ofseminar chair,
shoestrings, and Coffee Shop
French fry grease. He shoots up
stairs to Bell Tower, rappels to
safety FADE OUT
It's fun to imagine what the
St. fohn's Story- the campy
student recruitment film made
more than 50 years ago-could
become in the hands of Lee
David Zlotoff (A74), the
creator of the popular TV hero
Angus MacGyver. Zlotoff,
who has enjoyed a career
as a screenwriter and
director since graduation,
volunteered his time and
expertise to write and direct
a promotional video for the
college- the first since a
second movie was produced in
the early Ig6os . After serving
Redux
Natalie Rinn (A05) was enlistedfor a starring role in Lee Zloto.ff's
movie. Here's her account oflife behind the camera.
for many years on the college's
Board ofVisitors and Governors, Zlotoffknewwell how
the college struggles to
explain itself to its various
audiences . Last year, he
proposed a new movie proj ect
to the board. Shooting took
place in Santa Fe and
Annapolis last fall. Now,
Zlotoff is supervising the
editing of more than 70 hours
of videotape into a series of
short videos that the college
can show at college fairs,
use as presentations to
potential donors, and post to
the college's Web site.
Unlike past films that have
tried to re-create seminar
discussions, Zlotoff's project
starts with tutors and students
"Now throw down your book like you just can't make sense of it,"
directed Lee Zlotoff from behind the camera.
So I did. And such was myweek, the week that the St. John's
promotional film crew became extended-stay guests on campus and
I became a movie star.
It all happened by chance. I sat in the Mellon courtyard on a warm
Sunday early in September. I was puzzling over a paper in the senior
lab manual. A young man approached me as I was crinkling my brow
looking over the reading.
"Would you like to do a screen test?" he
asked in a tone that lacked expectation.
Happy to set aside my confusion for a
moment and intrigued by the words ''screen
test," I accepted his offer. I was sat down in
front of a camera and answered questions
posed by Lee. After spurting answers in
response to his questions about "what is it like
to be a Johnnie?" I was told I would be contacted within a week and was sent on my way.
A week later, the call came. It was the young
man, Jared Krause, the producer of the
St. John's promotional film. He wanted to
know ifl would be willing to be the subject of
some scripted material for the film .
Apparently the look of confusion I wore
when Krause first spotted me was the type of
authentic St. John's experience they wanted to
be sure to include in the film . He told me that
they needed images that would create a visual
"I thought this
was something
that needed
doing."
LEE DAVID ZLOTOFF (A?4)
LEE ZLOTOFF CHECKS OUT THE VIEW FROM BEHIND THE CAMERA.
preparing for seminar. The
bells ring, and students walk
into the classroom. It ends ·
when the opening question is
posed. Interspersed in the
basic narrative structure are
interviews with students,
tutors, and alumni; scenes
of campus life and student
activities; and environmental
shots showing off the beauty of
Santa Fe and Annapolis.
All told, Zlotoffhas
already spent months on
the project, which he
describes as a labor oflove.
He ate in the dining halls
and coffee shops on both
campuses, hung out with students in downtown Santa Fe or
Annapolis, and talked with
tutors. He enjoyed reliving his
own student days through the
eyes of a younger generation.
"It was great fun to do
and a remarkably insightful
process," he says. "At
St. John's, everybody does
the same thing and in certain
ways gets the same sort of
thing; in another way it's
TUTOR NICK MAISTRELLIS LED A
MOCK TUTORIAL FOR THE NEW
totally individual. If I had to
title the experience it would
have been 'Chasing the
Paradox.' We tell students
what to study but we don't tell
them what to think. It's a small
school, but in many ways,
there is this amazing diversity
of opinions and suppositions
and life experiences that
people bring to them."
The college has remained
basically the same since his
student days, but Zlotoff
has noticed some changesparticularly in the students.
"When I was at the college,
there were students who were
at St. John's because they didn't
fit in anywhere else . On both
campuses today, I see a great
deal of awareness on the part of
the students about what the
college is about and what
they're looking for," he says.
What took Zlotoff away from
Hollywood to document life at
St. John's? "The college could
go out and hire someone to
produce a video, but they
wouldn't have had a clue how
to do a film about St. John's,"
he explains. "I thought this
was something that needed
doing."-$-
ST. JoHN's VIDEO.
- RosEMARY HARTY
{ THE
CoLLEGE .
St. John's College. Winter 2 005
}
ST. JoHN's IN
THE NEWS
For those involved in the three
days of shooting on the
Annapolis campus, the Today
Show segment on St. John's
that aired December 30 might
have seemed disappointingafter all there was no mention
of great books, tutors, or seminars. A quick glimpse of tutor
Peter Kalkavage leading a
chorus, a seminar, a Waltz
Party in the Great Hall, shots of
crew on College Creek, and the
story of a "tiny college next to
the Nav~Academy"was over.
But brief as it was, the
story couldn't help but be good
press for the college, and about
6 million viewers watch this
most popular of morning news
programs. Roger Martin,
president of Randolph-Macon
College,hadspentasabbatic~
from his college in Ashland,
Va., to find out what life is like
for freshmen at St. John's. For
the f~l semester, he attended
seminars, rowed with the
crew team, and got to know
Johnnies. A Washington Post
story on Martin's experiences
caught the eye of an NBC
producer, and a crew came to
campus in mid-December.
{ THE
CoLLEGE.
TowERS}
7
story of a student's preparation for seminar: sitting in various places
on campus reading, conversing with fellow students, looking
generally confused while paging through a reading. They thought I
was a good candidate. Because they would capture these images without sound bites, the pressure to perform would be minimal. I agreed
to his request and we arranged a date to do our first filming.
The day arrived. I sat in a bath of synthetic light and rested on the
quad while the production assistant applied makeup to my face. I felt
I was experiencing the clashing of two worlds: The world of St. John's
and the outside world that was straining to look in. Providing a
vvindow of exposure into the Johnnie world felt unnatural at first.
Could we, as props arranged to tell the Johnnie story, really communicate the essence of the Johnny experience? I was told to assume
my look of confusion as I sat in the quad and affectedly discussed a
seminar reading with classmates.
The lights glared, the camera rolled, and then, a funny thing
happened. Under a tent of surveillance and heat, I embodied all too
easily the confusion with which I was so well acquainted. Though the
scenario was staged, my two classmates and I
had so often been genuinely confused throughout our time at St. John's that to reproduce the
appearance of confusion, even in a feigned
discussion, was second nature. I then realized
very little acting would be required in order for
the film to communicate even a taste of true
Johnnie life.
Throughout the next week I spent several
hours with Lee and his crew performing
several takes of"seminar preparation." While
the repetition of takes at times grew tedious,
I was confident the finished product would
convey to the world outside something true
about our microcosmic haven. And I, for one,
was more than happy to reproduce that truth
under the lights. -$-
NATALIE RINN:
Two observations on the
experience: Students can summon a mid-week Waltz Party on
about a hour's notice. And students and tutors assembled for
a mock seminar will have a serious discussion on Thucydides
that will go on long after the
crew packs up ru1d leaves.
NPR's WeekendEdition
~so carried a short story on
Martin's experiences at the
college, as did more than 6o
newspapers. (An. essay by
Martin will run in a later
edition of The College.)
The college continues to
attract attention from a
perplexing assortment of
media. In September,
St. John 's College. Winter 2005
}
A
STAR IS BORN.
Cosmo GIRL! magazine
included St. John's on its
"first-ever guide to the so Best
Colleges for CosmoGirls."
Sometimes national press
attention is just a passing mention, but in the right context,
it's enough to make Johnnies
swell with pride. An Atlantic
Monthly article entitled "Who
Needs Harvard?" an~yzed the
competition to get into top
schools and mentioned St.
John's-in the company of colleges such as Bryn Mawr, Notre
Dame, and Oberlin- as "schools
[that ru:e] not in the top twentyfive, yet may be only slightly
less good than the elites."
Now that's good press.-$-
�8
{FRoM
THE
BELL
}OHNNIES-R-Us
A New Online Community for S]C
Alumni Awaits Members
The college is pleased to unveil a new online community created to
enable alumni to stay better connected to each other and to the
college. The address is: http://alunmi.stjohnscollege.edu. The page
can also be reached by clicking Alumni on the college's home page:
www.stjohnscollege.edu and following the link published there.
Shortly after launching a new Web site last year, the college also
rolled out an online alumni register, but after a rough start never
improved, the application was scrapped. The college chose
YourAlumni. com to provide a broader range of services to alumni.
The site does require registration to take full advantage of its
features, but alumni can still choose to hide all or some of their
personal information from public view. Register as a member, and you
can view the personal listings of all alumni who have also registered.
Alumni can add much more information than has been provided in
the paper directory, last published in 200I. There is space to add
occupation, employer, graduate school, birthday, and other information such as career changes, moves , books read or written, and births of
children. Johnnies can post their own photos and create a gallery of
their children, new home, pets, or vacation to Greece.
{FRoM
TowERs}
Other options:
• Take part in online forums.
• Submit alumni notes online.
• Find out about college news, chapter events, and college-wide
events.
• Search for members by multiple criteria: e.g., campus, class year,
location, occupation. (Please note that results will be limited until
more alumni become members.)
• View class homepages and photo galleries.
Another improvement of the new sile is ease of registration: in most
cases, alumni will not need to wait for approval from the Alumni offices
in Santa Fe or Annapolis- it's automatic. Even when staff intervention
is needed, action can usually be tal(en in one business day. Users can
also select their own passwords.
The college chose a membership-based application in order to
restrict personal information to the alumni community and protect
privacy. However, alumni can still access a slatic directmy-which the
college will update periodically-that lists alumni, class year, city,
and slate. While this information is oflimited use, it's the member
directory that should be genuinely useful in creating a community.
All it needs is members.
Contact the Alumni offices with any concerns or questions about
the site: in Santa Fe, Roxanne Seagraves at 505-984-6Io3 or alumni@sjcsf.edu; in Annappolis, JoAnn Mattson at 4m-626-253I, or
alumni@sjca.edu. -t-
THE
BELL
TowERs}
9
TRAINING DAY
EARLY LAST FALL, 2I NEW RECRUITS-MOST OF THEM FRESHMENCOMPLETED THEIR FIELD CERTIFICATION FOR THE ST. JoHN'S COLLEGE
SEARCH AND RESCUE TEAM WITH A SIMULATED SEARCH MISSION ON
DECEPTION PEAK IN THE SANTA FE SKI BASIN. THE NEWBIES MADE THE
CLIMB TO I2,000 FEET AND COMPLETED FIELD NAVIGATION , BACKCOUNTRY
SKILLS, AND SEARCH TECHNIQUE TRAINING TO BECOME FIELD CERTIFIED
AND EARN THE NICKNAME "GROUND-POUNDER." WITH MORE R E CRUITS
THIS YEAR THAN EVER, THE COLLEGE TEAM CAN NOW FIELD MULTIPLE
TEAMS OF VOLUNTEERS. LEFT, ANABELLAASPIRAS (SF08) OF
WASHINGTON D.C., CAN NOW USE A TRIANGULATION MAP AND COMPASS
TO FIND HER WAY IN THE MOUNTAINS. ABOVE, NATE OESCH AND
RYAN GREENDYK (BOTH SF08) DO PUSH-UPS AT THE TRAILHEAD.
{LETTERS}
MISTAKEN NoTIONS
The story of Martin A. Dyer's being recruited
as the first Mrican-American student to
attend St. John's College, ofhis graduating in
I952, and of his now joining the Board ofVisitors and Governors, is inspiring. Mter all,
Brown v. Board ofEducation was not decided
until I954· When I arrived in Annapolis as a
freshman in I956, African-An1ericans were
still second-class citizens in Maryland.
The story of Martin A. Dyer reflects well
on St. John's College, on the students who
persuaded the college to agmit [him], and on
Mr. Dyer himself.
The college's "diversity initiative," by contrast, is consistent neither with the mission of
St. John's College nm·with the achievements
ofMr. Dyer. Defending the "diversity initiative," nonetheless , Mr. Dyer asserts in his
recent letter (Fall2004) that the college
should make a determined effort to recruit
more minority students, "because seminars
and classes achieve greater profundity and
richness when students of different races, ethnicities, and backgrounds bring their life
experiences and individual perspectives into
the conversation."
I must disagTee. To remain politely silent
would show respect neither for the college
nor for Mr. Dyer. To remain silent would trivi-
thing profound that any Asian or Irish-American or Je,vish or African-American student
has said in a St. John' s College seminar that
flowed from his or her "race, ethnicity, or
background." My own fellow-students
advanced our conversations by giving evidence of close reading and good logic. My
fellow-students' racial and ethnic characteristics made no discernible contribution to
their being able to read and think well ...
Mr. Dyer is a remaTkable man, and I am
like other Johnnies in respecting his
achievements and in tiling pride in him
and in his story ... .All men and women are
educable "l.vithout regard to the peculiarities
of their ethnic and racial backgrounds. It is
not our fellow-students' peculiarities that
are the teachers at St. John's College . It is
the great books that are our teachers.
alize the great books program, and it would
patronize Mr. Dyer. St. John's College exists
because, as its motto suggests, boys of all
sorts are equally capable ofbecoming men by
a single device, namely, by means of books
and balances. The Program Telles on books,
not on the alleged broadening effects of a
multi-cultural mi'< of students. Nor was Mr.
Dyer himself recruited to St. John's College in
order to provide his fellow-students with his
race-peculiar contributions. Such a suggestion is repellant. Mr. Dyer was recruited
because the students at St. John's at that time
found the then-prevalent rules of racial discrimination offensive. This was precisely
because they believed that all men are fundamentally the same, not that they are different ...
Mr. Dyer cannot and does not appeal now
to what all men have in common, however. In
departing from that premise, he departs from
the foundation on which St. John's College
stands. Mr. DyeT relies, instead, on the premise that different "life experiences" will somehow enrich the college's seminaTs. Is this an
empirical claim or is it a tautology? I assume
that Mr. Dyer means it to be an empirical
claim. If so, he must present proof. Unfortunately, no proof is possible. Neither Mr. Dyer
nor anyone else can present evidence of any-
{ THE
CoLLEGE .
St. John's College. Winte r 2005
MARY CAMPBELL GALLAGHER,
CLASS OF Ig6o
The College welcomes letters. Letters may
be edited for clarity and/ or length. Please
address letters to: The College Magazine,
St. John's College, Box 28oo, Annapolis
MD 2I4o4. Letters can also be sent via
e-mail to: rosemary.harty@sjca.edu.
}
MELLON GR.ANT
SuPPORTS FACULTY
A $soo,ooo grant from The
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation will allow St. John's College to raise faculty salaTies
and provide funds for faculty
study groups on both the
Annapolis and Santa Fe
campuses.
One of the college's most
important strategic goals is
to bring its faculty salaries
closer to the mid-range of
comparable liberal arts colleges. Attracting and retaining exceptional faculty, and
compensating them fairly in
cities with a high cost ofliving, are key to preserving the
college's discussion-based
education program and small
classes.
Almost important as
improved compensation is
the need to provide faculty
{ T HE
C o L L E G E .
with continuing opportunities to deepen their own
knowledge ofthe subjects
they are teaching. Funds for
study groups mll support
faculty members who plan
and organize the material for
the sessions, and compensate
faculty for the additional
time they spend in such
groups . In the past, study
groups at St. John's have
included topics such
as Apollonius' classical
geometry, advanced reading
in ancient Greek, and the
poems ofWallace Stevens.
St. f ohn 's College. Winter 2005
}
"This generous funding
from the Mellon Foundation
for faculty salaries and
faculty development mll
allow the college to demonstrate to our tutors and our
students, as well as to the
college community as a
whole, the value we place
on our faculty and the
commitment we have made
to them for the future,"
said Christopher Nelson,
president of the Annapolis
campus. -t-
�.
'
,--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------.
IO
{PHILANTHROPIA}
RINGING A BELL FOR
II
{PHILANTHROPIA}
ST. JOHN~ s
REUNION
CLASs LEADERS
Increasing Alumni Involvement
ell-ringers were all over town in Santa Fe last
317 phone calls, and there was a lot of ringing: they raised $2,245
December, but bell ringers of a different kindin gifts and pledges .
without the Santa Claus suits and red kettles-were
Tiffany Simons (SFo6), a phonathon veteran, gave an
also making appeals from Weigle Hall at St. John's
enthusiastic kickoff speech to first-timers . "Make sure alumni
College. Telephones rung in homes across the
understand that gifts of any amount are greatly appreciated," she
country as students participated in a phonathon
said. "If everyone on this list gave only five dollars, we'd be way
for the college's Annual Fund.
above where we were last year in terms of alumni participation."
The Annual Fund helps pay for tutors' salaries, health and
Students say they get a great sense of pride in volunteering for
counseling services, admissions, athletics, and campus
phonathons. Some start out reluctantly, afraid to make a phone
maintenance and, perhaps most vital to the group making the
call to a stranger and reluctant to disturb a quiet evening to ask
phone calls, student financial aid. Thition meets just 70 percent
for money. But when they secure their first gift, they beam .
of the cost of educating students, and about 6o percent of the
Melinda Miller-Klopfer (SFo7) has worked several phonathons,
college's students receive financial aid. A gift of $roo to the
and each time she riffles through the list of potential donors to
Annual Fund has the same effect as $2ooo in the endowment,
find alumni in California. She, too, is from California and taps
since the college draws a s% from the endowthe \Vest Coast connection to establish a personal
ment every year for operating expenses. Gifts to
association with the alumni she calls. Some she
'~
the Annual Fund can be put to immediate use .
has talked to several times, and even though they
Phonathons take place on both campuses
have never met, they catch up like old friends
toward the end ofthe calendar year, and again in
over the phone. Helping the college raise money,
the spring, as the college' s fiscal year comes to a
Miller-Klopfer says, strengthens her appreciation
close June 30. Alumni, students, and staff take
for St. John's.
parents~
tutor~
part in the calling. To heighten the fun and
"After all," Miller-Klopfer says, "my St. John's
foster a little gentle competition at the Santa Fe
education is a gift-from my parents, my tutors,
phonation, held on a blustery December
the financial aid office. An education of any
evening, students had bells next to their phones
variety is a gift, but a St. John's education is a
• -11:
"
0J~ce
that they could ring each time a call yielded a
blessing as well." "'$gift. The group of eight students together made
MELINDA MILLER-KLOPFER ( SF07)
-ANDRA MAGURAN
.. my St. ]ohn:S
education is a
g!ft-from my
my
thefinancial azd
...
RINGING THE BELL:
ZAcK BoRING ( sFo8)
AND MELINDA MILLERKLOPFER ( SF07) HIT THEIR
BELLS TO SIGNAL A "'YES"
IN RESPONSE TO THEIR
ANNUAL FUND CALLS .
{ THE
C o L LEGE .
St. John 's College . Winter 2005
}
ohnnies like talking
with other Johnnies.
They get a chance
to exchange ideas particular to the college,
and they understand
what a genuine conversation is. That's one reason many
alumni accept an invitation
from the Advancement offices
in Annapolis and Santa Fe to
serve as "reunion class leaders," joining Philanthropia
volunteers in making alumni
aware of their role in supporting the college. When your job
is to reconnect with members
of your class to strengthen
their ties to the college, it's
more fun than work .
Tapping everything from
{
nostalgia to technology,
J
reunion class leaders work at
bringing the St. John's experience back
to alumni who have gone on to other
pursuits five to fifty years after leaving
their campuses. "It's so easy to keep in
touch with old Johnnie friends - which is
why it's weird that a lot of them don't
realize how important it is to give back to
the school," says a new reunion class
leader, Anna Christenbury (SFoo).
One of the major goals of the volunteer
effort is to increase awareness of the
importance of the Annual Fund to the
college and increase the number of
alumni who make contributions.
Gifts to the Annual Fund are vital to
supporting the college's day-to-day
operations .
Often, serving as a class leader is the
first time some alumni have had an
opportunity to volunteer for the college.
"We're fortunate to have reunion class
leaders who are exceptionally enthusiastic
and energetic," says Suzanne Thornton,
advancement officer in Santa Fe. "Many
of them find it extremely rewarding to be
able to do something for the college."
A FAMILY AFFAIR:
CAROL PLAUT
RICK
(A79)
(A77)
AND
HAVE BOTH
VOLUNTEERED AS REUNION CLASS
LEADERS.
Is
EMMA PLAUT
(Ao7)
NEXT?
and aware of what's happening
at the college today. "I owe
St. John's a debt of gratitude,"
says Preston, an architect in
Washington, D.C. "It opened
me up to appreciating the
eloquence of an idea, of a
well-reasoned argument. I may
have felt oppressed by it all
while I was there, but now it's
a kind of heaven in my mind-a
golden, shimmering memory."
Christenbury, who has been
composing music since graduating, has more than a few
ideas on how to get members
of her class back to the
college. Assisted by other class members,
she's assembling digital photo albums
and organizing regional get-togethers.
The most important part of her job, she
says, is taking the time to explain to
alumni why it's important for them to
help support the college. Preston says
that the most successful outreach in the
past has been making and selling home
videos from college days.
Other reunion class leaders have sent
handwritten thank-you notes to alumni
who have made a gift, contributed
material for class Web pages, sent out
postcards with senior class photos,
and arranged class gatherings for
Homecoming.
Putting one Johnnie in touch with
another invokes the sense of community
shared at the college, and that's what
reunion class leaders strive to do:
encourage their friends and classmates
to keep giving to ensure that more
students can learn what it is to be a
Johnnie . --$-
"I owe St. ]ohn:S a debt
qfgratitude. It opened
me up to appreciating
the eloquence qf
an zdea~ qfa wellr~asoned argument. "
BRUCE PRESTON, CLASS OF
Ig6s
From Annapolis, volunteers are
recruited for ro reunion classes;
eight classes in Santa Fe have reunion
leaders this year. The college offers
training at Homecoming each year to
inform volunteers about the needs of the
college and to provide an opportunity for
new recruits to talk with past RCLs about
the program.
Bruce Preston, class of rg6s, said he
took on the job because he wanted not
only to reconnect with the college, but
also to become more directly involved
{ THE
CoLLEGE.
St. John 's College. Winter 2005
- RosEANNA WHITE
}
(Ao4)
�{T
I2
H E
C H .A I
{THE CHAIR}
R }
ABOUT A CHAIR
"The chair looksfine everywhere. "
A Visit to the Home ofa St. Johns Icon
BILLY COPPAGE
It's a family business, and has been since
Moses Clore started the company in I83o.
Mter a fire in I930 nearly put the Clorcs
out of business, Mrs. Herbert Hoover-a
summer resident-came through with a
loan. Since then, the operation's been a
strong one, aided by a small college that's
been one of its best customers.
This is the home of the St. John's chairor, to be precise, the three chairs that
have populated the Annapolis campus
since the Igsos and the Santa Fe campus
since its opening in I964. The seminar
chair is actually the Plain Master Chair.
Dorm rooms are furnished with the armless Plain Side Chair, and the dining halls
in Santa Fe and Annapolis are filled with
the Ladder Back Dining Side Chair. While
the factory makes tables and desks and
other furniture, chairs outsell everything
else, says Troy Coppage, a great-grandson
of E.A. Clore and the vice president for
personnel. "You just won't find a more
durable chair," he says, hefting one up
and showing off the construction.
Production is labor-intensive. It starts
in the lumber room, where wood is boiled
for about three hours, then placed in
form s that forc e the wood for the back
frame, arms, and slats into graceful
curves. The slats are fitted into the
grooved holes of the frame, as are the six
rungs for the bottom of the chair, which
connect to the front legs. No nails are
needed, except for one on each arm of the
Master Chair.
Mter the chairs are stained, they're
sent out to local residents who weave the
fiber-rush seats with which Johnnies
become so intimately familiar. Newcomers to this work sometimes surrender in a
few days. "It's hard on the hands," says
Coppage. ''I'd starve ifl had to do it."
The graceful arms of the Master Chair
go on last. Then the chairs are shipped,
most often to individual customers, but
also to big users like boarding schools,
seminaries, and inns.
BY RosEMARY HARTY
fit weren't for the signs leading the way, it would
be easy to miss the E.A. Clore Sons Furniture
Factory in Madison, Va. The view to the west is
of Old Rag Mountain, the most spectacular peak
in the Blue Ridge'- Mountains. Turn off the main
business thoroughfare of this town, follow a
driveway to the bottom of a little hollow, and you'll find
a very small factory where furniture is made the old-fashioned way.
{ T H E
C
o L L E G E .
St. fohn 's College . Winter 2005
}
OPPOSITE: "You CAN USE IT EVERY DAY,
AND IT'LL LAST IOO YEARS," SAYS
TRoY CoPPAGE OF THE ST. JoHN's CHAIR.
AT RIGHT AND BELOW: CHAIRS ARE MADE
THE OLD-FASHIONED WAY IN THIS FAMILYOWNED BUSINESS IN RURAL VIRGINIA, JUST
EAST oF THE BLuE RIDGE MouNTAINS.
ABOUT THREE HOURS OF HAND WORK GO
INTO EACH CLORE CHAIR.
Coppage doesn't know a lot about the
St. John's Program ("It's not a normal
college'?") but he likes seeing the Master
Chair featured on the college's Web site.
That was partly the doing of Mark
Neustadt, a marketing expert who's been
handling the college's recruitment publications. "It's a perfect symbol of how the
school differs from others," he says. "You
learn by sitting and discussing the books.
You learn for yourself."
But is the chair really comfortable?
"Wonderfully comfortable," says tutor
Eva Brann, who should know as well as
anyone. "You sit in them for hours at a
time, so it's good that they have a comfortable'bottom. And of course, they are
very elegant to look at."
And is it really sturdy? Yes, says Bryan
Valentine, the treasurer in Santa Fe,
who is in charge of buying new ones
when the stock of more than I,Ioo out
West needs replenishing. "The rungs
sometimes break out because students
always rest their feet on them, and the
backs have been broken out when they've
tipped over."
Billy Coppage, vice president of the
company, has made several trips to
Annapolis to deliver new or repaired
chairs. On a visit to Colorado a few years
back, he made a detour to Santa Fe just to
see the campus-and his chairs.
{ THE
CoLLEGE.
St. fohn 's College . Winter 2005
So where does the Clore chair look
better, he's asked? In Santa Fe's
sun-drenched seminar rooms? In
historic McDowell Hall? He smiles
broadly and says in a voice dripping
with Virginia honey, "That chair looks
fine everywhere."-*
For more on Clore, visit the company's
Web site: www. eaclore. com
}
�{THE
{THE
PROGRAM}
PROGRAM}
EINSTEIN
COMES TO ST. JOHN'S
BY RosEMARY HARTY
URTIS WILSON (HA83) BROUGHT
Einstein to St. John's College.
That is, during Wilson's
tenure as dean of the college in
the late Igsos, he decided that
Einstein's theory on special
relativity deserved a place in the Program. "The
idea of tackling difficult things was not foreign
to the Program," Wilson recalls. "All sorts of
things could be attempted, but what was important was learning to do them in a way that students feel some accomplishmen\ in them. We
didn't want to bamboozle them by talking over
their heads."
Working with tutor L. Harvey Poe (A52), Wilson wrote a manual designed to lead students
through the math and the major concepts of the
I90S paper. The manual was introduced in I959
and used at least until I964, when Wilson joined
the faculty in Santa Fe and later, the University of
{ T H E
C o L L E G E .
California. When he returned to Annapolis in
I973, seniors in math tutorial were reading the
paper. "That was an important shift, and I was
really glad to see it. It motivates students- 'this is
really the paper that Einstein wrote? And I'm
reading it?' "
Beautiful, simple, mind-boggling-the words
St. John' s tutors and students use t o describe Einstein's paper-help explain why so many Johnnies
find reading the paper a capstone of their years at
the college. But it was once thought ''too modern, too difficult, too complex" for students,
recalls Santa Fe tutor Peter Pesic, who has taught
the paper about half a dozen times. As a physicist,
of course he was familiar with Einstein's theory,
but he had never read the I90S paper before
coming to the college.
''It was one of the discoveries I made at St.
John's, to encounter Einstein in his own
thoughts, his own words," he says.
S t. fohn's College . ·w inter 2005
}
{ T H E
CoL LE G E.
St. Jo hn 's College . Winter 20 05 }
IS
�I6
{THE
PROGRAM}
{THE
"Special theory is a
little gem. "
patience, even more so than intelligence (though that does
not hurt, of course) . Patience is needed for both running
experiments and figuring out what to make of the end results.
SEEING A PROBLEM
Erin Hanlon (SFo3)
Studying Einstein's paper did not influence my decision to
become a scientist but it has had an impact on how I think
about research questions.
I had been accustomed to reading scientific papers a couple
of times over and thereby getting a general sense of the theory
and any equations. But with the Einstein paper I had to carefully go over each word to make sure I understood what he was
saying-so much of it was counterintuitive to my mind. I
remember staring hard at the board and frequently interrupting
whoever was presenting in order to ask questions so that I could
better shape the mental illustration I was trying to form.
The properties of electrodynamics addressed in the special
theory of relativity do not have a direct effect on my research as
a plant eco-physiologist. But it is the process, the process of
seeing a problem, coming up with possible solutions and
working through them all until one that holds up is found, that
turned out to be my most important gleaning from this paper.
The most important thing that you need to bring to science is
CHALLENGING AssuMPTIONS
Richard Green (SF87)
Probably the most radical thought that comes from the rgos
paper on special relativity is that it forces one to rethink the
concept of simultaneity. Assumptions about simultaneity seem
so basic that it is difficult to be aware that one is making
assumptions. How interesting that one can be unaware of basic
assumptions that are fundamentallyWI·ong.
Richard Green is a chemist workingfor the US. government on
issues related to difenses against chemical warfare agents.
"Ones learning
how to make
another small
step_, then maybe
another step
ifierthat."
C oLLEG E .
S AM KuTLER ( AS4 )
Erin Hanlon is a Ph.D. student in biology at the
University of Utah.
In Annapolis, Dean Harvey Flaumenhaft
"We didn't assume that our students knew
has led the senior math tutorial on Einstein
algebra back then," he explains, ''and the
many times. Although Flaumenhaft's speworst thing we did was waiting until senior
cialized field of study has been political phiyear to teach calculus-too late to use in
losophy, a framed copy of the Einstein-on-asenior laboratory."
bicycle photo hangs prominently in his
To Kutler, Einstein's theory is simply
office, and Flaumenhaft holds this particubeautiful. ''It has two postulates. One is that
lar Program author in high esteem- not just
if light is emitted it doesn't matter if the
for what he thought, but how he thought.
light is coming right at you, going away
Einstein characterized himself as a "slow
from you, or standing still with respect to
thinker" who pondered his theories long
you: it's still going to come at a single speed.
and hard for many years before something
The constancy of the velocity of light is one
emerged. Approaching Einstein in the classprinciple, and the other one is the relativity
HARVEY FLAUMEN HAFT, DEAN
room also requires patience and time.
principle, which is that the laws of physics
"One's learning how to make another small
have to be the same; there's no special frame
step, then maybe another step after that. If
of reference."
we can take just a couple of really good steps
Long b efore he worked out his theory on
toward beginning to understand those fundamentals, one
paper, "Einstein didn't think that Newtonian physics made
starts to think in a way that's much deeper."
any sense," says Kuder. Poincare, Lorentz, and Fitzgerald
"Special theory is a little gem," says Annapolis tutor Sam
were all thinking along the same lines, and Poincare might
Kuder (class of 1954) , because seniors can study it for a
well have beaten Einstein to the punch. But Einstein was
term- one truncated by the writing period and perhaps
the first one to determine that "since we can't find the
aether, there's no need for it."
tainted by the post-essay letdown -and emerge with a fairly
good understanding of the basics. Adding the paper to the
" This is a great blow to empiricists like Francis Bacon
Program was a change that was enabled by the college's
who believe you keep experimenting and experimenting,
earlier decision to stop extensive instruction in algebra.
and you're very slow to theorize. Einstein didn't obey those
{ THE
PROGRAM}
St. John 's College · Winter 2005
}
rules. He theorized first and the
experimentation came later. He
loved his theories, and he
believed in them."
Santa Fe tutor Ralph Swentzell
guided seniors in math tutorial
many times in his 38 years with
the college, and led one exceptional preceptorial for Graduate
Institute students taking the
math and science segment.
"Some of them were accountants, and some were English
teachers, and they would all get
up to the board and work through
the equations . It was very exciting-I still get letters from those
students," he says.
Over the years, Swentzell has
assembled a collection of notes
that he uses to supplement the
paper; they're enormously popular with Santa Fe students. One
of his favorite examples is helping students make sen se of Einstein by getting them to figure
how fast they would have to drive
a car to get it to shrink and fall
into one of the cracks on the
road. "They get a big kick out of
that," he says.
Even after all his years of working through the paper 'vith students, Swentzell finds there are
some concepts Einstein presents
that just "hit you in the stomach
sometimes."
"You can see how it's all
derived, but then to imagine
walking around this world of
ours and as you're walking down
Two THINGS
Laine Conway (SFot)
I was, while reading Einstein, fairly obsessed with the
work of Kurt Go del, and so my memories are doubtless somewhat tainted. Still, two things in particular
stand out for me from reading Einstein:
r. The equation "e=mc 2 " is far from being
mysterious and arcane. Instead, it falls neatly,
elegantly, and almost unobtrusively out of the
preceding equations.
2. Einstein later (re) did his calculations for
relativity using only algebra; the original equations
use calculus because Einstein was, at the time he
wrote the paper, studying calculus!
The other thing I recall is how much I liked Einstein.
I'm thinking, here, of a line from The Catcher in the
Rye: "What really kno cks me out is a book that, when
you're all done reading it, you wish the author that
wrote it was a terrific friend of yours, and you could
call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it.
Laine Conway; having completed an MFA in
Dramatic Writing, has returned to math (and Marx)
and is studyingfor a Ph.D. in economics.
PROVING THE ABSURD
David] Macdonald (SFg3)
Einstein's 1995 paper on special relativity was certainly one of the highlights of my time at St. John's,
and not just because it seemed to prove the absurdthat our notion of absolute space and time was an illusion. What I found most exciting was the simplicity of
the reasoning behind it. The step-by-step proof, from
the premise (Michaelson and Morley's observation
that the speed oflight is constant) to the conclusion
(that the length of an object varies according to its
speed relative to the observer) , was accessible even to
a college student like me with no more than a basic
knowledge of calculus. I felt like we were proving the
absurd with very simple , rational tools.
David Macdonald is a composer who also teaches
music theory at the Manhattan School ofMusic. .
{ T HE
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St. John 's College. Wi nter 2005
}
the hall, to suddenly think that
what you're calling 'now' means
a different set of events in the
universe than for somebody
who's sitting down in their
office. Everything changes.
That's the part," h e says, and
stops to chuckle, " that's just too
weird. That's when you have to
go home and sleep on it and get
the equations out to guide you."
The Nike adage "just do it" fits
with Peter Pesic's approach to
teaching the paper to Santa Fe
seniors. " Some tutors try to go
backwards, but it's hard to do
that without spending a long
time on review. So we plunge
into it and then take extended
digressions in electricity and
magnetism. We can drag out
magnets and coils and try to
bring to life where Einstein
was starting from with his
questions."
The paper may have seemed a
risky proposition to introduce
four decades ago , but it's well
within the grasp of today's students, says Pesic. "The heart of
his deduction can be done with
nothing except algebra, " he
says, adding that each time he's
taught it, even those students
without great skills in math have
risen to the occasion.
A leisurely pace is needed for
Einstein; up to 30 class sessions
in Santa Fe are invested in the
rgos paper. "That's quite a long
time, and a lot of time is needed
�{THE
PROGRAM}
{THE
"JYe can understand a lot
about geniuses and we can
participate in their thinking.
It;wt talces some zvork. "
GREAT IDEAS
Alciba Covitz (Ag1)
My senior year math tutorial was led by Winfree
Smith. Although I very much liked and respected
Mr. Smith, it was not a very good tutorial. One
student in particular refused to accept any aspect of
non-Euclidean geometry. Mr. Smith was patient at
first, but he was clearly not in the best spirits and, as
the semester progressed, the clash between the two
of them became quite pointed. We came to Einstein
with that as our rather contested and cantankerous
foundation.
At that stage in my college career, I was still on
the fence about what I would do, in terms of what
field to pursue i.n graduate school, try law school, do
a post-bac and try med school, pursue my interest in
journalism, etc. I remember that Einstein's language
seemed to be as much tied to metaphysics as to
physics. His ideas about the actual workings of
the universe and his semi-hidden, semi-mystical
cosmology seemed all jumbled together. I tried to
dis aggregate them, but with little luck. This, as I
recall (together with the mind-breaking steps he
assumed between the lines of his proof), helped to
convince me t11at it was best to pursue what I took
to be the foundations of all pursuits: the manifold
origins of the theoretical underpinnings of great
ideas. I chose to pursue this with the idea of a
constitution in the fully-contested world of politics.
for students to express their perconclusions on electromagnetic
plexity," continues Pesic. "The
radiation led Einstein to wonder
problem that emerges requires
what would happen if a source
having to reconsider the evidence
of electromagnetic radiation-a
of your senses in a very deep way.
light bulb, for example-wereWith Einstein, you don't so much
moving and he stood still. "And
understand it as you get used to it.
of course, you discover it doesn't
It flatly contradicts everything
matter," says Flaumenhaft.
that seems to make common
Einstein wasn't such a good
sense."
mathematician says FlaumenWatching students struggle
haft. "He was imaginative, he
with Einstein, Pesic sees the
took simple notions and mulled
best characteristics of Johnnies
over them, and he revolutionized
revealed in their discussions with
what we know about the world,"
each other. "They are not v-.rilling
he says.
to take some expert's word for it,
There's a strong correlation
instead, they want to see whether
between studying Einstein and
it's really true," he says. "They're
approaching nearly everything
An assistantprofessor ofpolitical science at the
intelligent and open-minded, and
else in the Program, from basic
University ofRichmond, Alciba Covitz teaches courses
they want to understand deeply."
assumptions about human freein constitutional law, civil rights, and ci'villiberties.
The types of questions tutors
dom to the laws of the physical
and students ponder in class can
world. "And that is that you just
be both wondrous and perplexing, agrees
can't'take it for granted-you have to think
Harvey Flaumenhaft. "What does it really
about; you have to examine whether it's
mean to say it's 5 o'clock in two different
really true," Flaumenhaft says.
Einstein~
places? \XThat does a law of nature have to
Curtis Wilson, who as tutor emeritus
look like to be reasonable?"
continues his life-long study of the history of
science, says Einstein's revelations were as
Students have the time to be patient and
shocking to the world as those of Coperniplod through the interesting questions
cus, Newton and Galileo. "There is a
Einstein's paper raises. " One ofthe delights c
relativity, usually called Galilean relativity,
of senior math is that Einstein's paper is
that says that whether the solar system is
short, and we spend a lot of time reading
moving or sitting in one place in absolute
through it line by line. It's so concentrated
space you can't tell, because everything
that what you're doing is unpacking the
goes on exactly the same way whether it's
significance of very simply stated assumpmoving or not. Here was a large branch of
tions that turn everything you've been
science that said you can't locate anything
thinking about the framework of the world
in absolute space, you can only say that
upside down," he says.
PETER PESIC, TUTOR
bodies move relative to one another and if
Senior math tutorial should start with
one body is accelerating instead of moving
a so-minute "quick-and-dirty review" of
uniformly, you can say that it's accelerating
Maxwell's Equations because Nla,"'CWell's
"Wzth
you don't so much
understand zt as
you get used to it.
Itflatly contradicts
everything that
seemJ· to rnake
common sense. "
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St. John 's College. W inter 2005
}
PROGRAM}
CuRTIS WILSON (HA83)
with respect to absolute space- in Newtonian physics , acceleration is real, the forces are real.
"That was kind of astonishing to people because they
thought the earth was not moving: 'I walk on this ground, it's
perfectly stable, towers are not toppling, and so forth. That
seemed like firm common sense. That's why Luther spoke of
Copernicus as 'that fool.' The earth moves!-how ridiculous
can you get? But of course Galileo and then Newton show
that everything works exactly the same way, mechanically,
whether we're moving or not."
By the time Einstein started questioning things, most
physicists "were as firmly convinced that there was an aether
as back in Luther's day people were convinced that the earth
stood still."
Einstein was able to think about light moving through the
aether in a different, imaginative way, and that made all the
EINSTEIN IN PoETRY
Anna Perle berg (SFo2)
The most amazing thing about the rgos paper is that it's all
algebra. Einstein could have worked the whole thing in calculus,
but instead he makes it simple-once, that is,,you get the dozen
or so steps he leaves out between equations. And Mr. [Ralph]
Swentzell brought a wide-eyed fascination to the subject (as all
the best teachers do) that made it matter. He was wonderful at
coming up with "real" examples applying these obscure
theories-swimmers, twins in spaceships, trains in tunnels.
One of the things Mr. Swentzell said that stuck with me was
that Einstein needed to be poetized in order to be brought to a
larger audience . Here's my attempt:
II. Relativity
T = cp(w)~(T-w~hc2)-Lorentz transformation for time
"*'
Yet it's all predictable,
and so smooth a ride in the end;
time-dilated by a few tokes
I faced the following:
A train (of course a train) pushing c, trapped
or not trapped in a pre-Freudian tunnel,
depending on passenger or spectator.
And they're both right. They're both right,
goddammit. The sober mind boggles.
But as I spmwled on the floor after two hours of work
and saw the clock's fingers tap out fifteen minuteswell, it's synchronicity, that's what it is.
Everything's happening the same everywhere,
just not at the same time.
And not at the same where, either.
How-much-not-the-same-time,
how-far-from-the-same-where,
.
though, is only algebra. And for mankind
it all goes to zero. Fm electrons or stars, a different story,
haiku or epic; but here on Pascal's fulcrum,
balanced between infinite and infinitesimal,
one feels less wretched than weighting.
It's all about trains,
though their timetables must be thrown out
· thewindow. "Hurryhome,"
I say to an absent lover, "or at least
start traveling at three-quarters c away from me."
I stand on the platform and watch you go by
getting smaller and smaller, more and more part
of my past.
{ TH E
difference. "He tried to think about sitting on the hump of a
wave. Just sitting there at 30o,ooo kilometers-persecond, what would it be like?" Thought experiments like
those led Einstein to new questions. "He gets rid of the
aether and says space and time are what we're talking about."
Even with his many years of studying science as his foundation, Wilson says he can still be "befuddled" by the
subtleties of the paper when he stops to think about them.
But it's not a bad state to be in, he concedes, adding a rationale that seems in a broad sense to cover the whole point of
choosing a college '"rith a program like St. John's in the first
place.
"We can understand a lot about geniuses," Wilson says.
"And we can participate in their thinking. It just takes
some work."
Anna Perle berg is at work on an MFA in poetry at
Wichita State Universi~y.
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St. John 's College . Winter 2 0 05
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�20
{ATOMIC
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2I
THE NEGOTIATOR
From the Seminar Table to International Relations
BY RosEMARY HARTY
~--
HESE DAYS NICOLE NELSON-JEAN (AGIOO) LIVES
in Tokyo, where she directs the Department of Energy office and serves as Energy
Attache to the U.S. Ambassador to Japan.
In September, she received a Service to
America Medal honoring her for her success-at the age of 28-in negotiating bilateral agreements with Russia that led to
stronger security measures for that
country's nuclear material and weapons stockpile. She's the
mother of an n-year-old daughter, newly wed to a Marine, and
ambitious enough to follow her career in public service as far as it
will take her.
But it all started very modestly with an internship at Los Alamos National Laboratory. As a college student, she was assigned
to a project tracking and cleaning up so-called "legacy waste"
from the lab where the atomic bomb was developed in the I940S.
In the lab's early days, materials like cobalt or cesium were
dumped into nearby canyons and carried by rainwater into
surrounding areas, she explains.
"My primary job was to get people to sign access agreements for
the government to come on their property, do a site survey, and if
necessary, clean it up and restore it," she explains. With her clipboard and her I.D. badge, Nelson-Jean was like a young Erin
Brockovich, traveling through the Los Alamos area, visiting
homes, mnches, and Indian reservations. One man, in his gos,
lived in a mobile home on a large tract ofland. "He was extremely
paranoid and wouldn't let anyone on his property," she recalls.
Nelson-Jean visited with him, listened to his stories, and, after
about a month of visits, left with a signed access agreement. "He
used to be the locksmith at Los Alamos during the time of Oppenheimer-he knew it all," she says.
Nelson-Jean had a family connection to Los Alamos. Raised by
her father, who had a military career, she was born in Morocco
and had lived in Spain and Italy. Mter retiring from the military,
her father went to work in nuclear engineering and was at Los
Alamos when Nelson-Jean was in college. Nelson-Jean landed
summer internships, founded the lab 's first student organization,
and was soon recruited by the lab's nuclear nonproliferation area.
Here, her language skills were a plus: She had learned Arabic as a
child and continued studying the language in college. She began
{ THE
CoLLEGE .
translating documents from Arabic to English-and, since some of
the information was determined as classified, earned a security.
clearance before she had a bachelor's degree. Mter graduating
from Grambling State University with her degree in political science, she went to work full time at the laboratory for one of the
defense contractors installed at LANL.
While she was working at the lab, Nelson-Jean applied to the
St. John's Graduate Institute in Santa Fe. "I really wanted to hone
my critical thinking and writing skills," she says. She had just
applied to the GI in Santa Fe when she was asked to take a temporary job working at the Department of Energy headquarters in
Washington, D.C. As a short-term contractor on loan from the
lab , she helped coordinate a nonproliferation exposition on
Capitol Hill. She met then-Secretary of Energy Federico Pefia.
"He asked me if there was anything I ever needed to come and talk
to him about it." Nelson-Jean said she'd love to work for the DOE,
and shortly after returning to New Mexico, she was called for a job
interview in Washington. Mter she joined the EneTgy Department
(still as a contractual employee), she put her graduate degree
plans back on the front burner. "Once I found out there was a
St. John's in Annapolis, it made it a lot easier to move to Washington. I was really sold on the GI," she says.
Status as a full-fledged federal employee came the month before
she graduated from the GI. Nelson-Jean was hired as a project
manager in the DOE's Materials Protection, Control and
Accounting Program. She was assigned to projects geared to helping Russia protect its nuclear facilities-and an estimated 6oo
metric tons of weapons-attractive materials in the country. Later,
her work came under the jurisdiction of the National Nuclear
Security Administration.
The two nations continue to work cooperatively to secure
Russian materials, but certain agreements had not been signed
when Nelson-Jean joined the effort. She believed that only face-toface meetings would facilitate negotiations, and she soon found
herself leading a delegation of U.S. security specialists and
scientists to the Arctic Circle. "I flew on Russian airlines, on
planes with bald tires. It's worse when you have 30-degree-belowzero temperatures, and the runway is a sheet of ice. The guest
houses were livable, but when you turned the water on, lots
of brown gunk came out," she recalls.
St. John's College. Winter 2005
}
In the negotiations, Nelprograms, technical center
son-Jean was at a disadvandesigns, and construction
tage-not because she lacked
schedules for the facility.
a science degree and not
Her award was a nice plus,
because she is an Mricanbut Nelson-Jean modestly
American woman. Instead,
says the real reward lies in
her youth worked against
the work itself. In her new
her. "In Russia," she says,
role in Japan , nuclear ener"they respect expeTience
gy is just one of the issues
moTe than anything, and
she handles. Her n-year-old
when you're young, how
daughter, Rachelle, attends
much experience can you
an American school in
have?"
Tokyo and may have inherIt was in overcoming that
ited her mother's skills.
barrier that heT Graduate
"When it comes to negotiatInstitute experiences proved
ing, she has it down pat,"
most helpful. She was able to
says Nelson-Jean. Her husCrOSS the boundaries of age and ethnicity How DO YOU BREAK THE ICE IN A ROOM
band, Patrick, is stationed about IO hours
because she knew that genuine conversation FULL OF RussiAN SciENTISTS? NICOLE
away at a U.S. military base in Iwakuni.
cultivates trust and respect. "The ability to NELSON-JEANWOULDTALKBOOKS.
Nelson-Jean has been adapting to a new
learn about different cultures, to really hear
culture again, by watching, listening, and
different perspectives without judging, to
respecting differences. "When dealing
communicate and talk with other people-all
with Russians, you can slam your books
were developed sitting around the seminar
and throw your papers-in Japan it's very
table at St. John's," she says.
civilized and very quiet. The Russians,
She had also read Tolstoy at the college
they're tough, and they're very good at negoand was able to convey true interest and
tiating. With the Japanese, they deal with
appreciation for Russian history and culture.
things by not dealing with them so directly."
NICOLE NELSON-JEAN (AGIOO)
Her knowledge of other classics in the WestWhen pressed, Nelson-Jean acknowledges
ern canon gave her the chance to talk with
that the world is perhaps a little bit safer for
the Russians about something other than weapons-grade plutothe work she has done. When she made her first trip to Russia,
nium. "Many of the people you deal with who have reached high
"September I I hadn't happened yet." What the NNSA seeks to
levels with scientific backgrounds are also very well read in the
prevent-unsecured nuclear material falling into the hands of a
classics," she explains.
terrorist group-seemed a more distant threat than it does today.
One of the best outcomes of the negotiations was a new cooperThe terrorist attacks sharpened her focus and have helped shape
ative agreement with the Russian Ministry of Defense. Another
her career. "I feel better that our cooperation is stronger with
was the establishment of the Kola Technical Center, the first
Russia today," she says. "It's made my work even more satisfying.
multimillion-dollar service and training center for securing
I feel like I'm making a difference. I hope I am."-$nuclear material and weapons in Russia. Nelson-Jean worked with
the Russian navy and Russian contractors to develop training
"In Russia they
respect experience
more than anything. "
{ THE
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St. John's College. Winter 2005
}
�22
{ATOMIC
JoHNNIES}
{ATOMIC
JoHNNIES}
BEYOND
THE BOMB
Johnnies Pursue Research Questions at Los Alamos
DY ANDRA MAGURAN
INCE
J.
ROBERT OPPENHEIMER LED A TEAM
of scientists in developing the atomic
bomb at a laboratory created on the site
of a former boarding school in I943, it's
been difficult for the sprawling Los
Alamos National Laboratory to promote
an image of being anything other than a
secretive place where nuclear weapons
are developed. Santa Fe senior Chris
Horne witnessed this view firsthand last summer when he
went to work at Los Alamos as an intern and encountered a
gathering of anti-war protesters. It was a bit ironic, he
thought, considering he was assigned to the lab's project
focused on efforts to find a cure for HN.
About 40 miles northwest of Santa Fe, Los Alamos
National Laboratory is the nation's leading science
research facility, currently operated by the University of
California for the Energy Department's National Nuclear
Security Administration. Together with Sandia National
Laboratories, the laboratory is the state's largest employer,
and many Johnnies work there as scientists, researchers,
project managers, and in various support roles. Many more
Johnnies have taken advantage ofthe laboratory's student
internship program, which employs about 2,ooo students
every year.
{ TH E
CoLLEGE .
The development of nuclear weapons is, of course, still a
major part of the laboratory's work, and some Johnnies are
part of that. But Horne says that the public is generally
unaware of the scope of research conducted at Los Alamos.
Horne worked as a bioinformatician on a project devoted to
using LANL's worldwide database ofHN virus information
to better understand the strain responsible for the AIDS
pandemic. In the summer internship, Horne used mathematical models and computer programs to annotate a
viral genome. He organized raw genetic data-namely, the
basic nucleotide series constituting the DNA of his
assigned virus-into charts, graphics, and text to create a
resource for medical and pharmaceutical researchers.
Since he recognized certain repeated portions of the series
in the viral genome he was annotating, he was given liberty
to name them as he wished. Inspired by the Iliad, he
gave the sequences names such as Agamemnon, Leitos,
and Euryalos.
Along with gaining experience in a scientific setting,
Horne enjoyed adapting his seminar skills to the professional environment of the lab. He gave two presentations,
one for the Annual Summer Student Symposium, a showcase for work done by summer interns. Since he'd been
annotating a viral genome, Horne created a poster displaying the sample gene record for one of the 77 genes he'd
St. John's College . Winter 20 0 5
}
examined. His other presentation-on SciENTIST EDWARD TELLER (CENTER) AT
ers can speak, to understand the
FuLLER LoDGE IN Los ALAMOS IN I946.
open reading frames, a type of gene
mechanics of this speech, and to alter
found in DNA-was part of a series of T ELLER WOULD LATER BECOME KNOWN AS
these mechanics to develop more
THE "FATHER OF THE HYDROGEN BOMB."
meetings that were held to update
efficient [computer] languages," says
members of his immediate group on
Hurwitz.
contemporary issues in genetics and
In his two years interning at the lab ,
virology. Mter his 45-minute talk, he
Hurwitz published six papers and was
ably defended his work in the question
the primary author for four of them. (A
period-even though he felt a bit intimsample title: "End-to-End Performance
idated facing a room full of scientists.
of Io-Gigabit Ethernet on Commodity
An internship in computational
Systems" published last year in IEEE
science was an equally rewarding expeMicro.) He was also part of a team that
Gus HuRWITZ (sFog)
rience for Justin "Gus" Hurwitz
set a new record in the Guinness Book of
(SFo3), who completed two internships before going on to
World Records for the fastest transmission of data over the
work full time at the lab. During his junior and senior years,
Internet (2.38 billion bits per second). "The lab is a serious
and for a year after graduation, Hurwitz worked at the lab
place to work," Hurwitz says, and a place where even Johnconducting experimental and theoretical research in areas
nies without a graduate-level scientific background can
of high-performance computer networking and protocol
contribute a great deal. "If you show your mentor that you
design in the Advanced Computing Laboratory, or ACL,
are capable of contributing to the work, the only limits will
part of the Computer and Computational Science Division.
be those you place on yourself."
Hurwitz's work in high-performance computer networking
In the working environment of Los Alamos, Hurwitz
was designed to improve the performance of the supercomfound similarities to the intellectual environment
puters used in nuclear science simulation.
fostered at St. John's. "The laboratory is a place where
"In more Johnnie-centric terms, I was a computational
people embrace inquiry and challenging questions," he
philologist, working to increase the rate at which computsays. He never encountered anyone who thought that the
"The laboratory is a
place wherepeople
embrace inquiry and
challenging questions. "
{ TH E
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St. John's College. Winter 2 005
}
�,-~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~-- -----
{ATOMIC
{ATOMIC
}OHNNIES}
DEBRA RuTHERFORD
HAS SPENT MOST OF
HER PROFESSIONAL
LIFE AT Los ALAMos.
liberal arts were useless; to the conweapons play in the lab-like me in my
trary, many of his co-workers with scifirst few months; you \vill meet moral
entific and technical backgrounds 'vish
delusionists , and those who work \vith
they had had the opportunity to read
the deadliest materials mankind has ever
the classics. "One of my co-workers
known and don't care, for whatever
always had a book \vith him. We had a
reason, to ask these questions. You \vill
number of good talks about Austen's
DEBRA RuTHERFORD ( sF8o)
meet idealists, who believe that they are
Emma, Descartes, and Locke."
helping to prevent more weapons from
c
Now that he's left the laboratory,
being built by maintaining the ones that
Hur\vitzhas turned his thoughts more
we already have," he says.
frequently to the difficult ethical questions he has previ"In short, the lab is a place on the edge of the greatest
ously avoided. A Johnnie who works at ~os Alamos \vill
moral dilemmas that I have ever encountered. Those
meet people whose views run a \vide gamut. "You \vill meet
questions are rarely asked or discussed, but they are always
people who have been at the lab since the Cold War for
there under the surface. And, if you scrape down below the
whom nuclear weapons were a necessary reality that could
surface, you \vill find as many understandings, acceptances, justifications, avoidances, and explanations of these
not be questioned. You \vill meet skeptics who question the
role that nuclear weapons played during the Cold War and
questions as there are employees at the lab. But, the most
the logic behind the arms races; you will meet
common response that you \vill find, nowadays, is, "I don't
people who do not understand the role that nuclear
know.'
"The intellectual
rigor. .. is astounding. "
{ THE
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St. fohn's College. Winter 2005
}
JoHNNIES}
'Yyworkis
tangential to kzlling
people and deJ'troying
the world"
''My work is tangential to killing peoin the area of nonproliferation. The reasoning and diplomatic skills she learned
ple and destroying the world. It is not
Gus HuRWITZ
at St. John's have proven as useful to her
the clean morality of a book, the ponas her scientific and technical training.
derous morality of Augustine, or the
technical morality of Kant; and it is far
"I participate and lead international
and domestic advisory panels and working groups, which
scarier than even the worst of that which Nietzsche could
require the skills one learns in seminar," she says.
conceive .... Students of philosophy in general \villlikely be
Rutherford feels the lab's most famous work, the Mansurprised by just how introspective most scientists are
about their work."
hattan Project, was a significant contribution to the end of
In addition to continuing as a consultant for the computWWII. But she is also impressed that the spirit of inquiry
er science company he founded while still in high school,
and the level of scientific excellence fostered in the
Hur\vitz is now making plans to attend law school with an
lab's early days have continued into the fields of physics,
eye to one day working at the intersection of science and
chemistry, biology, engineering, and mathematics. The
people she works \vith and leads at Los Alamos are proud of
law.
Unlike Hur\vitz and Horne, Debra Rutherford (SF8o)
their work and believe they are contributing to America's
freedom, she adds.
can provide few details about her work at Los Alamos,
where she took a short-term job after graduation
"The intellectual rigor \vith which national and internabefore going on to earn a master's degree in chemical and
tional scientific endeavors are pursued is astounding,"
nuclear engineering from the University of New Mexico.
Rutherford says.-$-She has worked full time at the laboratory since rg8g in
areas of nuclear technology
and nuclear material management-in short, helping to
safeguard the nation's nuclear
stockpile.
A clue to why she can't
say much about her work
may be found in the title she
holds now: Project Leader and
Nonproliferation and International Security Analyst in
the International Research,
Analysis, and Development
Group at the lab. What
Rutherford can say about
her job is that she leads a I2nation working group on the
need for critical experiments
AT
Los ALAMos, Gus HuRWITZ
CONDUCTED 'RESEARCH, WROTE
PAPERS, AND HELPED SET A NEW
WORLD RECORD FOR INTERNET
SPEED.
{ THE
CoLLEGE.
St. fohn's College. Winter 2005}
I
I
�{HOMECOMING}
{HOMECOMING}
HoMECOMING NOTEs:
ODYSSEY
Merit Award winners: William A.
Carter, class of 1940; Charlotte King,
class of 1959
Honorary alumnus: Glenn Housley,
class of 2004 (For more on awards,
see the Alumni Association section,
p. 47·)
IN OCTOBER
Homer Attracts a Crowdfor Annapolis Homecoming
ou couldn't say that Homecoming 2004 in Annapolis
lacked drama. Not with a
dozen or so costumed
students acting out the
homecoming scene of the
Odyssey in Iglehart Hall. Alumni happily
played the role of hungry suitors, noshing
on Greek appetizers offeta cheese,
hummus, and olives while they awaited
the banquet.
You couldn't say it lacked pizzazz-not
with a flock of plastic pink flamingos
leading the way to the picnic tent
("Kalypso's Isle"), where ceramic pigs
graced the table and calypso music played
on a steel drum had revelers dancing in
the buffet line .
·
And you certainly couldn't say it lacked
a good story, not with a dozen members
Y
of the class ofi954 , the last all-male class
to graduate at St. John' s, back on campus.
Rallied to attend by reunion class leader
and Annapolis tutor Sam Kutler, the
boisterous group matched much younger
Johnnies in their enthusiasm for the
weekend's festivities. On Saturday afternoon, they lingered in the private dining
room of Randall Hall telling stories and
drinking wine until they could be coaxed
outside for a group photo.
Arnold Markowitz stopped to comment
on changes in the main dining hall, where
bow-tied waiters did the serving in his
day. "Chairs," he observed. "We didn't
have chairs. We sat on benches." The
group disagreed on a few things. One
remembered milk cartons being lobbed at
the students by the servers; another was
Homecoming lecture: "Human Rights
from Antigone to Rosa Parks," Peter
Weiss, class ofr949
certain pitchers of milk were set on the
table.
Other members of the class were
pleased to see that the Chinese paintings
of a royal couple installed during President Dick Weigle's era were still hanging
in the dining room. The portraits were
among the few things that haven't
changed a great deal since these class
members attended the college . When
they were on campus, Campbell Hall was
brand new, Mellon Hall wasn't even a
blueprint, and students directed their
energy toward thwarting attempted
restrictions on their social lives that
today's students wouldn't believe.
With 450 students-compared to about
125 in 1954-the student body today seems
very large. "We were a small class," says
Bernie Jacobs, of New York City. "Only I7
of us graduated. It was a brief ceremony."
Several of the alumni remembered the
turmoil when women joined the student
body in their sophomore year. Eric
Crooke was one of several members of
the class to marry one ofthe first female
Johnnies. He and his wife, Sarah (class of
1955), live in Silver Spring, Md., and he's
been back to campus frequently since
graduation.
A nephew of tutor John Kieffer
(HA7o), Crooke learned of the college
through his uncle, but he came to
St. John's ofhis own choosing. "I've
never regretted it," he said, though he
heard many, many times, "you look like
John Kieffer" when he got to Annapolis.
Biggest turnout: Class of rg84, with
39 members registered. Annastasia
Kezar, assisted by Lenore Parens,
mustered the good showing, in part
by compiling for class members a CD
of '8os hits including "Rock the Casbah" and "Rock Lobster." A close
second was the class of rgg4, with
25 registrants.
Gerald Geddiman came all the
way from California for the
reunion. He hadn't visited the
campus since the day he received
his diploma under the Liberty
Tree. " I like what's happened," he
said, looking around. "I do like
the Greenfield Library. Next, I
want to go over and see Woodward
Hall-what's it called now?"
Santa Fe tutor emeritus Robert
Sacks-with Kutler one of two
members of the class to become
a tutor-was swept up in the nostalgia of the afternoon. "Fifty
years-it doesn't seem that long,"
he said.
The 1954 class members were
among the most honored guests at
what turned out to be the biggest
Homecoming yet in Annapolis .
More than 400 Johnnies attended
all or part of the weekend. At
Saturday evening's banquet, the
gymnasium was transformed (via
cardboard columns) into a palace,
where an energetic group of
students led by Julie Janicki (Ao6)
reunited Odysseus and Penelope
once more.
Inspired by the performance,
one alumnus giving his class toast
raised his glass to a true honorary
Johnnie. "Let's hear it for
Homer!" he said, starting the
alumni chanting: "Homer!
Homer! Homer!"._
Theme tchotchke: handy St. John's
backpack-good for any odyssey
TOP TO BOTTOM: STUDENTS GREET GUESTS TO
THE PICNIC TENT; MEMBERS OF THE CLASS OF
I954;
-ROSEMARY HARTY
PENELOPE AND ODYSSEUS, TOGETHER
AGAIN; AND MINGLING AT THE SATURDAY
COCKTAIL PARTY.
I945, AND
I949o PONDER A
CHARLES NELSON, CLASS OF
JIM CONRAD, CLASS OF
PHOTOS BY G ARY PIERPOINT
SEMINAR QUESTION.
{ THE
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St. John's College. Winter 2005
}
{ THE
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St. John's College. W inter 2005
}
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{THE
FACULTY}
{BIBLIOFILE}
IN ARisTOTLE~s FooTSTEPS
pARADISE LOST: REGAINED
A Healthy Marsh Enhances Freshman Laboratory
PARADISE LosT, r668-rg68 :
THREE CENTURIES oF CoMMENTARY
BY RoBINWErss (sFGI87)
On an autumn day in
Annapolis, at the foot of the
Boathouse, marsh grasses
wave along College Creek, a
testament to the health of
this six-year-old wetlands
restoration site. Cattails,
pinecones, and fist-size
mushrooms grow vigorously along the banks.
On their own initiative,
students often use the
marsh for projects such as
reseeding oysters, Environmental Club activities,
marsh cleanup , and independent research. Since
efforts to restore the grasslands have taken hold,
"we have more fish, crabs,
heron ...everything," says
tutor Kathy Blits.
Trekking through a
muddy marsh into a murky creek
isn't for everyone. But a few
weeks before the season turned,
some students in freshman lab
and a couple of tutors-enriching
the practica side of their biology
curriculum- took the plunge.
"Some ofmystudentswentin up
to their necks," says freshman
lab tutor Margaret Kirby. Using a
huge net supplied by tutor Jason
Tipton, they emerged from the
creek with four- to eight-inchlong fish . "We were just lucky
that we got really cool ones,"
Kirby says.
Thtor Christian Holland (A84)
recalls a handful of students
"leaping into the water to catch
a bunch of fish for the laboratory
tanks" after Holland showed
them Tipton's techniques. His
students continue to observe
these 40-some fish, well past the
fish sequence oflab.
This method of shallow
fishing with nets, called seining,
isn't new to the college, nor is
the aquarium in Mellon Hall,
which has been augmented over
the years by lab director Mark
"Small ugly;
insign!ficantfoh
consumed
[Aristotle :S}
thinking. "
TUTOR JASON TIPTON
Daly. In 1999, the college undertook a pilot project to restore a
portion of the College Creek
shoreline, with funding from
several sources including the
city of Annapolis and Chesapeake Bay Foundation. The
project proved successful in
increasing the number and
variety of wildlife habitats along
the creek and filtering stormwater runoff. When Tipton started
teaching three years ago, he was
thrilled with the pocket marsh
on campus, specifically its
possibilities for, what he calls,
"the pursuit of slippery prey."
The ubiquitous minnows aside,
Tipton names sunfish, silversides, croaker, yellow perch and
"FISH ARE A WORLD
I
KNOW," SAYS
ANNAPOLIS TUTOR JASON TIPTON
pipefish as some of the fresh
water and marine life plentiful in
this estuary.
"Fish are a world I know,"
Tipton says. An ichthyologist,
with a master's in evolutionary
biology and a Ph.D. in philosophy, Tipton wrote his dissertation on Aristotle's On the Parts
ofAnimals. Before coming to
St. John's, he spent a year in
Greece as a Fulbright fellow
tracking down, and finding,
Aristotle's fish. " One doesn't
have to be an ichthyologist,"
Tipton says, to stumble around
in the marsh.
''I'm paraphrasing, but
Aristotle says: 'Don't be afraid
to root around in the organic
world; there are gods here too.'
I love that idea. There 's something about getting your hands
dirty; Aristotle suggests something rhetorically powerful
about that."
More than 2,300 years ago,
Aristotle paid careful attention
{ THE CoLLEGE. St. John 's College . Winter 2005 }
to the eating, mating, and
breeding habits of fish in
their habitats. "Small,
ugly, insignificant fish
consumed his thinking,"
he says. Jars of alcoholpreserved goby and
blenny-Aristotle's one
fish, found to be two
through Mr. Tipton's
research- line a windowsill in Mellon. On one
jar, crowded with sturdy
grayish-brown fish , each
about two fingers long,
the label reads: " Bay of
Kallori, Lesvos, 4 km. N.
ofPyrrah, 75 m below s
altmarsh."
Nearby, tanks of marsh
fish from College Creek,
some wiggly, some mellow, inspire ongoing
student examination.
Atop one tank, a note
warns observers not to
touch or "you might get a case of
nasty microbes."
Freshman lab assistant Allison
Hennigan (Ao6) explains the
truth behind the joke: "Little
white crustaceans, about the
size of a dime," had attached
themselves to the gills and eyes
of certain fish. Eventually, the
arthropod parasites would have
worked their way into the blood
vessels on the gills or, after
sucking eye fluid, entered the
bloodstream through the eyes.
Biocalm, an anesthetic, seemed
to get the fish drunk, recalls
Hennigan: "The fish were doing
backllips. The parasites seemed
drunk, too ." The drug worked,
and the fish are healthy.
Students don't dissect these
specimens. Instead, Daly goes
to a local seafood store to get
" kitchen fish " such as rockfish,
flounder, and bluefish, for
students to dissect in lab. -t-
Edited by Earl Miner, co-edited by
William Moeck (A80), corresponding
editor Steven Jablonski
Bucknell University Press, 2004
BY G. A u GusT DErMEL, SF2004
---·--hen William Moeck
graduated from
St. John's in 1980,
he could not have
envisioned one
day co-editing a
massive volume of commentary on
Paradise Lost. First, like many Johnnies,
Moeck had developed "a healthy contempt
for secondary sources." Second, he had
skipped the Milton reading and seminars.
"I r em ember fearing that Milton would
be a boring or difficult author," Moeck
says. "Samuel Johnson once said that while
everyone could recognize the greatness of
Paradise Lost, no man ever wished it
longer."
When Moeck moved to New York after
graduation, he kept his Shawcross edition
of the poem along with his other Program
books. Fe eling guilty that he had never
gotten around to it, Moeck toted the book
along on vacation many years later and
discovered that he had missed a truly great
book. "I recall with vividness that on
vacation in 1988 I found clever and
Paradise Lost 1668-1968
,.HREE CENTURIES OF COMMENTARY
"
tdttor Enrl M1ner
Co·Edttor Wtlham Moec.k
Corresponding £d1tor Steven Jablonski
admirable the speeches of Satan.
I r ecall how moving the domestic
tragedy of Adam and Eve to be,
when Adam practically insults her
for wanting to go off to the garden
alone. If we are able to read
Genesis as literature nowadays ,
Milton must be given partial credit
for that change, fm he has told a
better story than the Bible itself,"
he says.
Reading Milton inspired Moeck
to look into graduate school, and
he later entered a doctoral progTam in English literature at City
University of New York. As he
wrote his dissertation, he began to
examine how passages from other
works influenced Milton. His dissertation adviser connected him
with Princeton University professor Earl Miner on the project that
would eventually become Paradise Lost
1668-tg68: Three Centuries of Commentary.
When he first conceived of the book
more than a decade ago, Miner (who died
last April) envisioned a reference book of
allusions on the Milton epic. Miner and
an early collaborator on the project,
Steven Jablonski, had begun collating representative work from scholars of Milton.
When Moeck joined the pToject in 1997,
"a different sort of problem emerged in
terms of defining what an allusion is."
"Imitation, echo, copy, allusion-even
parody and farce-all form a network of
words with related meanings . They imply
some sort of relationship between one text
and another that can be studied and
qualified. But how rigorously can one
establish how they differ from each other?
Is an unconscious borrowing also to be
considered as related to allusion?"
Moeck provided an example in the
oft-quoted passage where Satan says,
"The mind ... Can make a Heaven of Hell,
a Hell of Heaven."
"Has Milton here borrowed unwittingly
from Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's.
Dream, where one character says 'I'll
follow thee , and make a heaven of h ell'
(2.1.243)? The character in question ,
Helena, is merely the frustrated lover of
Demetrius, and not the diabolic perverter
of humankind. Would Milton in his lines
thus more likely be responding to the
{ T HE C oL L EGE. S t. John 's College . Win ter 2 005 }
IT TOOK HIM IO YEARS TO GET TO THE READING,
BUT PARADISE L OST EVENTUALLY CAPTIVATED
WILLIAM MOECK.
metaphysically-oriented Hamlet instead,
who also says ' There is nothing either good
or bad, but thinking makes it so' (2.2.24849)? Or do we have to look elsewhere for
Milton's sources, in Thomas Browne, for
example, or in the writing of the stoics?"
Together Miner and Moeck combed
through the available work on Milton
and chose commentary on each of the
12 books ofMilton's poem. A research
library unto itself, the book includes the
best commentary from Patrick Hume
(r6gs) to Alastair Fowler in rg68.
Now a pTofessor at Nassau Community
College in Garden City, N.Y., Moeckis
reading Augustine , Freud, Darwin, and
Marx with students in an interdisciplinary
program. The contempt he once held
for secondary sources has diminished
considerably, but he still believes in the
value oheading original texts before the
commentary of others.
"I think the very idea of such a reading
of the classics is embattled nowadays , and
probably the strongest line of defense
against the pre-professional training
vaunted by most undergraduate schools
would be to invoke the shibboleth ' critical
thinking,' " h e says. ~
�,-----------~-------·~- --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
{ALUMNI
{ALUMNI
PROFILE}
I've just completed r6 weeks of
training in getting certified as a
volunteer hospital chaplain."
CoMMITTED TO HELPING FAMILIES AND CHILDREN
Linnea Back Klee, A67, Balances I deals and Details
BY CAROLINE KNAPP, SFoi
rom her fourth-floor
office in San Francisco's Mission District,
Linnea Back Klee
(A67) has sweeping
views of the city, from
Nob Hill across the bay to the
shipyards of Oakland. Seagulls and
ragged palm trees flap in the foggy
air; down below, high school
students straggle down the sidewalk,
swinging their backpacks. Construction cranes sway up over the traffic
lights of Van Ness.
Inside, order reigns . Klee's deskfrom which she directs one of the
city's largest nonprofits, administers
an annual budget of$ so million, and
manages a staff ofr3o-has perhaps
three stacks of paper on it, each
corralled in its own tray. There are
no aging Post-its, no toppling files,
no stray paperclips. Even her
awards, bronze plaques from the
San Francisco Board of Supervisors
and various nonprofit groups, are
neatly aligned on the bookcase.
The Children's Council of San
Francisco, Klee's professional home
since 1993, strives to make sure that San
Francisco's working families can meet one
of the most basic needs of daily life : affordable , high-quality child care. The council's
referral programs put parents in touch
with child-care providers, its education
programs train caregivers, and, perhaps
most crucially, its subsidy programs
administer the monthly payments that
put child care within the financial reach of
low-income mothers and fathers.
But, not to lose sight of the social
environment in which all these individual
choices are made, the Children's Council
is also a major advocacy force in San Francisco, Sacramento, and Washington.
Through public policy lobbying and
grassroots organizing, Children's Council
employees and volunteers do their best
to bring the needs of working parents,
child-care providers, and children before
lawmakers and voters.
A "QUIET"
JoHNNIE, LINNEA BAcK
KLEE FOUND HER VOICE IN ADVOCACY.
her sophomore year, Klee wrote a
letter to tutor Barbara Leonard
(HAss) about the difficulties of
being a quiet Johnnie, packed her
bags, and went on to earn a degree
at George Washington University.
Klee's journey from the ether to
the grassroots can be traced in part
through her higher degrees: after
GWU, she earned a master's in cultural anthropology from Catholic
University, then a Ph.D. in medical
anthropology from the University of
California, San Francisco. Klee had
considered following her husband,
Earl Klee, into teaching. But her
thesis project, on cultural perceptions of illness in history, refused to
be contained in the classroom:
by1983, the AIDS epidemicwas
exploding like a shell over San
Francisco, and suddenly the most
interesting sources weren't in the
library. They were in the hospitals and in
the streets. Thus began Klee's decade of
~eldwork in medical anthropology.
An introvert no more, she interviewed
women about their attitudes toward childbirth, former GM workers about their
alcohol abuse, children of alcoholics
about their parents. In 1985 she joined a
colleague at the newly founded Center for
the Vulnerable Child at Oakland's Children's Hospital, where she continued her
work as a researcher with the center's target population: children in foster care. "I
loved going and meeting all those people
and talking to them," she says.
But her work at the Center for the
Vulnerable Child was leading her toward
another emerging talent: As program
coordinator of an innovative and perpetually underfunded nonprofit, Klee began
writing grants. By the time she left in 1993
to become the executive director of the
Children's Council, she had become very
"People arefinally
starting to get it. "
LINNEA BACK KLEE
(A67)
At the helm of all this, Klee, a gracious,
attentive woman with a generous smile, is
the first to admit that her work is not for
everyone. "It goes from the sublime to the
ridiculous," she says. "I've got employee
parking problems .in front of me one
minute, then major public funding
questions."
But Klee's background has made her
comfortable in balancing ideals and
details . Although she attended St. John's
40 years ago, she still remembers loving
Euclid and the freshman-year program.
"I really loved the curriculum," she says a
little wistfully. "But I just couldn't talk. I
was an introvert in an extrovert's college."
Klee followed her brother, Eric Back (A6s),
to Annapolis in I963. But midway through
{ THE
CoLLEGE .
St. John 's College. Winter 2005
continued
}
HEl\'RY SHRYOCK JR. was recently
awarded "The President's Call
to Service Award" by the
President's Council on Service
and Civic Participation.
1 935
"I'm still working- practicing law
for the past 66 years and I hope
to get it right soon!" writes
RICHARD WOODMAN.
Milestones: GIL CRANDALL writes
that he celebrated his 8gth
birthday on July r, 2004, and
classmate MARTIN RAuscH
celebrated his goth birthday
on July 8, 2004.
ERNEST HEINMULLER writes to
say that the " 'keep reading, keep
learning' credo ofWinkie
[Stringfellow Barr] is still alive:
1943
At 85, MILTON PERLMAN is still
reading many hours a day: "The
most important benefit of the
Program is a love of reading. I am
still hoping that at least the first
part of Proust's novel will be
restored to the fourth-year list."
GEORGE R. TRIMBEL JR. hecame
a great-grandfather with two
great-grandsons born one week
apart in October 2004.
NoTES}
eager for the homecoming: "We
have not seen him for three years ,
given our own driving limitations-twenty minutes to and
from church each Sunday is the
longest, with Rita on 24-hour
oxygen, etc."
GEORGE WEND continues to
participate in the Baltimore
Alumni Association chapter's
book discussion group. The
summer before last, he took a
trip to Peru to visit Machu
Picchu, the Andes, and the
Amazon. This past summer,
he took a two-week river cruise
from Moscow to St. Petersburg.
THE REV. FREDERICK P. DAVIS
writes from California that his
son, David, is expected back
home from a convalescent center
early this spring after suffering
several health problems, including a broken leg and infections
that settled in both legs. The
Rev. Davis and his wife, Rita, are
continuedJr:om page 30
good indeed at nonprofit management and
her grant writing was paying the salaries of
the entire staff.
In her I I years with the Children's
Council, Klee has supervised its expansion
from a neighborhood organization with
35 employees to its current status as a
statewide player with 130 employees and its
own building. She's been gratified to see
public opinion shift on child care ("people
are finally starting to get it").
Today Klee's work continues to walk the
line between the big picture and the individual story. These days, she's the one who
Enjoying the retired life,
JOAN CoLE just returned from an
Alaskan cruise. "The glaciers,
mountains, lakes, and wild life
are too impressive for words .
Residents spoke about their
state with the enthusiasm and
pride of staunch St. Johnnies,"
she writes.
gets int~rviewed for articles, and at work
she goes weeks without seeing a child. She
writes the position papers for the council's
public policy committee and sits on the
policy boards of sister nonprofits. But she
is acutely aware that the 30o,ooo children
on the waiting lists for public assistance
in California represent not only budget
dollars but also individual families with
complex, often pressing needs.
What more, she's aware that the work
she strives so hard to keep organized, there
in her office with the city laid out all
around her, is work that truly can- in the
most simple ways- help many of those people. Nonprofit management is a good field,
{ TH E
CoL L EGE .
St. John's College. Winter 2005
HILDRErH BECKER (HILDY
SMITH) writes: ''I'm a happy
grandmother again: grandson
Alexander Paige, son of rg88
[Annapolis] alumnus CHRISTINA
MYER PAIGE. He joins his sister
Adela, who is now nine. Christina is working full time as a high
school math teacher. What have I
been doing since attending the
college? I pursue my studies in
philosophy and other esoteric
pursuits."
1962
JOHN FRANKLIN MILLER is president of the board of the Library
of American Landscape History.
1957
1 949
rg6o
rg68
PETER CoEN (A) is currently
employed as an assistant public
defender in Bradenton, Manatee
County, Florida.
ANTIGONE PHALARES (SF) spent a
week in Santa Fe in July staying
with ALLISON KARSLAKE LEMONS
(SF68), DoN (SFGigr), and two
she says, "if you're interested in pursuing
the Good. That's what we do."
As for less practical pursuits of the
Good, Klee still hasn't given up on the
idea of St. John's. She and her husband, a
professor at UC Berkeley, visited Santa Fe
last summer and are already thinking that
perhaps, when they retire, getting a few
more degrees might not be amiss . "I
wouldn't have any problem talking in
seminar now," Klee says, laughing. --$-
Caroline Knapp lives in Berkeley,
California, and is an editorial assistant at
the University of California Press.
}
�{ALUMNI
sons Micha 1md Than, and a
St. Johnnie , JAKE, a junior at the
Santa Fe campus. "We gathered
around the television listening to
the speeches of the Democratic
convention . It was delightful to
be amongst politically like-minded friends. Allison and I enjoyed
a three-night, do-it-yourself
retreat at the Holy Archangels
skete near Canones in northern
New Mexico. We had lunch with
Claudia and Sam Lancombe and
reminisced and sputtered over
the political mess-o-potamia our
government has gotten us
embroiled in. Both Allison and I
fac e the empty nest; this fall her
sons leave for Italy and Hungary.
My daughter, Heather, is already
in Paris."
1969
LINDA M. BERNSTEIN (A) writes:
"Our first grandchild was born in
August. We are fortunate our son
and his wife and their new son
live in Philadelphia so we can
enjoy their company and watch
him grow. Meanwhile, our third
son has left home to become a
freshman at Guilford College in
Greensboro, N.C . We would
be 'empty-nesters' but our
middle son has moved back
home until he gets established
after graduating from Boston
University last May."
JoHN GOODWIN (SF) is now
marketing director at the Plaza
Hotel in Las Vegas, N.M. "I am
also the president of Habitat for
Humanity in Las Vegas llJ.ld with
any luck will be single soon! "
RACHEL HALLFORD 'I'REIMAN (A)
decided it was time to bring The
College up to date: "I divorced in
2001, and after my son entered
college, sold the house in New
York and returned to Lewistown,
Montana, where my brother
lives, last December. I am now
coordinator for the Retired and
Senior Volunteer Program covering Fergus County and Judith
Basin County. Since that is only
30 hours a week with no benefits,
I also work online 20 hours for
benefits . My oldest, Grace , is now
21 and a senior at the University
of Pennsylvania, majoring in history. My son Andrew is 19, a
sophomore at the University of
North Dakota, majoring in Air
Traffic Control and on an Air
Force ROTC scholarship, planning to go career Air Force. I love
being back in Montana. I was
born in Lewistown (left when I
was six) and therefore , for many
of the older folks I identify myself
by my grandfather, mother, and
her siblings. That slots me in the
scheme of things. I'm fortun ate
my family was liked back thenpeople have long memories out
here!"
If you've lost track of BRAD ARMs
(A), it's because he and his family
have been on the move: "2004
was the year of moving for
us ... three times! After living in
various parts of the country
based mainly on the job ... we
finally had a chance to pick where
we wanted to live . We had always
liked Oregon for its beauty and
friendliness .. .so in early 2004,
we sold our house in Simsbury.
Since the house sold quicker than
we expected, we moved into a
1930 Colonial, which we had
fixed up as an investment
property. We were there for two
months while we made arrangements to move West. And then it
was on to Lake Oswego, Ore.,
where we rented a house while we
decided exactly where we wanted
to live and what to buy. Finally,
on November 30 , we closed on
our new house in West Linn,
which is about ro miles south
of Portland. The house is comparable in size to the one in
{ TH E
CoLLE GE .
{ALUMNI
NoTES}
Simsbury. It is built on the hill,
which gives it a view of Mt. Hood
in back. Jen & Chris have started
classes here locally. Their interests are in computer animation
and web site design. Meanwhile,
we are settling into the new
house and learning about all that
Oregon has to offer."
ROBIN KOWALCHUK BURK (A) is
at West Point: "I have been
teaching at the U.S . Military
Academy for the last 3 years,
first in the computer science and
information technology
programs and now in the systems
engineering department, where
I currently advise groups of
seniors applying Multiple
Objective Decision Analysis and
simulation techniques to projects
for real-world clients. I've also
begun doctoral studies at SUNY
Albany in the Information
Science program, with a focus on
intelligent software agents and
their application to group
decision making. Best regards to
the staff at St. John's and to all
the alumni that ROGER (A74) and
I missed seeing this past weekend
at Homecoming."
· .. .... · · · · · · · · · · · · · · .. .. · · · · · · · · · · · .. ·
1973
DONNEL (A) andJANET O' FLYNN
(A74) moved to Hamilton, N.Y.,
home of Colgate University, on
Oct. r6 , 2004. Donnel will be
rector of St. Thomas' Episcopal
Church . Janet will work as a
therapist, probably in the public
schools. AIDAN O'FLYNN (Aos)
graduates in May. Kathleen
O'Flynn is now an EMT and
looking forward to joining a
New York ambulance crew.
1 974
MARIE CLARK AVERY (SF) has
four sons : Justin, 20; David, 18;
Josh, 14; and Tyrel, rr. She
taught for the Jicarilla Department of Education, Apache
Government. A founding
member of the National Campaign for Tolerance, she also
received the National Nomination to the Wall of Tolerance in
February 2oor. The wall, she
notes, was designed by Maya Lin
and is similar to the Vietnam
Wall. She started her master's
degree program in rggg and
most recently has been a special
education teacher in Espanola.
1 977
CLIFF ADAMS (A) is divorced
and has three children: " I live in
Germany, I'm traveling a lot,
and loving life."
JUDY KISTLER-ROBINSON (SF)
recently visited classmate ELIZABETH (COCHRAN) BOWDEN (SF)
at her home in Marblehead,
Mass. The two celebrated their
birthdays and being friends for
more than half their lifetimes at
the Kripalu Yoga Center in the
Berkshires. Judy also watched the
continued
AGGIE JACOBS (SF71) has been engaged in the
type of work that reaps real rewards: "Mter
three years of composing music for Hebrew
prayers , I am about to release a CD of my work.
I don't expect to make any money from it, but
I'm hoping that my music will find an audience." -*'"
S t. John 's College . Winter 2005
}
33
FRoM HINDU FESTIVAL To HIGH ScHooL BASEBALL
Alex Shear, SFoo, Explores Lffe Through Documentaries
BY R o s E MARY HARTY
LABoR oF l~ovE
M
NoTES}
lex Shear (SFoo) has
had front-row seats
to two very different
phenomena united
by the fanatic zeal of
their participants.
The first is the Maha Kumbh Mela,
a Hindu festival believed to be the
largest gathering of individuals in
the wOTld; 27 million people made
the pilgrimage to wash away their
sins at the Sangam at Allahabad in
January 2oor. The second is the
National High School Baseball
tournament in Japan, a two-week
contest which draws the rapt
attention of the whole baseballcrazed country every August.
In India, where he recorded
digital sound for the film Take Me to the
River in 2001, Shear worried about being
crushed in the crowds, never quite managed
to get enough to eat, and met a famous yogi
who had been holding his right arm up in
the air for 30 years. "His fingernails were six
inches long," says Shear.
Working on the baseball film, Kokoyakyu, in Japan last summer, Shear ate
sushi, worked long hours, and met
Takashima Kantoku, the most successful
high school baseball coach of all time.
"Many Japanese consider him a living
samurai," says Shear. This time Shear was
producer of the project, with responsibilities in fund-raising, accounting, research,
interviewing, and when it was his turn,
getting everyone lunch.
AB different as the two proj ects and
cultures are, Shear found a common thread
in the power of devotion to bring people
together: "There were some similarities in
that both were types of national fe stivals.
In India we had millions of people from
every possible state, and all these different
cultures were represented. The high school
tournament in Japan is the only national
event like this. It's on TV all day, 24 hours a
day and 20 million people tuned in to watch
opening ceremonies.
Only recently has Shear been able to
devote himself full time to documentary
filmmaking. After graduating from St. John's
in 2000, h e landed a job at a dot. com
company in his hometown of Boston. But
company Projectile Arts . He
helped secure $roo,ooo in grants
from foundations and sponsorship
from United Air Lines. " I like the
creative aspect, working out the
content of the film ," he says.
"And I like the
entrepreneurial aspect, starting
something from scratch, and
against all odds, making
it happen."
Shear has always been a big
baseball fan . "I felt there was ver y
little known in the U.S. about
Japanese baseball and it could be
a great way to learn about a very
mysterious culture. It's a filmmaker' s dream: passion, history,
culture, youth, sports- it really
has it all," he says
The crew interviewed players, coaches,
cheerleaders , and fans, and filmed some of
the most intensely played baseball Shear has
ever seen. The work could be grueling; the
t emperature in the stands reached rr7
degrees one day. One of the highlights for
Shear was meeting Hidcki Matsui,
who earned the nickname " Godzilla" in
Japan before going on to become a N.Y. Yankees star.
Immersion in such fanatical national
fervor gave Shear a lot to think about. "As
an American, I don't think I would want my
son to play ro hours ofbaseball a day. It's
kind of like milit ru:y sch ool."
Shear isn't sure he's found his career.
Low-budget documentary filmmaking, he
says, has its pros and cons. "Pros: it's
creatively and intellectually stimulating, you
are your ovm boss, and you get to travel and
meet fascinating people. Cons: no money,
job security, or vacation time; it takes
forever, and it's a nerve-wracking rollercoaster ride .
"To me the satisfaction comes from
having an idea, which a whole bunch of people tell you can't be done , and going out and
proving them ·wrong."
Take Me to the River is showing at film
festivals; Shear hopes it will soon be
distributed nationally. AB for the baseball
film , he and director Ken Eng hope
PBS will pick it up for broadcast after
production is completed this spring. _..
ALEX SHEAR, SECOND FROM RIGHT, SUITED UP
FOR A PRACTIC E GAME.
': .. it:S a nerve-wracking
roller-coaster rzde. "
ALEX SHEAR ( SFOO)
when two of his good friends told him they
were headed to India to make a film , Shear
was desperate to go along. " I took a month
off, paid half my airfare and volunteered to
work for free doing sound," Shear says.
" It was ll1l incredible experience."
A few days after Shear got back to his
promising job in Boston, the company
folded and laid everyone off. He moved to
New York to be involved in post-production
on Take Me to the River, and took a few
temp jobs. After September rr, Shear went
back to Boston to sell ads for a tabloid. "The
stories are short, you can read it on the
train , and the ads get a lot of results, which
h elp ed us all make money."
But the next time his filmaker friend
Kenneth Eng called, Shear was ready to
commit to the project on Japanese baseball.
This time he quit his job and devoted his
sales skills to raising grant money for the
proj ect through the nonprofit production
{ T HE
C o L LEGE .
St. John 's College . W inter 2005
}
�34
{ALUMNI
KARL STUKENBERG (SF) is director of Psychological Services at
Xavier University's Psychology
Department in Cincinnati, Ohio.
He is also a tenured faculty
member in analytic psychology.
As CRAZY AS IT SoUNDS
W
ILLIAM (BRAD) HODGE (SFg2) is working for
the Department of State, managing security
issues for U.S. embassies in almost a dozen
countries. "It's fun, challenging, gets me
traveling all over the world, and reminds me
of one thing I remember from the St. John's program, 'That
which doesn't kill us makes us stronger,'" he writes. ""When
that is not challenging enough, I volunteer as a police officer
with the Washington, D.C., police department. Yeah, it's as
crazy as it sounds."+
cows changing pastures while
visiting LYNNE GATELY (A) in
Randolph Center, Vt., where
Lynne is a librarian. Lynne and
her husband, David, run a dairy
farm and a maple sugar business.
Judy also visited KEITH HARRISON (SF) at his home in New
Hampshire. Keith teaches law at
Franklin Peirce Law School. Judy
has been enduring Minnesota
weather for more than six years
now and is longing for a temperate climate '-vith mountains.
Anyone with job leads in New
Mexico, please contact Judy!
ELIZABETH KOCSIS (A) has retired
to a "hobby farm in north central
West Virginia (my husband,
Mike Kingston's, idea) where we
home-school our two boys
Steven (13) and Frank (g). I'm
active in the inclusive state,..vide
home-schooling organization
(wvhea.org), which recently
(2003) celebrated a political
victory in the state legislatureelimination of a rule requiring
home-schooling parents to have a
college degree to home-school
high-school-age children.
}ULIA PERKINS (A) writes: "My
daughter, MARGARET HENNESSEY,
joined the class of ' o8 in
Annapolis this year, adding to a
bunch of alumni children in
Annapolis now: Emma Plaut,
Ao7, daughter of Richard Plaut
(A77) and Carol Katrina (A7g);
and Bekah Ross, daughter of
Steve (A78); and Jessie Perry,
1982
PATTI NOGALES (A) recently
started her second year as an
assistant professor of philosophy
at California State University in
Sacramento. "The kids and I are
finding that Northern California
has some advantages. I would
love to hear from classmates."
Ao8, daughter of Steve Perry
(A78). Maybe there are others?"
1979
GERALDINE M. KLINE (SF) was
recently elected to a six-year term
of provincial leadership for the
Sinsinawa Dominicans in San
Antonio, Texas.
DANTE BERETTA (A) is teaching
biblical Greek at St. Mary's
Seminary and has been teaching
Latin at Garrison Forest School
since 1985.
ELIZABETH JENNY (SF) says:
"Greetings to fellow alumni! I am
getting a lot of enjoyment from
my alumni chapter. My family
and I are doing well in Colorado.
I invite you to see my work at
http:/ /artist.bldr.net."
1981
ROBBYN JACKSON (A) has a
"great new job as chief of
Cultural Resources and Museum
Management at San Francisco
Maritime National Historical
Park (check out the park at
www.nps.govI safr)."
CoLLEGE.
STANLEY SCHIFf (SF) has retired
after 14 years teaching at Sierra
Vista Junior High.
DAVID WEITZEL (A) married
Allison Hornvag in the fall of
~woo, after Dave had finished his
law degree at Catholic University
that spring. They welcomed
William Kenneth's arrival in
October 2002.
1980
{ TH E
{ALUMNI
NoTEs}
DAMON ELLINGSTON (A) is getting
a Ph.D . in physics at the University of Maryland College Park.
MARY (PUTNICK) GARNER (A) is
in her second year at Episcopal
Divinity School and a postulant
for the priesthood. Spouse
GEOFF (A86) is the academic
dean at the Naval Justice School
in Newport, R.I.
CHRISTINE GOWDY-}AEHNIG (A)
and her husband, Mark, recently
moved to Decorah, Iowa, and are
looking forward to living in a
St. fohn 's College. Winter 2005
}
college town of over 8,ooo
(six times larger than Preston!).
Their eldest child, Alexandra,
recently left for Hamline University in St. Paul. "It's been a year
of changes for us," she writes.
TRISHAA. HoWELL (SF) is
pleased to announce the
publication of her newest book,
a personal growth/self-help title,
The Journeying Workbook:
Unleash Your Inner Power.
Trisha would love to hear from
former classmates and can be
reached at Trisha@HowellCanyonPress.com.
1989
}ACK EGGLESTON (A) and EMMA
MORTON EGGLESTON (SFgo)
write: "We have moved back to
our home state ofVirginia after
many years of studying and
working elsewhere. I am working
as a hydrologist for the U.S.
Geological Survey in Richmond,
Va. Emma is doing a fellowship in
endocrinology at the University
ofVirginia Medical Center. We
have three children ages 3-9 and
are living in an old farmhouse
near the mountains.
"Hello friends!" writes KYRA
LYNN ESBORG (SF). "I live in
San Francisco and share intuitive
healing practices and stress
management as my business.
My St. John's experience
enhances every day. I am a wave
diver in the ocean waters near my
home, and enjoying life."
LINDA HAMM GREZ (A) is thrilled
to announce the birth of her first
baby, Anna Helene Grez, born
on Sept. 30, 2004-the week
Mt. St. Helens erupted (hence
Anna's middle name).
NINDA LETAW (A) reports that she
is the proud owner of Charlotte's
Home Cooking, a personal chef
service in Raleigh, N.C.
She would love to hear from
classmates.
1990
REV. GERARD THOMAS SPARACO
(A) is living in Little Valley, N.Y.
"It would be nice to hear from
people," he says.
}ONATHANYING (A) is a Ph.D. student in the School oflndustrial
and Labor Relations at Cornell
University in Ithaca, N.Y.
1991
FATHERKEvlNLIXEYL.C. (SF), a
priest of the Congregation of
Legionaries of Christ, is involved
in establishing the new Church
and Sports department within
the Pontifical Council of Lay
people as announced by the
Vatican in August 2004.
From CATHERINE BARRIER (A)
and}IMDUGAN (Ag3): "We'd like
to announce the birth of Lucy
Eleanor Dugan on December 10,
2004, in Los Angeles. We are, of
course, convinced she is the most
beautiful and smartest baby in
the world. We just hope we can
keep up. If anyone is rash enough
to ask for pictures, they can
contact us at ccb@
mnemonides.net! "
BONNIE FORBIS (AGI) recently
graduated as a certified nurse
midwife from the Yale School of
Nursing. She lives in Chicago
with her daughter, Meaghan,
age g.
1995
1993
CHRIS GRAM (A) has just started
in practice as a vascular surgeon
in Decatur, Ill. "We bought a
great house on a lake and our
daughter is two-and-a-half and
doing very well."
"I'm keeping very busy," writes
JANE McMANUs (A). "Not only
will I b e an adjunct professor at
the Columbia Graduate School of
Journalism this semester, but
Steve and I had our second little
girl, Charlotte Mason, on August
28. Big sister Jean just calls her
'New Baby.' I can be reached at
janesports@hotmail.com. Any
Johnnies wanting to know more
about J-school should drop me
a note."
1994
LEAH MuLHOLLAND AucKENTHALER (A) writes, "My husband,
Ben, and I welcomed a son on
June 10. Jonathan Titus Auckenthaler completes our family, '"lith
Nicholas Alan, 2, and Reggie
Pit-Shephard, 8. I always wanted
three boys. We moved from
Brooklyn to Minneapolis three
weeks after I delivered Nicholas.
Ben got a job in financ e here
working for American Express.
Not bad for a jazz drummer.
"Anyone interested in catching
up (Eddie, Matthew, Chad,
Johnnie, Janice , et. al.), please
e-mail me at leaha@
earthlink.net. And any of you
Minn./St. Paul peeps (Paul,
Amie, Muneet), let's have
a thing!"
{ THE
CoLLEGE.
35
NoTES}
" I am living the good life in
sunny Phoenix, Ariz .," writes
ALEX GOLDSTEIN (SF). "I own a
real estate business, and way
more wine and cigars than any
human should possess. Any
Johnnies in the area who want to
drink, smoke, or talk smack, call
me (602-405-9961). Best wishes
to all my friends with whom I've
lost touch ages ago ... "
Greetings from VERONICA
GVENTSADZE (AGI): "After some
four years of teaching the humanities at a university, I am back to
being a student, this time in veterinary medicine. I have no
regrets and am enjoying this new
experience immensely, and while
I have no doubt that I have made
the right choice , my liberal arts
background will always be there
to help me along. So four years
down the road I will be the
'philosopher-vet,' for what that's
worth . I would love to hear from
my classmates and from any of
those who remember me or who,
like me, are in the midst of
switching careers. But most of all
I want to thank Mr. John Verdi for
starting me on this great American adventure some I I years ago,
and I have a question for him
about Nietzsche. It's a long one,
so I won't take up any more space
here. "
}ULIA}. KELLY (A) sends in her
first update since leaving
Annapolis: "After graduation, I
attended the Maine Photo Workshops for six months , contributing to my decision to attend the
Savannah College of Art and
Design in order to get an MFA in
photography. After completing
that program, I worked for three
years with a commercial photographer in Savannah. Convinced I
could make a better living selling
real es tate for my mother's large
firm, I did that for several years
St. fohn 's College. Winter 2 005
}
before meeting my fiance, and
now am planning a wedding in
early 2005, along with a move to
Pensacola, Fla. I hope to get back
into photography when I settle
in, though I may end up shooting
more images on the road than of
weddings, as he is a musician and
travels across the country. I'll
keep you posted! If a band called
the CodeTalkers ever plays in
yow· town, please come out! My
fiance is the banjo player!"
MIKE LAYNE (SF) and family are
still in Barrow, Alaska. "Our
daughter, Audrey Rae, will turn
three in February. And we are
expecting a second child, a boy,
in March. Feel free to e-mail me
at michael.layne@northslope.org."
1996
HEATHER POOL (SF) is a firstyear graduate student at the
University ofWashington in the
political science department.
She's currently a teaching
assistant for Intra to Political
Theory. " I will likely be doing
political theory as my first field,''
she writes.
1997
Major news from }EHANNE
DUBROW(A): "}EREMYSCHAUB
(A) and I are engaged to be
married. The big day is set for the
end ofJuly 2005, in Washington.
Jeremy is currently stationed out
of Norfolk, Va. I'm in my second
year of a Ph.D. program in
creative WJ.'iting at the University
ofNebraska-Lincoln, where
I'm also teaching and working
on the editorial staff of Prairie
Schooner. This past summer, I
spent two months in Oswiecim
(Auschwitz), Poland, where I codesigned and created an exhibit
�.
-,
, -- - - -- ---------------------------- -- - - -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - -- - - - - - - -- - - - - -- -- --- - -- -- -- -- -- -- - - -- -- -- - - -- -- - - -
g6
{ALUMNI
THE OTHER. SIDE OF THE WALL
Navy PilotandAuthor Ross Mackenzie, AGio2
BY RosEMARY HARTY
ssigned to teach English at
the Naval Academy five
years ago, Ross Mackenzie
(AGio2) crossed the street
to see what the little college
on the other side of the wall
had to offer. AN avy pilot and 1994 graduate
of the academy, he had been invited back to
teach at his alma mater. "I went to visit a
seminar at St. John's and literally ran into a
good friend of mine from the academy
[Mason New, AGIOI] who I hadn't seen in
years," he says. "He told me, 'man, you're
going to love it.' "
An English major at the academy,
Mackenzie's passion for language and
literature has always had a
rival in his passion for
flying. Mter seeing Top
Gun as a teen-ager, he
went on to earn a private
pilot's license and set his
sights on one day flying
the Navy's fastest jets.
"Take a dark and stormy
night and land a jet on the
back of a ship that's pitching and rolling- that really
appealed to me."
Mackenzie followed his
older brother, Alec, into
the Naval Academy. He
did well enough to secure
a coveted aviation billet,
but had to wait to begin
flight school and spent a
semester as an English
instructor at the academy. When he was
called to flight school, Mackenzie still
expected to fly jets-until a helicopter ride
changed his mind. "I was sold on just that
one flight."
Flying helicopters has its own challenges,
he adds . "You know where it is and what
you have to do to get the aircraft on the
ground before a catastrophic failure,"
he explains.
Mter earning his wings, Mackenzie was
stationed in San Diego and deployed twice
to the Persian Gulf. When he was asked to
come back to teach English at the Naval
Academy, he needed to begin a graduate
degree program, and St. John's was the logical choice. He was a] so eager to fill in gaps
in his education. ''I'm proud of myNaval
Academy degree, but as an English major,
I was frustrated that I didn't end up
reading some of the things I thought
were important."
The texts Mackenzie read at St. John's
quickly found their way onto his syllabus at
the academy; midshipmen in his first-year
English class were assigned the Odyssey
and the Canterbury Tales. "I probably had
only a handful of English majors in my
classes, but I was determined to get those
guys excited about the literature," he says.
At St. John's, Mackenzie was invigorated
by the lively discussions in his classes. "The
thing about the Graduate Insthute that J
Ross MACKENZIE'S LOVE FOR BOOKS COMPETES
WITH A LOVE FOR F LYING.
find so remarkable is that it brings people
from such vastly different backgrounds to
share the same great works. Everyone
brings their own life experiences with them
to the table."
Mackenzie was enrolled in the literature
segment and discussing the Iliad when the
terrorist attacks took place on September
n; he was one of two students with military
experience in his seminar. "You can read in
these great books when and why it's appropriate to put people in harm's way. I've
been there and I was able to say 'this is what
I believe in.' "
{ THE
CoLL E GE.
{ALUMNI
PROFILE}
St. John's College . Winter 200.5}
Now stationed in Jacksonville, Fla.,
where he is a full-time pilot in a reserve
squadron, Mackenzie flies Seahawk
helicopters, often on counter-drug missions off the Florida coast. He's married to
his high-school sweetheart, Elizabeth, and
they have two boys: Stuart, 3, and
Cameron, I.
Last year, he put his liberal arts and
Navy backgrounds together to take over a
project his father, Ross Mackenzie,
launched shortly after Mackenzie's brother ·
graduated from the academy. "My father's
a newspaper writer who was frustrated by
having two sons in the Naval Academy and
listening to them talk-he always wanted
to know what was going
on-and he decided he
could tell other parents
about it."
BriefPoints (Naval
Institute Press, 2004) was
originally published in
1993 and revised n Igg6.
Much information in the
book was dated, and g/n
had brought changes to
the academy. A major
revision was needed, and
the publisher gave
Mackenzie the job. "I did
interviews with everyone
from midshipmen to academic deans to athletic
department personnel to
find out what really makes
the Naval Academy tick."
Mackenzie observes that family
members of middies are proud and excited
about their children entering the Naval
Academy, but they can be perplexed by the
military culture. A glossm·y of terms that
quickly become part of every plebe's
vocabulary-Mackenzie calls it "Midspeak"-is an important part of the book.
Parents aren't always aware of what their
midshipmen endure in terms of academic
and physical challenges. In his introduction, Mackenzie tells parents that the
academy-like St. John's-isn't for every
student. "As important as their advice is,
their support and understanding are even
more important," he says.~
of art and poetry, 'The Lost
Shabbos: the Jews ofOswiecim.'
Two ofmypoemswere recently
published in The Hudson
Review. And, staying true to
my St. John's roots, I'm still
translating poetry, at the
moment, sections from the
19th-century Polish epic, Pan
Tadeusz, by Adam Mickiewicz,
which is nothing if not obscure."
1998
CINDY LUTZ (A) and VINCENT
BAKER (Ags) were married on
October 10, 2004, in Frederick,
Md., nearly IO years after they
first met by the mailboxes in the
Coffee Shop. Johnnies in attendance included PAMELA BERGSON
(Agg), JosH EMMONS (Agg)and
the also newly-married MARISA
Jo and BILL ERSKINE (A97).
"We'd love to hear from any
friends in the D.C. Metro Area:
cinderlou@peoplepc.com."
1999
MELISSA "MISSY" PHIFER (SF)
writes: "After completing my
service in the Peace Corps in
Haiti in 2002, I worked in
various odd jobs until I began
graduate school at Temple
University in Philadelphia.
Currently I am working at John
Bartram High School teaching
biology and working on my
Master's ofEducation to be
completed soon! I would love to
hear from any of my former
classmates- send me an e-mail at
mphifeno@aol.com and let me
know what you're up to. I hope
all ofyou are well!"
2000
KARINA I-lEAN (A) will receive
her master of fine arts in drawing
from New Mexico State University
in Las Cruces, N.M. , this May. For
the time being, she's keeping busy
with exhibitions and teaching.
"Will be relocating to southern
Colorado soon-I'll be hiding in
the mountains, making artwork,
and protesting the Bush dynasty if
anyone would like to join meyou're always welcome: karinahean@hotmail.com."
"It was a long road similar to the
one described at the beginning of
the Inferno, but after nine years I
have reached the end of a long
road," writes CHRISTOPHER
VAUGHAN (A). "A journcy that
took me from the University of
Alaska and the wilds of the great
Northwest to the warmth of
Florida at Flagler College is now
history. I have graduated from
college at last!"
NoTEs}
37
certification training. She was
recently in London and Hawaii,
and is heading to France and
Mexico shortly! She would love
to hear from recent graduates
and alumni in the New York area.
Mter traveling to the far reaches
of Thailand and New Zealand
together, ANDREW RANSON and
MARTHA ROGERS (both AGI)
were married June 26, 2004, in
Annapolis . Martha is continuing
her studies in holistic healing
while Andrew is teaching high
school social studies and English
in Baltimore County. They have
found marriage to be greater
than they ever expected and are
looking forward to their next trip
abroad as husband and wife.
2002
JAMES GILMORE (A) is studying
phifosophy at Johns Hopkins
University. "My e-mail is jamesfgilmore@gmail.com, and it
would be great to hear from any
Johnnies, especially members of
the class of 2.002.."
CHARLES GREEN (AGI) writes:
"After completing my coursework as an English literature
Ph.D. candidate at Drew
University, fhave moved back to
Annapolis to prepare for my
comprehensive exams. I look
forward to getting to know the
city and the college again, as well
as seeing alumni old and new."
"As of August 2004, I am living
in San Jose, Calif. , passing on the
love ofliberal arts by teaching
general curriculum to eager
fifth-graders," writes MEGAN
MAxwELL-SMiTH (A). "My experience is, so far, quite rewarding.
I am at a very well-run school
peopled by bright students and
dedicated staff. I would love to
hear from anyone inclined to get
in touch: megan.maxwellsmith@sbc.global.net."
}USTINNAYLOR (A) and DILLON
WRIGHT-FITZGERALD (Aos) were
married on June :12, 2004, in
2001
}OSHUA VAN DONGE (SF) is still
"slogging away" at the University ofWashington's graduate
program in architecture.
"I've spent this year in
St. Michael's, Md., serving an
apprenticeship in wooden boat
building," ANNE NEEDHAM (A)
wrote last summer. "I'm now off
to Naguabo, Puerto Rico, for a
few months to do some house
repair and child care for my
brother and his family. After
that, if you know anyone who has
a wooden boat that needs work
(i.e., anyone who has a wooden
boat), please let me know."
SYLVAINE RAMECKERS (A) is still
working for Dateline NBC and
currently completing diver
{T
H E
Co
L L E GE .
A STRONG FouNDATION
orne things just seem meant to be, as AURORA
CASSELLS (Ao4) writes: "My sister, boyfriend, and
I, all of the most recently graduated class from
Annapolis, are moving into a cute little house in the
beautiful town of Shepherdstown, W.V., which my
sister, PROSE, is buying. This itself is exciting news,
since buying a house is considered a big step in establishing
oneself, but the real reason for writing in about it is of course
much more personal and familiar and Johnnie-based.
"Mter our offer on the house had already been accepted and
Prose was touring the outside of the house another time, she
found a remarkable, unbelievable sign that this was the right
house: It seems that someone had taken a finger to the concrete
foundation for the newer part of the house at the back while it
was still wet and written in 4-inch-high letters, underlined:
The Program. So, three recent graduates are all moving into a
house built on the foundation of the Program!
"We also discovered that it was obviously meant for Johnnies
from the Annapolis campus, since on the newly built back deck
there was an old lawn croquet stake! Already in love with the
little house and its great location, it was truly welcoming to find
such friendly reminders of St. John's. " ~
St. John 's College . W in ter 2005
}
�{ALUMNI
JoHNNIE
VOICES}
B. ATHENS
Athletic~ Aeschyl~
ABOUT THE CATS
and Spzderman
BY STEPHEN CoNN (SFg8)
first came to Athens I I years ago,
a post-high school gift from and
with my parents. Mom wanted
to give me an introduction to
classical culture before I headed to
St.John's. Several years and jobs
later, armed with only my Spiderman 2
backpack and a whole lot of can-d?, I
returned to Athens for the Olymp1cs.
I checked in at my hostel, the Hotel
Zorba on Victoria Square. Yannis the bellboy was pleasant enough, the bunk area
only had one unidentifiable odor, and the
toilets flushed as long as you didn't put
toilet paper in them. I learned .to j?urney
on the Piraeus-Kifissia metro hne m order
to get to the different stadiums. Fierybrowed Greek men pondered my Spidey
backpack, while old ladies crossed themselves every time we passed a church.
Many events took place at the aptly
named Olympic Stadium to the north,
where people walked under va~t white
archways while Greeks sat on lifeguard
chairs and announced on bullhorns,
"Parakalo [please] we are welcoming you
to the Olympic Games. Water polo is on
the right."
gymnasts happened to take an extra step
when I shoot-coincidence!
The Acropolis! Don't think I passed up
the ancient stuff, folks. The next day I
began the hike to that fount of democracy,
The Temple ofNike . To the east of~he
main structure, slightly down the ndge,
are the remains of the Theater of
Dionysus, where Sophocles and Aeschylus
received their first performances.
In honor of the occasion, I pulled out
my copy of Lattimore's Aeschylus, and
recited a bit of The Persians. A few cats
living among the pillars gathere.d in .
audience, and I felt the Apolloman veil
had been suitably rent.
And the women! Many a time I would
approach a sellers' booth and say, "excuse
me, would you have a ticketfor. .. good
God!, I considered asking one of these
Hellenic beauties for a night on the town,
but reflecting on the Medea-like anger of
most of my past dates, I opted for another
evening of Amstel Lights at t~e Zorba.
After sessions of table tenms and boxing between various breakaway republics,
it was time to head home. I brought an
American flag with me on the flight. Not a
huge hit in Athens, but the bu~z - ct~t
customs officer in Atlanta notlced lt as
he stamped my passport.
"You bring that to the Games?' he
smiled.
"Yessir."
"You must have waved that quite a bit,"
he said with a grin .
"Well, if we can put a chimp in the
White House then we should certainly be
able to wave CHd Glory once and a while."
Okay, I didn't exactly say this. ~ut ifye
Johnnies old and new want to get m t~uch
with the Mediterranean source, then JUSt
put those terrorist fears away ~nd tell
the ticket agent, "I want two t1ckets to
paradise."-'$-
But it was gymnastics I was after, my
old sport, many beers ago. I sat down
among sad-eyed Eastern-block:r~ to
watch one of the women's prehmmary
sessions. "GO KA-TY!" cried an
anguished Englishman into my left
eardrum. The Chinese girls tended to fall
off the beam and stumble a lot. "No flash
photos, sir," the usher chided me. So the
(SF or) writes, "For the most
part, my life is quiet and full of cats. If they keep
multiplying I might make crazy cat woman status
at the early age of 35· I live with ANDRE\V SMITH
and ISLA PINELO (both SFo3) . CAROLINE KN~P
(SF or) recently moved from our house to a qu~et
neighborhood and lives in a beautiful garden. I'm su~·e she m.lsses
h . g her bedroom windows rattle when the cars dnve bywlth
t : : ;bass all the way up . If anyone is in or passing through the
Berkeley area, give me a holler." -$-EBEKKA SHUGARS
Millvi1le, Penn. The Naylors now
live in Wilmington, Del., where
Justin teaches at Nativity
Preparatory School.
2003
Thorn Barry and MEG EISENHAUER (A) were married at
St. John's College in Annapolis
on July 31 , 20o4. " Many thanks
to everyone at the Annapolis
campus who helped us to make
this possible ," Meg writes.
(A) is moving to
Italy to study gastronomy at the
new Universita di Scienze Gastronomiche (www.unisg.it/eng).
He received a full scholarship.
"Drop me a line at aaron .foster
@gmail.com. I will be in
Pollenzo, a small town outside of
Bra, in Cuneo, Piedmont."
AARON FOSTER
biology.utah.edu or
bugle song@ juno. com."
RACHEL (ROCCIA) SULLIVAN (A)
Wl·ites with an update on what she
and husband MICHAEL SULLIVAi~
(Ao2) have been up to since
graduation. "As many already
know, we were married a week
after graduating from St. John's.
We then moved to Washington,
D.C., so that I could take pre-med
classes at the University of Maryland, and so that Michael could
pursue his Ph.D. in Philosophy
(particularly in medieval scholastics, which should come as no
surprise!) at Catholic University.
He is now in his third year. In May
of this year I gave birth to a
daughter, Clare Veritas Sullivan,
who is now a fat and happy little
five-month-old. We bought a
house in Silver Spring, Md., and
I've begun studying medicine
at the Uniformed Services University, which is located right
.
'
across the street from NIH in
Bethesda. I'm a commissioned
ofii.cer in the U.S. Army and learning to be an "Army Doc." I go to
school with several ex-midshipmen from the Naval Academy who
think it's bizarre that a Johnnie
would choose to join the military,
but the idea of practicing "Good
Medicine In Bad Places," as our
motto goes, is really exciting and
led me to choose this school over a
few more prestigious ones that
offered me slots. I found that
medical schools were surprisingly
receptive to me as a St. John's
student, and would love to talk to
and encourage anyone interested
in applying: I can be reached at
rmrsullivan@hotmail.com. I'm
also happy to report that
Michael's brother RANDALL (Ao4)
has joined the Dominican order
of priests, and has started his
novitiate . He's enjoying himself
immensely and has taken the new
name of Ezra. In closing I'd like to
say hello to all my old pals, to offer
my spare room to anyone who has
a reason to be in D.C., and to take
this opportunity to encourage
BEN FREY (A02,) and GABRIELA
HURWITZ (Ao2) to call me back!"
CoLLE G E .
St. fohn's College . Winter 2005
}
2004
LAURAA:NNEMANGUM (A)
married Michael Moore on
June 5, 2004·.
PAUL McLAIN (SFGI) was
awarded a scholarship to attend
Yale University Divinity School in
New Haven, Conn. He completed
an intensive Koine Greek class
this summer and is settling into
his first of three years' work
toward a Master of Divinity
degree. Ruthie, his wife , is office
manager ofHistoRX, a medical
research firm affiliated with Yale.
She now serves her patented
Thursday Night GI Gathering
Homemade Goodies to "Divvies"
instead ofJohnnies. They have
been blessed with a rent-free
four-bedroom parsonage provided
by St. Andrew's United Methodist
Church, where they work part
time. Johnnies are welcome to
stay when making New England
pilgrimages. Contact
pkmclain@comcast.net if
you are headed their way or if
you would just like to keep
in touch. -$-
NATASHA VERl\iAAK (A)
writes: "I just survived my first
quarter of graduate school in
the materials science and
engineering department at
the University of California,
Santa Barbara ...woah!
Visitors welcome."
ERIN HANLON (SF) Wl·ites: "I
entered the University of Utah
this fall as a Ph.D. student in the
biology department. I am
studying plant ecology with an
emphasis on the impacts of the
drought and climate change. I
would be interested in hearing
from any Johnnies in the Salt Lake
area, whether they live here or are
just passing through. I can be
reached al either hanlon@
WHAT's UP?
The College wants to hear from
you. Call ns, write us, e-mail us.
Let your classmates know what
you're doing. The next issue
will be published in May;
deadline for the alumni notes
section is March IS.
IN ANNAPOLIS:
Tlz e College Magazine
St. John's College, P.O. Box 28oo
Annapolis, MD 2I404;
rosemary.harty@sjca. edu
IN SANTA FE:
The College Magazine
St. John's College
Communications Office
n6o Camino Cruz Blanca
Santa Fe, NM 87505-4599;
alumni@sjcsf.edu
STEPHEN CONN WAVED THE FLAG AND
RECITED THE PERSIA NS IN GREECE.
{ TH E
39
{OBITUARIES}
CLARE SULLIVAN IS GOING PLACES.
{ THE
CoLLEG E .
St. John 's College. Winter 20 0 5}
�4I
{OBITUARIES}
{OBITUARIES}
REMEMBERING
MISS LEONARD
At a memorial service in October, former
St. John's tutor and Assistant Dean
Barbara Leonard (HAss) was remembered
as a star athlete with a zeal for competition, a scientist with an inquisitive mind,
and an able administrator with a skill for
strongly-worded memos. Mostly, she was
remembered as a good friend.
Miss Leonard died last August in
Oberlin, Ohio. Her health had been
failing for several years. She
had retired from the college
in rg87 after serving as
assistant dean and tutor for
36 years, but continued to
serve the college as a
member of its Board of
Visitors and Governors for
several more years.
In the midst of Homecoming festivities, alumni,
tutors, and former colleagues of Miss Leonard's
gathered in Francis Scott
Key Auditorium to share
their memories of a strongwilled woman with a great
sense ofhumor. And
although she was dean of
women for just one year
before her title became
assistant dean, Miss
Leonard remained a role
model, confidante, and
friend to generations of
women at the college.
Among them was Anita
Kronsberg (A7g), who read
from an account of Miss
Leonard's life.
Born and reared in Oberlin in what
she described as something of an "idyllic
childhood," Miss Leonard earned a
bachelor's degree at Oberlin College
and master's and doctoral degrees in
zoology at the University of Rochester.
She conducted research in histology at
Yale Medical School before becoming a
visiting lecturer at Oberlin. Before
coming to St.John's, she taught zoology
at Smith College. Her willingness to work
with men and to compete in a maledominated field had roots in her love for
"She came with us_,
J'he read the bookJ' with
us_, and J'he learned
at our rate. "
from my colleagues, male students
resented my presence when I arrived on
campus," she later recalled. "In fact,
prior to my appointment, it was a mass
protest of the then all-male student body
against the admission of women students
that convinced the college leadership they
needed to hire a female tutor and assistant
dean. These students would constantly
try to catch me off guard,
so I pretended nothing
fazed me."
The following year, when
the assistant dean for men
took a sabbatical, Miss
Leonard worked with both
male and female students.
From that point on, she
said, "I never weaned those
boys from me."
In the early rg6os, Miss
Leonard was a Fulbright
lecturer in India. She was
named an honorary faculty
member of Lady Doak
College and The American
College, both in Madurai,
India. When she retired in
rg87, the students dedicated
the yearbook to her:
"Though gruff in manner,
she has an eye for the
humorous and is quick
with a quip, delighting in
repartee," theywrote.
"She is also judicious in her
advice and careful to keep a
confidence . In her position
she has heard many."
Tutor emeritus Ben Milner (HAg7) recalled that after their first
meeting,
he thought Miss Leonard to be a "retiring
motherly sort. That was a Jirst impression
-and one I would discover in need of
correction," he said.
When Mr. Miln er began his new post,
Edward Sparrow (HAg3), dean at the
time, advised Mr. Milner about the
"importance of cooperating with Barbara
Leonard." "And to reinforce the point
smilingly, he asked if I was familiar with
her habit of firing off sharply critical
BARBARA BRUNNER KiEBLER (ASS)
Mrss LEONARD PREFERRED THE CoFFEE SHOP
To HER McDowELL HALL OFFICE.
sports: As a third-grader she was the
catcher on a boys' softball team.
Through colleagues in Oberlin,
President Richard Weigle (HJ4g) found
Miss Leonard and brought her to
St. John's to shepherd the first 25 women
to attend the college. Miss Leonard had to
win over the male students.
"Although I encountered no resistance
{ 'I'
HE
CoLLEGE .
St. fohn's College. Winter 2005
}
memoranda and letters to
various colleagues including
the dean and president of the
college," Mr. Milner added.
In her time at the college,
Miss Leonard became "the
first among equals," and "her
voice was always respected
and often decisive," he said.
"I think that it was universally acknowledged that she
had a love affair with the
students," Mr. Milner said.
"It was mutual and it was fun.
Barbara enjoyed nothing
more than a good joke, a
hardy laugh, and she had a
lot of company in this with
students and staff as well. "
Tutor emeritus Malcolm
Wyatt (HAo3) shared
McDowell 13 with Miss
Leonard in the mid-rg8os.
"She was very fond of the
students," Mr. Wyatt said.
"She maintained close
friendships with successive
generations characterized by sympathy,
warmth, acrostic humor. And the source
of that acrostic humor had a certain skepticism about it that sharpened her judgment but didn't keep her from being
attached to the student body and hence,
[she had] a very accurate perception of
what life was like at the college from day
to day."
A member of the first class of women
to graduate, Barbara Brunner Kiebler
(class of 1955), said Miss Leonard was a
genuine member of that class even before
the Alumni Association made her an
honorary alumna. "She came with us,
she read the books with us, and she
learned at our rate," Mrs. Kiebler said.
With all the new rules the college
adopted to keep men and women
separate-and with the inevitable bending
and breaking of those rules-Miss Leonard
was "good-natured and flexible" even as
the president and dean fretted over such
matters. "She was sanguine about the
relationship of the sexes-after all she was
BARBARA LEONARD BECAME AN HONORARY
MEMBER OF THE CLASS OF
I955
UPON HER
RETIREMENT, BUT LONG BEFORE, THE FIRST
CLASS OF WOMEN CONSIDERED HER ONE OF
THEIR OWN.
a biologist by training, she knew the
inevitability of the relationship," she said.
Miss Leonard could usually be found in
the Coffee Shop , but she spent a great
deal of time on the playing fields as well,
Mrs. Kiebler noted. "Barbara broke the
sports barrier for women at the college.
There were no sports here for women
except badminton and Ping-Pong.
Barbara h erself integrated the softball
team ... she was a whale of a softball
pitcher and she won her St. John's blazer
for softball. Whenever I came back to the
college at Homecoming, I would see her
in the blue blazer and a pleated skirt, her
school uniform. She wore it proudly."
When Mrs. Kiebler brought her
daughter, Amy Oosterhout (A82) to the
{ T HE
CoLLEGE.
college, she was pleased to leave
her in the capable hands of
Barbara Leonard. "Barbara told
me how pleased she was to
have at St. John's the children
of her girls. I never heard her
call us that before, but I guess
that's what we were. She
promised us she'd look after
Amy, and she did."
Two members of the Annapolis
class ofrg8o, Didrik Schanche
and Ann Schanche Ferro came to
the college as Febbies, leaving
their parents in Cairo, Egypt, for
a college halfway around the
world. In Miss Leonard, the
sisters found " landfall and a very
solid one in a sea of words and
great books." Like many
students, they forged a life long
friendship with Miss Leonard.
"Ann and I, being homeless,
were often around campus or at
least Annapolis during the
holiday because Egypt was a little
too far for a three-day weekend,"
Miss Schanche said. '"Miss Leonard would
periodically invite us up to her apartment
over the infirmary for a glass of wine and
some conversation and just to help us feel
that we did have a bit of home away from
home." Ms. Leonard also was a stickler
for certain thing, Ms. Schanche noted.
One in particular was the correct pronunciation of the word' dissect.'
"Most people, me included, pronounced
it 'dye-sect,'" she said. "The correct
pronunciation according to Ms. Leonard is
' dis-sect' and she drilled that one in. I am
now an editor and every time I try to
correct someone's pronunciation of that,
I think of Ms. Leonard."
"She was there for us," Mrs. Ferro
added. "And so in death she stays with us,
too. She is locked in our psyches, in her
flat-soled sneakers, her blue skirtconsistent, calm, humorous, solid, and
generous to a fault with her support and
guidance for us students. These are lifelong gifts that Barb am gave us and that
she expects us to share with others."*'
St. fohn's College. Winter 2005}
�{OBITUARIES}
BEATE
RuHM voN
{OBITUARIES}
0PPEN
Beate Ruhm von Oppen (HAor), St. John's
tutor emerita, died in August at her
home in Annapolis.
Miss von Oppen left Germany as a teenager to complete her secondary education
in Holland, moved to England and earned
a bachelor's degree at the University of
Birmingham. She worked in political
intelligence for the British Foreign Office.
Mter the war, she took a job with the
American Historical Association in
Alexandria, Va., when she learned from a
co-worker about an opening at St. John's.
She taught at the college for nearly
43 years, with an occasional break to write
books, conduct research, and serve as a
visiting professor at other colleges.
Her interest in the role of religion in
the German resistance led her to work
before starting college in England:
Letters to Freya, a collection ofletters
written by Helmuth James von Moltke,
a legal adviser to the Third Reich, to his
wife, Freya. Von Moltke worked within
the regime to undermine the Nazis
before he was captured and executed.
In 1989, the German edition of the book
won the Scholl Prize, a prestigious literary
award in Germany.
At a memorial service last
September, Miss von Oppen
was remembered as a careful
and diligent scholar, a lover of
music (particularly Bach) and
books, and a beloved sister,
sister-in-law, and aunt.
Several who spoke at the
service referred to an essay
called "The Tuning Fork,"
Miss von Oppen's account of
the bewildering change in the
Germany of her youth.
The following is excerpted
from the essay, originally
publishedinHumanitas, the
journal of the George Bell
Institute. Miss von Oppen
wrote of her attempt to go to
Holland, where she hoped to
work before starting college
in England.
crisis at the very tim e when the Hitler
regime created large numbers of refugees
or would-be refugees- trying to keep such
aliens out.
To admit my status as a worker, albeit
unpaid, would have meant being sent back
to the fatherland, with the additional
black mark of having tried to flee it. So I
denied it. The denial was an automatic
reflex. Unfortunately, my response to the
question about my religion was equally
automatic. I said 'Protestant,' having been
baptized at birth according to the
Zwinglian rite and having attended Prates- ·
tant religious instruction at my German
schools, with even a spell of Lutheran
Sunday school thrown in for good measure. It was a mistake. I did have the presence of mind and necessary minutes and
pennies to send a cheery postcard about
my 'good trip' to my Jewish grandmother
in Frankfurt from the Dutch side. I wanted
to reassure her; she had a heart ailment, of
which she died before the year was out.
Now I was put on the next train to
Emmerich, where I was received-not
to say taken into custody- by the Evangelische Balznlzoftmission ... .It felt like a
halfway house on the way to more
serious, more purely political
confinement. Theywere stern
and forbidding and there was
nothing evangelical about them.
There was even a touch of
Nazism. As I was sitting, somewhat disconsolately, in a dark
reception room, a boy of about
eight came in and sang one of
those Nazi songs-1 don't know
why; perhaps it was just youthful
exuberance. It grated enough to
make me decide to accept no
food from this establishment or
run the risk of having to sit at the
table with these professional
Protestants. My grandmother
had given me enough provender
for the day.
What I did not have was
money, beyond the ten Marks
one was allowed to take out of the
country. When the woman in
"THE TUNING FORK"
It was spring 1936. They took me off the
train after it had crossed the border from
Germany. They asked me for my religionfor while they wanted to protect the Dutch
unemployed from the competition offoreigners, they also wanted to protect the
virtue of young women. I was 17. They
accused me of coming to work in Holland.
I denied it, though they were right. They
had no proof, but I had the burden of
proof. The fact was that I had in the prcvious December passed the examination
given by Oxford for entrance to British
universities. Being penniless and not
wanting to be a burden on the American
uncle who had paid my school fees for the
year that it had taken me to prepare for
that exam, I had gladly accepted the
school's invitation to stay on as unpaid
general dog's body until it was time to go
to England to study, the following October. So I was earning my keep as matron's
assistant, occasional coach or tutor, babysitter, and so on. But these services .. .were
work prohibited by the law or regulations
of the land that was , like most European
countries-struggling with an economic
ALTHOUGH SHE WORKED IN
BRITISH INTELLIGENCE DURING
WoRLD WAR
II, Miss voN 0PPEN
RESISTED BEING CALLED A SPY.
{ THE
CoLLEGE .
St. John 's College. Winter 2005
}
charge of this Internal Mission house
allowed me to go for a short walk in town,
I could not resist a tuning fork in the
window of a small music shop. I went in
and bought it. My instrument at the time
was the violin, which I played as badly as I
had played the piano and would later play
the oboe. I may have justified the rash
purchase to myself as useful: a violin has
to be tuned and there isn't always a piano
or other instrument present to give the
pitch. It was a modest tuning fork and
cheap, but it depleted my minimal
resources. I probably realized this, yet
probably felt, too, that there was not only
practical but also symbolic value in a
gadget that gave you the true pitch.
Before I went for the walk in the strange
town I had telephoned my school and told
my friends there what had befallen me .
They said they would certify me as a bona
fide pupil- I was taking lessons with the
music master-and get the local police
to put an official endorsement on the
43
'-/1s I was sittin~ somewhat disconsolately;
in a dark reception room~
a boy ofabout eight
came in and sang one
ofthose Nazi songs... "
This meant crossing the Rhine. I boarded
the ferry, paid my last Pfennige to the nice
conductor, and asked him how far from
the landing place on the other side the
railway was. It was a fal.r step, especially
with luggage. He found me a free ride to
the station. This turned out to be a local
butcher, who gave me the seat beside him
in the van, with the carcasses behind us.
He wasn't an anti-Nazi. He sounded like a
Nazi or at least a loyal citizen to the Third
Reich. In the absence of money I gave him
my last German postage stamps and
signed a document acknowledging my
debt to him for the additional small
amount it cost to connect my old rail
ticket with the new stretch from Cleve to
Nijmegen.
So offl went, crossed the frontier without further incident, and reached the
school safely. The tuning fork came in
handy when we played Haydn quartets.
I still have it. Tuning forks don't take up
much space._.
BEATE RuHM VON 0PPEN, THE T UNING FORK
document that would suitably impress the
Dutch border officials. The document duly
arrived by Express mail the next day, but
also a message that the police station had
closed by the time that my friends had got
there and that they had made their statement sound as persuasive as possible without the police back-up. They advised me
not to try the same border crossing again,
from Emmerich to Zevenaar, where I was
now known, but to take another, from
Cleve to Nijmegen, where I wasn't.
JOliN AINSWORTH
economy called Socialism in the Soviet
Union. He is survived by a daughter, Jenny.
JONATHAN AURTHUR
John Edgar Ainsworth, class of1942,
died Sept. 30 following complications
from a stroke. He was a resident of Silver
Spring, Md. Until his retirement in 1984,
Mr. Ainsworth was an atmospheric
physicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight
Center, where he was primary designer of
the Pioneer Venus probe.
Mr. Ainsworth pursued many hobbies
including ice skating, sailing, skiing,
camping, windsurfing, hang-gliding, flying
small aircraft, ballroom dancing, and jazz.
He became one of the first students in the
college's New Program when he enrolled at
St. John's in 1938, but he left the college
shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor to
enlist in the Army-Air Force. As the Washington Post reported, Mr. Ainsworth was
sent to the Pacific, and "took with him two
books, both on calculus, and taught himself the discipline while in the military."
Mter returning from the service in 1946,
he earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics at Harvard University.
He is survived by his wife, Anne, and
three children.
Jonathan Aurthur (A68), who wrote a book
about his son Charley's struggles with
mental illness in The Angel and the
Dragon, took his own life in November.
He was 56 and had lived in Santa Monica,
Calif. An account published in the Los
Angeles Times said Mr. Aurthur leaped to
his death from a soo-foot cliff in the Angeles National Forest in Arcadia, Calif. His
body was found Nov. 29. According to the
article, friends said that he was despondent
over several issues.
Mr. Aurthur was profiled in the Winter
2003 issue of The College. The article
described his attempts to understand his
son's illness and to determine if someone
could have found a better way to help
Charley, who committed suicide by
jumping from a freeway overpass.
Mter leaving St. John's, Mr. Aurthur
attended the University of California,
Los Angeles, where he majored in motion
pictures. In the late 1g6os through the
early 198os, he worked as a community
organizer and documentary filmmaker.
He was also the editor of a journal of
political theory called Appeal to Reason
and the author of a book on political
{ THE
CoLLEGE .
St. .John's College . Winter 2005
ALSO NOTED:
STEPHEN BRAUN (SF84), July 2004
}OliN-DAVID HINDLE HAIIDT (AGI96), Sept. 9,
2004
CHARLES HYSON (class ofr937), March 8,
2004
PERCY KEITH Ill (class ofi949), Jan. 17,
2004
JoHN LOGUE (class of1950), June r, 2004
}oHNMAGIDRE (class ofr946), March 13,
2003
ALAN PIKE (class of1937), Oct. 22, 2004
MR. WILLIAMT. ROBERTS III (class of1951)
ANDREW CAMERON SHERRARD }R. (class of
1941), Nov. 7, 2003
A. ROBERT SMITH (class of1937), June 2,
2004
ROBEitl' SNIBBE (class ofr937), June 8, 2004
}OliN STERRETT (class ofr950), Aug. 14,
2004
RICHARD B. TAYLOR, class of1936
THOMASUSILTON (class of1943), Oct. 15,
2004
VALYS ZILIUS (class of1958), Nov. 14, 2004
}
�~------------------------------------------------------------- -----------------------,
44
ALFRED MOLLIN
Alfred M ollin, who died last August in
Philadelphia, was a tutor for seven years in
Annapolis. He later lift the college and
embarked on a career at the Department
ofJustice, where he rose to the position of
senior appellate counsel. Some alumni may
remember him.from his days at the college,
but many more know ofhim.from the Greek
manual used at St. John :S. Tutor emeritus
Robert Williamson (HAo2), who
co-authored the manual, offered this
remembrance at Mr. M ollin 's memorial
service at the college last September:
I first met Alfred Mollin when he visited this
campus in order to sit in on classes and he
interviewed for a position on the faculty.
Fellow graduate students of his at Penn
State whom I had known as students at
St. John's suggested that he stay over at
Marilyn's and my home .. .On the night
before he returned to Penn State, he and I
talked long into the night about St. John's
College, about our common friends, about
philosophy and the writings of philosophers, about politics and military history.
By the time we arrived at the subject of our
favorite movies, it was clear-I think to both
of us-that our conversation, if allowed to
continue into the coming academic year,
would develop into a friendship.
Since I first read his Ethics, Aristotle's
account of friendship has seemed to me the
truest and most helpful guide to understanding what can generally be understood
of an afiection so intimately bound up with
the particularities of those who share in it.
It is an abiding disposition or readiness to
take pleasure in another's company and to
wish for and work for that other's good. And
it is reciprocal. But, as always with Aristotle,
that readiness comes fully into being when
it is set to work. The highest manifestation
of friendship is shared activity which, in
itself or in its goals, is good. Activity, unlike
readiness, depends upon opportunity, has
its starts and stops. There are high moments
in friendship. And aside from the activity of
raising children which husband and wife
share, I have never enjoyed a more intense
and sustained experience of friendship than
in the two years Alfred and I collaborated in
the production ofAnlntroduction to
Ancient Greek.
The idea was first his. We had both come
to agree that the textbooks available at the
time did little to encourage serious
reflection on the forms and artful use of
language. I had been content to supple-
{OBITUARIES}
{ArJUMNI AssociATION NEws}
ment and occasionally correct the
treatment given by Chase and Phillips'
textbook, then in use. It was Alfred who,
after giving two informal lectures on
Greek and English grammar, proposed
that together we produce a textbook with
the aim of serving the principal aims of
the St. John's language tutorial. At first I
was skeptical. I'm glad he overcame my
doubts .
We decided that each of the major
themes which would be recurrently
addressed and developed in the course of
the textbook should be passed back and
forth between us. We knew that in what we
speaking. The striking triangular diagram
which he placed at the end of the introductory chapter on the verb is the visible
image of his unifying insight. In the years
since, I have marveled at this unifying
power in his thinking on the most various
of subjects, a unification which respects
and illuminates the differences of its units
by revealing their togetherness.
There was a third sharer in that activity:
Chris Dill, later Chris Mullin, who was at
that time secretary to the dean and then
registrar at the college. In addition to
those responsibilities, she undertook the
final stages of preparation of the text for
distribution to the freshman classes. This
required the exercise of taste and judgment .
as well as the transcription of Greek. Our
goal was to distribute each lesson at least a
week before it would be used by the freshman classes. She saw to it that we did,
not only by doing her part but often by
making up for time lost in our last-minute
submissions ofrough drafts to her ...
If I tried to describe Alfred throughout
the time I knew him, the word with which
I would begin and end is one with which
Homer often describes his heroes: megathymos. In English: "great-hearted," though
in Homer's use the meaning can range
from "generous" (or "big-hearted" ) to
"high-spirited."
I have already mentioned one instance of
Alfred's gcneTOsity. I wish to mention
another, lest it be forgotten sooner than it
should. Early in the fall semester which was
to prove his last, John Kieffer (HA7o) fell
ill and Alfred was asked temporarily to
substitute for him in his feshman language
tutorial. At that time a substitute was asked
to serve on a pro bono b asis for a couple of
weeks and then would begin receiving a
stipend in addition to his regular compensation. After a longer period ... the class
would cease to be assigned to the incapacitated tutor and be reassigned to some other
tutor, with proportional compensation.
Alfred knew how strongly John Kieffer
hoped to be able to return to his class, a
hope which, as Alfred knew, would probably never be realized. When the treasurer,
Chuck Elzey, objected that under the
Polity the college could no longer pay for a
substitute, Alfred responded, "I insist on
continuing as a substitute, and I refuse to
be paid." Alfred continued as a substitute
during John Kieffer's remaining months
and never told John what he had done for
him ...
"What we learned in the
e:x:ecution was that
same-mindedness can
be generative: as we
passed a theme back
andforth~ each ones
anticipated contribution
was deepened and
enlarged by the others
prevzous one. "
RoBERT WILLIAMsoN (HAo2)
were setting out to do there was what
Aristotle calls homonoia, same-mindedness, on all that really mattered. What we
learned in the execution was that samemindedness can be generative: as we
passed a theme back and forth, each one's
anticipated contribution was deepened and
enlarged by the other's previous one. It was
truly a combined effort.
But sequential combined efforts must
have beginnings. Early on we had agreed
that we would unfailingly present the textbook as an equal effort. He held me to the
agreement on several occasions. That was
an act of generosity on his part. Now that
he is gone, I feel free to speak the truth.
'I'he two most important and original
insights .which gave rise to our project
and which most pervasively shaped it
were his. I mean the distinction between
formal and material verb-complements
and, especially, the unification of the six
aspects of the Greek verb under the three
elements of subject, predicate, and act of
{ THE CoLLEG E . St. fohn 's College. Winte r 2005
+
}
FRoM THE ALuMNI
AssOCIATION
PRESIDENT
Dear Johnnies,
As alumni, we are always happy towelcome new members into our community.
This fall we've had the occasion to open
our doors to new students and a new
leader.
Welcome to incoming students-alumni
of the future!
Do you remember your first encounter
with the idea of St. John's? Your first visit
to a campus? First seminar? I certainly
do, and those memories rushed back
when; in late September, we hosted a
prospective student reception in my
home. "We" is the Twin Cities Chapter of
-the Alumni Association and my husband,
John. Together we welcomed a group of
CHAPTER CONTACTS
Call the alumni listed below.for information
about chapter, reading group, or other alumni
activities in each area.
ALBUQUERQUE
Bob & Vicki Morgan
SOS-275-90I2
BALTIMORE
Deborah Cohen
4I0-47 2-9IS8
ANNAPOLIS
Beth Martin Gammon
4I0-28o-0958
BOSTON
Ginger Kenney
6r7-964-4794
AUSTIN
John Strange
2I0-392-SSo6
Bev Angel
5I2-926-7808
CHICAGO
Rick Lightburn
lightburn@
earthlink.net
': .. thefoture ifthe
college seemJ' stronger
and brighter this year
than ever_ ifore."
b
young and enthusiastic would-be Johnnies
and their parents . It was a remarkable
gathering in many ways in addition to the
personal time travel it afforded.
One of the prospectives appeared with
her mother in tow-an alumna herself,
Annapolis class of 70-something.
Another brought a sibling who began
the afternoon clearly bored beyond belief
and ended it rather curious about this
strange place and the education it ofiered.
Another parent had read the great
books in her youth without benefit of
conversation. She was thrilled to find out
(via the "The Following Teachers Will
Return ... " mailing) that such a place as
St. John's existed. Her son was excited,
too. Next fall he'll be off to Annapolis
while she joins us for chapter seminars
and contemplates the possibilities of the
Graduate Institute.
The story is that prospectives who
attend such receptions are much more
likely to come to the college than those
who have no personal contact. It was a
delightful party, and the Santa Fe Admissions office made it quite easy! If you are
interested in hosting such an event, contact the Admissions office nearest you.
Not onlyvvill you be doing the College and
the prospectives a favor, but you'll also
find an occasion to revisit memorable
moments from your youth.
Welcome to President Peters!
As alumni from the East and West, we
are pleased to welcome Mr. PeteTs as the
new president of the Santa Fe campus.
Mr. PeteTs' experiences have prepared him
well for a role of productive leadership in
the college community. He has dedicated
DALLAS/,FORT
WORTH
Suzanne Lexy
Bartlette
8I7-72I-9II2
DENVER/BOULDER
Lee Katherine
Goldstein
720-746-I496
GLENDA H. EoYANG, PRESIDENT
ST.JOHN's CoLLEGE ALuMNI AssociATION
himself to learning and supporting the
environments of learning; he has managed
administTative functions that are similar in
size and structure to the College; and he
engages with a kind of seriousness and
attention that we like to think is characteristic of our community.
We are pleased that MT. Peters and his
lovely wife, Eleanor, will be joining us in
January. The Alumni Association Board
of Directors will be looking for ways to
support him and the College under his
leadership, and we encourage our fellow
alumni to do the same.
With a constant supply of eager students
and a promising new leader in Santa Fe,
the future of the college seems stronger
and brighter this year than ever before.
Thanks to all who continue to make the
idea of the college a reality: members of
the Board ofVisitors and GovernOTs,
administration, faculty, current students,
alumni, and friends.
For yesterday, today, and tomorrow,
Glenda H. Eoyang
President
St. John's College Alumni Association
NORTHERN CALIF.
Deborah Farrell
4I5-'{3I-8804
SANTA FE
Richard Cowles
505-986-I8I4
PHILADELPHIA
Bart Kaplan
2I.5-465-0244
SEATTLE
Amina Brandt
206-465-778I
PITTSBURGH
Joanne Murray
724-325-4I5I
SOUTHERN
CALIFORNIA
Elizabeth Eastman
S62-426-I934
MINNEAPOLIS/
ST. PAUL
Carol Freen1an
6I2-822-32I6
PORTLAND
Lake Perriguey
lake@law-works. com
NEW YORK
Daniel Van Doren
9I4-949-68II
SAN DIEGO
Stephanie Rico
6rg-423-4972
{ THE CoLLEGE . St. fohn 's College . Winte r 2005
45
TRIANGLE CIRCLE
(NC)
Susan Eversole
9 I 9 -9 68-4856
. WASHINGTON, D.C .
Jean Dickason
gor-6gg-6207
}
WESTERN NEW
ENGLAND
Julia Ward
4I3-648-oo64
ISRAEL
Emi Geiger Leslau
IS Aminadav Street
Jerusalem 93549
Israel
9-722-67I-7608
boazl@cc.huji.ac.il
�~-------------------------------------------~----~--------------------------------------------~
{ALUMNI AssociATION NEws}
HoMECOMING
CHARLOTTE KiNG (CLASS OF I959) FOUND AN
OASIS FROM RACISM AT ST. JoHN'S.
ARouND THE CHAPTERs:
TwiN CITIES
DISCOVERING
HoNoRs
The Alumni Association extended its
highest honor, the Award of Merit, to two
Annapolis alumni at Homecoming in
October. William Carter, class ofig1~o,
was recognized for his contributions in the
field of technical education; Charlotte
King, class of rgsg, was honored for her
contributions to the field of social service.
The association named Glenn HousleyAnnapolitan, sailmaker, and Johnnie
supporter-an honorary member of the
Class of 2004 in recognition of his
contributions to the life of the college,
specially its students and alumni.
Dr. Carter was nominated for his award
by Bill Reynolds, also of the class ofig4o,
with whom he also attended Charlotte Hall
Military Academy. Dr. Carter enlisted and
served in the Navy after graduating from
St. John's. He went on to a career as an
executive with the Northwestern Mutual
Life Insurance Company, but it was in the
field of education that he made his real
mark. He was a founding father of Delaware
Technical and Community College in
Georgetown, Del., and served on its board
of trustees for more than I3 years. The
\Villiam A. Carter Partnership Center on
the Delaware Tech campus is named in his
honor.
After earning his doctoral degree from
Berne University in rgg8, Dr. Carter turned
his attention to the use of computers in
public school classrooms. The Teacher
Assistance Program he founded is now
being used in schools with great success.
Dr. Carter has served on numerous
state, regional and national boards and
{ALUMNI AssociATION NEws}
Maryland's Social Services Administration,
where she was responsible for a $300
million budget and the operation of all
family services and child welfare prograrn:s
in the state.
Miss King has served on the Anne
Arundel Commission for Women, the
Anne Arundel County Ethics Commission,
and the YMCA Board of Directors. In addition, she has volunteered time to more
than a dozen coalitions and commissions
devoted to helping women, chHdren, and
families.
In accepting her award, Miss King said
that although it was difficult to endure the
racism she encountered in the city of
Annapolis in the rgsos, she found in
St. John's an "oasis."
"St. John's is one of my longest and most
profound relationships," she said. "It has
all the characteristics of a good friend; it
has taught me, guided me, challenged me,
and supported me .. .St. John's enabled me
to be a better person by giving me an
expanded vision oflife and its infinite
opportunities for learning, discovery,
and actualization. "
When Miss King returned to work and
live at St. John's more than a decade later,
with her 7-year-old daughter Rachel in tow,
Annapolis had become a "hotbed of civil
rights activity." Here, Miss King found her
new challenges in the area of public service.
"I am so thankful to the college and the
Alumni Association for reminding me that
my life had meaning and that I should take
pride in some of my achievements,"
Miss King said.
At the All-Alumni meeting, Glenn
Housley joined the class of 2004, receiving
a college cap and gown along with his
honor. For IS years, Mr. Housley has hosted
St. John's students on the college's Annual
Sail Picnic and has introduced other
students to the art of sail making.
In his tribute to Mr. Housley, Chris
Denny (Ag3) said: "Glenn and his wife,
Sus3an Borden (A87) , the college's director
offoundation relations}, have opened the
doors of their home to students and faculty
with gracious hospitality through the years.
Students who know Glenn in his many
roles-sailor, craftsman intramural
competitor, and friend-are grateful for his
participation in the life of the college."_.
commissions, including the Delaware
Higher Education Commission and the
National Commission for the Support of
Public Schools. In 2000, he received the
Order of the First State from the governor
of Delaware, an award the recognized his
contributions to improving the quality of
life for residents of the state.
"It is gratifying to have one's efforts
recognized, but it is especially so that this
award comes from all of you," Dr. Carter
said at the Homecoming banquet. "I have a
special place for it right here," he added,
tapping his chest, "and I'll keep it there
for always."
Dr. Carter acknowledged the support
and assistance of his "capable and longsuffering wife, Ann," and introduced his
grandson, Matt Carter, (Ao8). "I have been
lucky enough to be in the right places, at
the right times, to be able to help make
good things happen," he said.
A native of New York, Charlotte King
became one of the first African-American
students to graduate from St. John's. After
graduation, she went on to a career in
social services and today is a senior human
services executive and clinical therapist.
In rg7o, she returned to St. John's to help
establish the college's first counseling
program. She entered public service,
becoming assistant director of the Anne
Arundel County Department of Social
Services, and later directed social services
in Charles County. She served as the
executive director of Associated Catholic
Charities in Washington, D.C. In rggo,
she was appointed executive director of
WILLIAM CARTER (CLASS OF I940) WAS
HONORED FOR HIS COWfRIBUTIONS TO
EDUCATION.
{ THE
CoLLEGE.
St. fohn 's College. Winter 2005
}
AMERICA
BY }UDY KISTLER-ROBINSON (SF77, SFG179)
For several years the Twin Cities alumni
chapter has engaged in reading books according to a theme. Mter a year-long theme on
tragedy, we read what was for some of us an
arduous list of Goethe's literature and scientific writings for a ydr. With that ambitious
undertaking completed, we had no theme in
mind when one member suggested reading
The Confidence Man by Herman Melville.
None of the group had yet read it, but the
keywords "travel" and "Mississippi" spurred
us to read TWain's Adventures ofHuckleberry
Finn first, followed by The Confidence Man.
At that time, we weren't sure whether our
theme should be travelogues or river tales.
Our theme evolved into "Who are we as
Americans?" when we chose to read
Tocqueville 's Democracy in America next
(over three months).
Since the time period of our readings started in the early rgth century, we attempted to
move gradually into the 2oth century and get
a range of different perspectives. Our readings encompassed W.E.B. DuBois' Souls of
Black Folk, Willa Cather's Death Comes for
the Archbishop, Henry James's Washington
Square, Sinclair Lewis's The Jungle, Jack
Kerouac's On the Road, and Anne Fadiman's
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down:
A Hmong Girl, Her American Doctor, and the
Clash oJTwo Cultures. Although our members all agreed we could have stayed on this
theme for years without even scratching the
surface, we ended our investigation into the
American psyche with an American Western
film. Which one to watch caused more
debate than any reading selection, but we
selected The Man Who Shot Liberty
Valence, directed by John Ford, because
we'd heard that Eva Brann once led a
seminar on it.
Many exciting and relevant questions came
up in the course of our readings and discussions. Some of the recurring ones:
What would Tocqueville say about
2-oth-century America? This surfaced in
discussions on immigrant experience and
cultural/ class clashes .
Questions of culture, as seen through the
immigrant experience. How does a group (or
individuals within a group) both keep a former culture and found a new one? Is assimilation inevitable, or does this very process end
up changing the dominant culture too?
How do time and experience change Western archetypal ideas, such as democracy?
What do we value?
How do we deal with the precarious and
important balance of individualism versus
the common good?
What are the different ways to approach
building a society?
What is the American myth? What are the
stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, and
is there a basis for these?
Participants seemed to enjoy this theme
greatly, both due to the variety of readings
available within it as well as the timeliness of
the topic in this election year. Next up for our
chapter: epic adventures and journeys, starting with the Odyssey.-$-
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 n ewsletter within The College magazine is sponsored by the Alumni
Association and communicates Alumni
Association news and events of interest.
President- Glenda Eoyang, SF76
Vice President-Jason Walsh, A85
Secretary- Barbara Lauer, SF76
Treasurer - Bill Fant, A79
Getting-the-Word-Out Action Team ChairLinda Stabler-Talty, SFGI76
Mailing address- Alumni Association,
St. John's College, P.O Box 28oo, Annapolis,
MD 2r404, or u6o Camino Cruz Blanca,
Santa Fe, NM 87505-4599.
Awards of Merit go to alumni who have
made outstanding contributions to the
college, their professions, or the nation.
Honorary Alumni awards go to individuals who have made significant differences
in the lives of students or the college
without having been enrolled as students.
At-Large Directors of the Alumni Association Board are elected by members of the
Association to represent them in the
decision-making processes.
Alumni-elected members of the Board
ofVisitors and Governors provide unique
alumni perspectives to inform the
decisions that set policy for the college.
Officers of the Alumni Association are
elected to provide support and leadership
to the Alumni Association Board of
Directors.
Do you know anyone-alumnus or
not-who should be recognized as an outstanding member of our community?
If so, please contact our Nominations
Committee chair Steve Thomas at
sthomas@fsa.com. Please provide your
name, class year, contact information
for you and the nominee, and a brief
explanation of your nomination._.
CALL FOR
NoMINATIONS
The St. John's College Alumni Association
recognizes members ofthe community in a
variety of ways.
. MEMBERS OF THE TWIN CITIES CHAPTER TOOK A
LITERARY JOURNEY THROUGH I9TH- AND 20THCENTURY AMERICA.
{ TH E
CoLLEGE .
St. f ohn's College. Winter 2005
}
�- -- - - - -- - --·--- ·
{ST.
}oHN~s
FoREVER}
Experience the beauty of early summer
along the San Juan, Colorado, or Green
rivers in an outdoor adventure led by
Mark St. John, director of student activities
in Santa Fe. This adults-only trip is open
to all alumni and their spouses/partners,
but is limited to r6 participants. Participants are invited to camp on the launch
site on Thursday, June r6.The cost
is $300. Contact the Alumni Office at
sos-984-6103, or e-mail Roxanne
Seagraves at rseagraves@sjcsf.edu for
more details. By April I, the office will
know which river has been chosen for
the trip.
THEigo8FOOTBALLTEAM,
AT A TIME INTERCOLLEGIATE
ATHLETICS THRIVED AT
ST.
JoHN's.
GLORY DAYS
n October ro, 1936,
The Black and Orange of
St. John's College entered
the field before s,ooo fans
in Ashland, Va., to face the
Randolph-Macon Yellow
Jackets. The Johnnies were clearly outmatched by the Jackets, who were expecting
to add an 18th game to their winning streak.
But the Johnnies, well prepared by new head
coach Valentine "Dutch" Lentz, held back
Randolph-Macon's star quarterback. Neither team scored until Johnnie Lambros
(class ofrg38) passed the ball to Bill
Stallings (class of 1939), who crossed the
goal line. The game ended in a 7-0 victory
for the Johnnies, the second in a six-game
winning streak.
But the glory days for the college's
athletic teams were waning. In earlier years,
even as the college's academic program
struggled, the athletic program thrived.
Championship lacrosse and football teams
regularly humbled rivals including Johns
Hopkins and the new state college,
Maryland Agricultural, now the University
participate in intercollegiate sports.
In the account given in J. Winfree Smith's
A Search for a Liberal Education, Barr
cited difficulties in scheduling games,
adding that intercollegiate athletics
"involves substituting a spectator
psychosis for student participation."
Lentz left St. John's and later became
head basketball coach at West Point.
Seniors from the class ofr939 voiced
their disappointment with Barr's decision
in thatyear'sRat-Tat, the college yearbook. "With the graduation of our class,
intercollegiate sports pass out of the
picture. And while it is no more our
purpose to bring up that question than
to re-fight the Civil War .. .looking at the
list of our activities, we find that half of
the class played [a sport] at one time or
another during our stay here."
The yearbook writers couldn't have
anticipated how many Johnnies still play
sports. More than roo of the students in
Annapolis and about J20 in Santa Fe take
part in intramurals.
of Maryland. The Johnnies' 62-0 victory
against MaJ:yland in r8gg recently made
the front page of the Washington Post as
one of Maryland's 13 worst losses in
football, a sidebar to a story on a Virginia
Tech-Maryland game.
The brilliant rg36 season was attributed
to some outstanding players and the coaching prowess of Lentz, a rgr8 alumnus who
became athletic director later that season.
A professional sports star in football and
baseball, Lentz had played with the Orioles
basketball team in the Eastern League and
was a high school coach until he returned
to his alma mater in 1926. The 1937 season,
with only two wins and one tie in a ro-game
season, was attributed to a tough schedule
and several injuries. The great triumph of
the final season, rg38, was a o-o tie with
Johns Hopkins, with whom the Johnnies
had the third-oldest sports rivalry in
intercollegiate sports. Failing to win a
single point that year, the team earned the
nickname "the galloping goose-eggs."
In 1939, President Stringfellow Barr
announced the college would no longer
{ THE
Co LL EGE.
St. fohn 's College. Winter 2005
-CHRISTOPHER UTTER
}
(Ao6)
Reunion classes are '70, '75, 'So, '85, 'go,
'95, 'oo. This year, a special roth anniversary reunion is planned for Eastern
Classics participants. Events include
reunion class parties and seminars, the
annual Alumni Art Show, Homecoming
Dinner Dance, Friday Night Lecture
(relating to Eastern Classics), and a
Saturday night Midsummer's Night Ball.
Meet the new president of the campus,
Michael Peters, over Sunday Brunch.
Join Annapolis president Christopher B.
Nelson and Santa Fe president Michael P.
Peters for an "Evening of Conversation"
about the state of the college and plans for
securing its future.
The venue is the Fogg Museum of Art
at Harvard University, and guests will have
the opportunity to tour the museum's
galleries before and after the program.
Beer, wine, and light fare will be served,
and there's plenty of time set aside to allow
Johnnies to catch up with each other and to
hear about what's happening in Annapolis
and Santa Fe.
This year's summer program is a week full
of intellectual stimulation, fun events on
and off campus, and a special participatory
theater event. Alumni can choose from
three seminars:
Chushingura, or The Treasury ofLoyal
Retainers, led by Claudia Honeywell
Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy, led by
Kenneth Wolfe and Jay Smith
Milton, Paradise Lost, led by Eva Brann
and David Carl
Participants can also explore A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Tempest by
joining a Shakespeare Reader's Theatre
production of the comedy. Reader's
Theatre is minimalist theatre in which
the script is used openly, staging is simple,
and no full sets or costumes are involved.
Special outings include a picnic and winery
tour along the Rio Grande and Puccini's
Turandot at the Santa Fe Opera. For information on fees, housing information, and
hotel discounts, visit the college's Web site
(click on "Alumni" and choose activities in
Santa Fe) or call the Alumni Office at
sos-984-6!03.
A QUIET MOMENT BY THE POND DURING
SANTA FE's HoMECOMING LAST suMMER.
September 30-0ctober 2
Reunion class years are ' 45, 'so, 'ss. '6o,
'6s.,
,
,
Alla11
Ce
"An Evening of Conversation"
6 p.m. to 9 p.m. Tuesday, March rs.
Fogg Museum of Art ·
32 Quincy Street, Cambridge
RSVP by March r: 410-295-sssr, or
alexandra.fotos@sjca.edu
This event is the first of four planned
for 2005; similar gatherings for alumni,
parents and friends will take place in
San Francisco, Albuquerque/Santa Fe,
and Philadelphia later in the year.
:~~ DATE DUE
I
Back cover: Photo by David Trozzo
{T
H E
CoLL
E G E .
St. fohn 's College . Winter 2005
}
�•
STJOHN'S
COLLE~GE
PERIODICALS ·
POSTAGE PAID
ANNAPOLIS · SANTA FE
PUBLISHED BY THE
COMMUNICATIONS OFFICE
P.O.
Box 28oo
ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND
2I404
ADDRESS SERVICE REQUESTED
~I
�
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<em>The College </em>(2001-2017)
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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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Santa Fe, NM
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The College, Winter 2005
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Volume 31, Issue 1 of The College Magazine. Published in Winter 2005.
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Santa Fe, NM
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2005
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Harty, Rosemary (editor)
Hartnett, John (Santa Fe editor)
Behrens, Jennifer (art director)
Borden, Sus3an
Deimel, August
Goyette, Barbara
Hughey-Comers, Erin
Knapp, Carolyn
Maguran, Andra
Mattson, Jo Ann
Rinn, Natalie
Seagraves, Roxanna
Utter, Christopher
Weiss, Robin
White, Roseanna
Johnson, David
Eoyang, Glenda H.
The College
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/2af56e11a45b8d3aba5f39661265e33b.pdf
34e7470ef8c8719f57ecabb40f92fa18
PDF Text
Text
The
College
St. John’s College
•
Annapolis
w i n t e r
•
Santa Fe
Adam
Smith
The life of the
Marketplace
2 0 0 4
�On Adam Smith
verybody wants a piece of Adam Smith. Comb through articles in major
newspapers and trade journals, and you’ll find him embraced by the right,
“reclaimed” by the left, quoted in Congress, and tapped in propaganda by
free trade advocates and anti-globalization groups alike. California Gov.
Arnold Schwarzenegger is a fan: “I am more comfortable with an Adam
Smith philosophy than with Keynesian Theory,” said the man hitherto
famous for the line “I’ll be back.”
Smith has even been tapped as a “witness” in a recent criminal case. After former Sotheby’s
Chairman A. Alfred Taubman was convicted of conspiring to fix commission prices with rival
Christie’s, Taubman’s attorneys argued that his conviction was tainted by this oft-quoted passage from The Wealth of Nations: “People in the same trade seldom meet together even for
merriment or diversion, but the conversation ends in conspiracy against the public and in some
contrivance to raise prices.”
Taubman’s lawyers claimed that the quote, included in closing arguments by the prosecution,
constituted improper use of expert testimony. The appeals court upheld the conviction, but
told prosecutors to leave Smith out of it in the future.
Born in Kirkcaldy, Scotland, Smith lived during a remarkable time, had remarkable friends—
David Hume, Voltaire, Samuel Johnson, to name a few—and penned one of the most important
treatises written in the English language. He is credited with founding what later would be
called the English School of Classical Political Economy. But biographers suggest this major
contributor to the Scottish Enlightenment was a fairly quiet, socially awkward, and absentminded individual. He remained a bachelor all his life and lived with his mother.
Smith was born in 1723. His father died before he was born. After attending the burgh school
and the University of Glasgow, he was sent to Oxford, where he learned Greek, read Hume’s
Treatise of Human Nature, and developed a disdain for Oxford’s indolent professors. In 1751, at
age 28, Smith became a professor of Logic at Glasgow, and the following year took the Chair of
Moral Philosophy. In 1759, he published The Theory of Moral Sentiments, which won him widespread acclaim.
In 1764 he gave up the chair in Glasgow for the more lucrative post of tutor to the young
Duke of Buccleuch. The job allowed him to tour France, enjoy admiring and attentive audiences in French salons, and advance his study of the French physiocrats and their laissez-faire
ideas. That post also left him with a pension that freed him from academic work and allowed
him to devote himself to writing. He published An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the
Wealth of Nations in 1776, won appointment as Commissioner of Customs and of Salt Duties,
and became a founding member of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. In the last years of his life,
he hated to be away from his family and his library, a collection of several thousand volumes of
Latin and Greek classics, literature and art, science and philosophy. He died on July 17, 1790,
leaving a fairly modest estate. He had given away much of his wealth in secret acts of charity.
In April 1776, Smith’s good friend Hume wrote his fellow Scotsman to congratulate him on
his accomplishment, warning Smith that the public might not embrace it right away. (He was
wrong; the book was an instant sensation.) But Hume’s praise, so warmly offered, is similar to
the words modern economists use today when describing The Wealth of Nations: “…it has
Depth, and Solidity, and Acuteness and is so much illustrated by curious facts, that it must at
last take the public Attention.”
E
—
RH
The College (usps 018-750)
is published quarterly 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
postmaster: Send address
changes to The College
Magazine, Communications
Office, St. John’s College,
Box 2800, Annapolis, md
21404-2800.
Annapolis
410-626-2539
reharty@sjca.edu
Rosemary Harty, editor
Sus3an Borden, managing editor
Jennifer Behrens, art director
Advisory Board
John Christensen
Harvey Flaumenhaft
Roberta Gable
Barbara Goyette
Kathryn Heines
Pamela Kraus
Joseph Macfarland
Jo Ann Mattson
Eric Salem
Brother Robert Smith
Santa Fe
505-984-6104
alumni@sjcsf.edu
Laura J. Mulry, Santa Fe editor
Advisory Board
Michael Franco
David Levine
Andra Maguran
Margaret Odell
Ginger Roherty
Roxanne Seagraves
Mark St. John
Magazine design by
Claude Skelton Design
�winter 2004
Vo l u m e 3 0 , I s s u e 1
The
College
The Magazine for Alumni of St. John’s College
Annapolis
•
Santa Fe
{Contents}
12
Money Talks
d e p a r t m e n t s
page
2
•
Johnnies succeed in finance not by breaking the rules, but by figuring them out
faster than their competitors.
17
Santa Fe’s
Martial Artists
•
•
•
•
page
•
•
•
page 12
Santa Fe tutors find serious practice of
the martial arts complements their work
at St. John’s.
9
32
35
20
Remembering
Freshman Year
Christopher Nelson: Double Duty
Search Update
Meet the Alumni Directors
A New Face in the Great Hall
Santa Fe Bikes to Work
Being Green in Annapolis
Thai Summer
Philanthropia
letters
bibliofile
alumni notes
P RO F I L E S
page
Annapolis alumni share memories of
Jascha Klein, dorm mishaps, Seducers
and Corrupters, and fateful first
meetings.
from the bell towers
34 Francisco Benítez (SF89) finds artistic
inspiration in Dionysiac frescoes.
37 Eileen Renno (A82) helps welfare clients
find dignity and confidence in work.
38 Wine expert Jake Kosseff (A95) and his
brush with reality television.
page 26
44
alumni voices
Photographer Vivian Ronay (class of 1965)
captures Petra, the Lost City of Stone.
26
St. John’s vs.
The Naval Academy
page
46
48
The stakes in this contest were much
higher than a croquet cup.
30
Annapolis Homecoming
page
page 30
on the cover
Adam Smith
Illustration by David Johnson
alumni association news
st. john’s forever
�2
{From the Bell Towers}
A Conversation with Christopher Nelson
Q. Let’s talk first about the
sheer physical challenges of
running two campuses that
are 2,000 miles and a couple
of time zones apart. How are
you managing this?
A. Being in each place half the
time means that on each campus, everyone has sandwiched in
as many meetings, ceremonial
occasions, and social functions
as possible. While I’m still doing
less than a full-time job on each
campus, all this means that I
have no evening time, no time
for catching up on work, and less
time for exercise. It’s just going
from one meeting to another
meeting. Of course, I expected
that I’d be attending to the
needs of two campuses instead of
one, but I don’t think I realized
how much I’d have to squeeze in.
While I’ve always done a fair
bit of travel for the job, these
flights to Santa Fe and back are
longer flights than usual. I’ve
cut back on other travel as a
result of this. I don’t think the
travel itself is all that exhausting. It takes a lot of time to get
from one city to the other, and
that does give me some time
to read.
We have deliberately
designed the presidency here to
preserve two separate individual campus communities and to
avoid centralization. I think
that’s a healthy thing. But it
does mean I feel like I’m literal-
david trozzo
In the past six months, Annapolis President Christopher Nelson
(SF70) has become one of Southwest Airlines’ best customers.
Serving as interim president in
Santa Fe while the board searches for a successor to John Balkcom (SFGI00) has meant frequent travel to the college’s
Western campus. At the end of a
busy fall semester, Nelson sat
down to discuss the challenges
and opportunities of serving two
campuses.
Christopher B. Nelson
ly two people. I had an Executive Committee dinner the
other day at the board meeting
and I counted out 14 places for
all the people who were there.
There was this empty chair at
the end of the table and I could
not figure out for the life of me
who it was. There were two special guests, four officers of the
board, four at-large elected
members of the board, and then
the two deans and the two presidents. And it didn’t strike me
until the salad course that I was
the two presidents.
Q. How do you establish
priorities for your work with
two campuses to attend to?
A. I tend to concentrate on the
needs of the campus when I’m
there, but invariably there are
needs of the other campus that
come up during the course of
the day. Both campuses have a
very good staff of officers and
directors, and a lot can be done
without my being present. But a
number of surprises that come
up during the course of the week
require some presidential work,
so I am always in touch with the
away campus.
I schedule the calendar
around board meetings,
joint instruction committee meetings, Parents’ Weekends, Homecomings, and other
major events. Most of
the calendar is scheduled a full year in
advance here in Annapolis. In Santa Fe, with an
interim situation, there
aren’t nearly as many
activities scheduled, but
I need to make as much
time as I can to be available to the Santa Fe
community. Instead of
attending nine faculty
meetings a year, I now
attend 18. This winter, I’ll be in
Santa Fe more than Annapolis,
but that’s because this has been
a very busy fall in Annapolis.
Q. What are you gaining from
this experience? Will it
change the way you look at
the college as a whole, or
how things are done in
Annapolis?
A. I see things in Santa Fe that
would be interesting to try here
in Annapolis: programs that faculty and staff have done with students, things that have been
organized by students that are
different in Santa Fe that seem
to be very nicely done—a community clean-up day at the
beginning of the semester, town
hall meetings, and faculty-student social hours, for example.
Parents’ Weekend is different on
the two campuses. In Santa Fe
there is no meeting such as we
have in Annapolis with the parents, the dean, and the president
getting together to talk about
any questions that parents might
ask related to the Program. But
in Santa Fe, and not in Annapolis, there is a panel of students
and alumni who speak to parents
about the experience of living on
campus and being a Johnnie.
Parents seem to really appreci-
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2004 }
ate this, especially the parents
of freshmen. I thought that this
was proof once again that any
time we want to see the college
shine, we just need to introduce
people to our students—they
really are amazing.
There are differences that go
along with the physical setting of
the two campuses. We have
more centripetal forces at work
here in Annapolis, because we
have a center to campus and
most things look to it physically.
In Santa Fe, people are always
looking outwards, because
you’re surrounded by these
beautiful mountains and great
big skies. You also don’t have as
much of a center of the college.
As a result you’ve got more centrifugal forces in Santa Fe, and
you have to work a little harder
to bring about a strong community. I think that a lot of credit
goes to those people who are
doing just that in Santa Fe,
organizing special projects,
social hours, and other functions
to bring faculty and students
together.
Q. The Management Committee is due to become a
permanent part of the college
structure [by an act of the
Board of Visitors and Governors] in 2004. How has this
committee contributed to the
overall operation of the
college?
A. The Management Committee
is responsible for all advancement activities of the college,
including public relations and
alumni relations, for preparing
the budgets for both campuses,
for overseeing finances and
information technology, and for
approving admissions and financial aid policy. The management
committee consists of the two
presidents and two deans, and
the chair of the management
committee will always be one of
the two presidents. I’ve been the
�3
{From the Bell Towers}
Q. Since you’ve had some
experience in the job, what
advice do you have to share
with the search committee
that will help find a new
leader for Santa Fe?
A. I don’t think it needs to be
somebody from within our own
community, although that would
be a very fine thing. I don’t think
it has to be someone who’s been
a president of another institution or even a dean. But someone who has the qualities and
the capacities for leadership—
that would be good.
The new president has to
understand that the Program
comes first—that everything at
the college is in the service of
the Program, that the college is
in a certain sense the Program.
This means that we’re not looking for a president to make his
reputation at this college, to
take the college someplace new,
or to change what it is. We need
to have a president who will help
us improve what we do all over
the college and particularly in
Santa Fe.
There are criteria used for
selection of tutors that would be
useful to apply to the presidential search. The first is a rather
elusive qualification, which is
excellence of intellect and imagination. I hesitate to bring it up
because I haven’t been told that
I will be grandfathered in this
position with reference to that
qualification, but I do think it’s
an important one. No college
can survive well if the president
isn’t up to the quality of the
faculty and is unable to get the
respect of the faculty. So a president who is out of step with the
faculty or board is going to have
a hard time at any institution,
particularly here because of the
Dyal in the Great Hall
There’s a new face in the Great Hall in Annapolis. An oil painting of
William Dyal Jr. (HA89), who served as president of the Annapolis
campus from 1986 to 1990, has joined the portraits of other great
figures of St. John’s history: Stringfellow Barr, Thomas Fell, Hector
Humphreys, John Kieffer and others.
Dyal was an effective president, and his tenure was shorter than
the Annapolis campus community would have liked. He stepped
down in May 1990 after recovering from surgery to remove a benign
brain tumor.
In presenting the portrait to Dyal in Annapolis this past October
during a meeting of the Board of Visitors and Governors, President
Christopher Nelson said his immediate predecessor “made an enormous and lasting impact on the college during his time here.”
“He was loved and admired by faculty, and the students looked up
to him,” Nelson said. “He was called accepting, wise, kind, friendly,
and courageous.”
Prior to joining St. John’s, Dyal served as president of American
Field Service, was the founding president of the Interamerican
Foundation, and served in various capacities for the Peace Corps.
primacy of the Program. All in
all, however, if I had to use one
word for what we are looking
for, it would be ‘fit.’ We want a
president who belongs at the
college and fits well with its
ways, its program, its structures
and its people.
support, both within and outside
the college. We have a very
strong Board of Visitors and
Governors, and an active body
of alumni. Friends in the
community are helpful. We’re
entering into a capital campaign
with a set of strategic goals that
we think make sense for our
community, and we have a high
probability of achieving most of
those goals through a good
campaign.
So a new president comes
into a very nice situation. He or
she will not have to reinvent the
wheel. A new president has an
opportunity to get to know the
place, to listen and learn, to
come to join the community
rather than worrying about
finding a new place to take it.
Any president who wants to
leave a legacy is probably a
president we don’t want or
need. The Program will be the
legacy of this college; the alumni will be the legacies of this
college. We—the presidents,
the staff members, and faculty—
we’re trustees of the Program.
We care for it, and hope that we
will leave the college in a little
better shape than when we
came. x
Q. Let’s consider a candidate’s viewpoint of the presidency of St. John’s College in
Santa Fe. Is this a desirable
position?
A. The college is in good shape.
It’s hardly a wealthy institution.
But considering the state of the
world right now and the
difficult financial times we’ve
been facing in the last three
years, St. John’s has fared
extremely well. We have a
strong student applicant pool,
although we’d like to improve
the number of applications to
the Santa Fe campus. We have
filled our freshman class at
expected levels every year as far
back as I can remember. We’re
able to maintain a strict needbased financial aid policy,
which most colleges in the
country have abandoned. This
is a sign of real strength.
The faculty is strong. The
Program has never had greater
William Dyal Jr. joins
distinguished ranks in the
Great Hall.
He was known for his work in
civil rights and social justice, and
he brought an international perspective to the college, Nelson
said. Adept at fund raising, Dyal
secured funds for faculty salaries,
additions and renovations to
campus buildings, and the college endowment.
Dyal said he was pleased to
have a place in the Great Hall,
one of his favorite spots on
campus. “I loved my years at
St. John’s,” Dyal said. “They were too brief. I loved the faculty, I
loved the students, I even learned to love the board.”
As for the portrait, “the picture’s not too bad,” Dyal said. The
portrait was painted by Anastasia Hoffman Egeli (A92).
Dyal and his wife, Edie, now live in Fredericksburg, Va. x
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2004 }
daniel houck
chair since it began but expect
that the chair will be moved to
Santa Fe sometime after we have
a new president permanently
in place.
I think the management
committee has helped us come
to know each other a lot better
and to bring together policies
that help to strengthen the college. We’ve been able to accomplish a few of the big tasks that
had been eluding us. We now
have common tuition, common
admissions policies, and a common financial aid policy for the
two campuses. We have equal
faculty salaries, class sizes are
the same, and we just now are
getting to equal faculty development opportunities.
�4
{From the Bell Towers}
Homecoming Queens: Alumnae Return in New Roles
Meet the Alumni directors in Annapolis and Santa Fe. They work
with the Alumni Association to plan your Homecomings, they
make small talk over wine and cheese at chapter gatherings, they
persuade tutors to lead just one more Saturday morning seminar.
In short, they work hard to make you—the alumni—happy customers.
Both are multi-talented women: a minister, storyteller, stiltwalker, teacher, stand-up comedian in Santa Fe; a potter, artist,
teacher, and singer in Annapolis. Both are moms. Both have
interesting tales of how they found themselves back in the
St. John’s College community.
Jo Ann Mattson (A87)
Jo Ann (Lautenschlager)
Mattson was a freshman at
Wellesley College when she
came to Annapolis with her
then-boyfriend (now husband)
Walter Mattson (A87). Walter
was visiting St. John’s as a
prospective and Jo Ann, happily studying English literature
at Wellesley, was merely along
for the ride.
“I started the visit with a
snobby attitude,” she admits.
“The buildings all seemed run
down. I was thinking: ‘you call
this a library?’ Our guide was
barefoot and wearing a
poncho.”
Mattson, who had no serious
intention of transferring, was
planning to skip seminar; an
incident at dinner made her
reconsider. “There was a menu
board outside the dining hall
that said: ‘Philadelphia
cheesesteak, penny carrots,
French fries.’ ” Mattson
recalls. “During dinner, someone stood up on a chair and
said, ‘I just want to say that I’m
from Philadelphia and these
sandwiches in no way resemble
Philly cheesesteaks.’ About 30
seconds later someone else
stood up on a chair and said,
‘Well, I’m from Chicago and I
just want to say that these
penny carrots in no way resemble currency.’”
Something about that joke,
says Mattson, something about
the whole atmosphere of the
dining hall, made her think
that maybe St. John’s was the
place she was looking for.
With her mind now slightly
open, she attended a seminar
on Plato’s Republic. “It blew
me away,” she says. “The conversation was so intelligent, so
passionate. It was hard to be in
the room and not be allowed to
speak.” She did get her chance
to speak later that night, as
conversation continued after
seminar in the Coffee Shop.
“The scene in
the Coffee Shop
was exactly what
I was looking
for, exactly what
I wanted college
to be,” says
Mattson.
That winter,
she and Walter
joined the Febbie class of 1987.
She threw herself into the Program and loved
everything, particularly freshman seminar
with Mr.
Williamson and
Mr. McDonald
and sophomore
language with
david trozzo
Annapolis
Mr. Lenkowski. She canoed on
College Creek, took life-drawing classes with artist-in-residence Burt Blistein and had a
campus job in the dishpit.
After her sophomore year,
Mattson decided to return to
Wellesley and finish her degree
in English, but her heart never
really left St. John’s.
Before she left Annapolis,
she found her way into one of
the most famous St. John’s
photographs. Todd Reichart
(A84) happened to be taking
pictures outside of Walter’s
Chase-Stone room during
library call-in. The library was
then in Woodward Hall (now
the Barr-Buchanan Center),
and while students and tutors
paraded past Walter’s window
on the way to return books,
Mattson, Ralph Stengren
(A86), Chris Reichert-Facilides
(A86), and Doug Gentile (A86)
sat in the window, clowning
around. Reichart seized the
opportunity to shoot what is
one of the most iconic photos
of the college and its students.
Although St. John’s and
Wellesley have nourished
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2004 }
Mattson’s intellect, she also
has a strong artistic side. In
addition to designing jewelry
and hand-made beads and
working in ceramic arts, she
has had leading roles in community theater productions
and singing groups.
After Mattson left St. John’s,
she married Walter and graduated from Wellesley. In 1991,
the Mattsons moved to Connecticut where Walter taught
English and geometry at Avon
Old Farms School. Early in her
marriage, while Mattson
stayed home with their three
children, she fed her creativity
by making polymer clay
jewelry, Halloween costumes,
and “the most stupendous,
over-the-top birthday cupcakes
ever brought to an elementary
school classroom.”
When the family returned to
Annapolis eight years later,
Mattson started teaching at the
Key School (founded by Johnnies) and volunteered in the
Alumni Office, creating
Jo Ann Mattson is happy to be
back at St. John’s.
�{From the Bell Towers}
Program-inspired drawings
and paintings for then-alumnidirector Roberta Gable (A78).
Her work illustrated a Homecoming brochure and a croquet match poster, and ultimately led her to apply for the
position of alumni director
when Gable became the director of Career services.
Mattson has been in the
position for over a year now
and finds that she loves the
challenges of working with different personalities and that
her diverse background is particularly suited to the everchanging needs of running an
office and managing alumni
events. At a recent alumni
party, Mattson met Chris
Denny (A93) and their discussion turned to why they came
to St. John’s. Denny told her
his story: When he was a high
school junior he received the
college catalog. Inside was a
photo so evocative of the joy
and camaraderie of the
St. John’s experience that,
based on its allure, he decided
to apply. The photo, of course,
was the famous Reichart
Chase-Stone photo. It now
hangs in Mattson’s office in the
Chancellor Johnson House.
—Sus3an Borden
Santa Fe
Roxanne Seagraves (SF83)
When Roxanne Seagraves
describes her amazing careers
so far, there’s one that never
fails to raise eyebrows: standup comedian. Night after
night, she took the stage in
smoky comedy clubs with a
daringly wholesome act, eager
for laughs, but ready for the
inevitable times when she
would bomb. It’s this experience, those in the know
believe, that might have best
prepared her for her newest
job—where you can’t make all
people happy all the time.
After graduating from St.
John’s, Seagraves
moved to Chapel
Hill, N.C., where
she taught kindergarten at Carolina
Friends School.
She became
involved in storytelling and performance art,
discovered she was
good at it, and
started her own
business. She took
her stories to
churches, community groups, and
schools all over the
eastern Carolinas.
She created and
wrote more than
300 stories for children, incorporated
dance and movement in her
performances, and engaged
kids in the narrative. To keep
herself “sane and in an adult
mode,” she developed a standup comedy routine and took it
on the road.
Some nights, she’d have her
audience rolling in the aisles;
others, she couldn’t wait to get
off the stage. “I sometimes
thought, ‘wouldn’t it be nice if
they were sober when they listened to my act?’ But I always
resisted the temptation to get
cheap laughs from sexual tawdriness and self-deprecating
humor.”
When the recession hit,
fewer schools and nonprofit
groups had money for stories,
and comedy club gigs were drying up. It was time for a new
plan, and Seagraves was drawn
to the ministry—“it’s kind of
like storytelling.” Although
she was raised a Quaker, she
chose Starr King School for
the Ministry, a Unitarian-Universalist seminary in Berkeley,
Calif.
During her years in graduate
school, her St. John’s education helped sustain Seagraves.
“In the basement, the seminary had a library of rare
Roxanne Seagraves has been a
teacher, storyteller, and
stand-up comedian.
books from the 16th century:
religious texts, Bibles, books
in Greek and Latin. I’d kept my
skills up and got a job reading
and writing abstracts of the
different books.”
While studying for a doctorate in American Religions at
the Graduate Theological
Union in Berkeley, Seagraves
took note of the poor state of
public schools in nearby Oakland. She raised funds for an
after-school tutoring program,
found churches to serve as
hosts, recruited students, and
set up a system to communicate with the students’ teachers. She kept the project going
for several years while earning
her degree, and she’s pleased
to see it’s still thriving today.
“I think one of the things
St. John’s gives students is the
way we’re taught to think. We
have the creative resources to
engage a problem,” she says.
Along the way, Seagraves
decided to become a parent on
her own, and is raising Thandi,
now three, as a single mother.
After her daughter was born,
Seagraves curtailed working
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2004 }
5
and completed her doctoral
dissertation on the annual pilgrimage to Chimayó, a sanctuary in New Mexico believed to
be built on sacred earth with
miraculous healing powers. “I
used to ride my bicycle to Chimayó, and found it a very powerful place,” Seagraves says.
After Seagraves finished her
doctorate, she took a job as a
prevention specialist in the
Tucson public school system.
She worked to help deter atrisk youngsters from gang
involvement, drug and alcohol
abuse, and crime. “You have
the challenges of poverty and
the challenges of second- and
third-generation gang and
drug culture, and they have to
be faced in order for kids to be
successful in public education,” Seagraves said.
With a daughter to care for,
she began to worry about the
physical risks of the job. When
the position came open at
St. John’s in Santa Fe, she was
eager for a new opportunity.
“I really loved the chance to
come back and work with
St. John’s and alumni,” she
says. “Our alumni are phenomenal people—trained to be
thoughtful, caring citizens.
There’s a lot of good energy
there.”
Seagraves, who began her
official duties in September,
believes that most alumni will
continue to gravitate back to
the college. “You become so
close with your classmates
because you work with them so
hard during your years at
St. John’s. And they shape
you in such profound ways,”
she says.
After settling in to her new
job, Seagraves hopes to continue some part-time involvement in the performing arts.
She has found the time to
design and sew intricate costumes for another hobby
almost as risky as stand-up:
walking on 12-foot stilts. x
—Rosemary Harty
�6
{From the Bell Towers}
‘Idealist’ Promotes Alternative
Commutes in Santa Fe
“I don’t know if I was born an
idealist or became one while
studying at St. John’s,” says
Circulation and Public Services
Librarian Laura Cooley (SF92).
“But reading books influenced
my being an idealist.”
Cooley is one of more than a
dozen St. John’s College community members who uses
alternative transportation to
commute to campus. Inspired
by an idea of the Santa Fe
Chapter of the New Mexico
Bicycle Coalition, Cooley coordinated a “Walk or Bike to
Work Day” at the college on
Wednesday, October 8. She
promoted the event through
e-mail, flyers, and word-ofmouth on campus. She staffed
an information table in Peterson’s hallway outside the Coffee Shop, promoting alternative transportation, with help
from students, tutor Linda
Wiener, and Mark St. John
(SF82), director of Athletics
and Outdoor Programs, and
students. They handed out
cookies and lemonade provided
by Aramark Food Service, free
safety lights, a lottery for free
bikes to those commuting from
off-campus, safety tips, and
bike maps of Santa Fe.
Santa Fe’s Public Relations
Director, Laura Mulry
(SFGI02), spent two hours
walking to and from work that
day, surviving aching calves,
SUV drivers blind to pedestrians, a steady rain, and a stiff
uphill climb in places. But the
walk was worth it, Mulry said,
because it gave her time to contemplate a master’s essay on
The Idiot and the opportunity
to really notice her environs.
Cooley hopes to make the
event an annual happening. x
damian taggart
Santa Fe Search
Laura Cooley’s ride to work has a nifty windshield.
Thai Summer
Last summer, Santa Fe tutor
Linda Wiener and her children
traveled to Thailand to live and
work at the Queen Sirikit Botanic Garden, 30 kilometers outside
the city of Chiangmai in the
northern mountains. Thailand’s
tropical environs are famous for
orchids, ferns, lotus, and other
exotic plants. Wiener spent the
summer helping to start a natural history museum on the
grounds of the garden, a challenging task since staff of the
fledgling museum had no prior
museum experience. She assisted in planning the exhibits,
helping to create a prototype
exhibit on pollination and flower
form, and led a workshop for the
staff of the garden on museum
philosophy and management.
With a Ph.D. in entomology,
Wiener devotes her summers to
her work as an entomologist and
field biologist.
When she wasn’t working
directly with the museum staff,
A specimen from Thailand.
With the help of an executive
search firm, a committee is
beginning to cull through applications coming in from candidates seeking to become the
next president of the Santa Fe
campus. John Balkcom
(SFGI00) resigned from the
Santa Fe presidency in June.
Created by the Board of Visitors and Governors, the search
committee comprises both
deans, a faculty member from
each campus, and five board
members. Last fall, the committee retained the Boston-based
firm of Isaacson, Miller to assist
in the search. The firm will conduct screening interviews and
extensive background checks
before recommending candidates to the search committee.
The search committee will then
interview finalists before presenting a single candidate for
the board to consider at its
April or July meeting.
The search committee is
chaired by Michael Uremovich,
a Santa Fe board member and
current student in the Graduate
Institute. x
Wiener surveyed the butterflies
at the garden, examined spiders, and studied the local flora.
She loved being in Thailand during the rainy season, when the
rainforest is vibrantly green.
Thailand, Wiener notes,
benefits from an enlightened
monarch. “When the Thais
were trying to stop the opium
trade, they did not spray defoliants and other poisons, burn
fields, and shoot people,” says
Wiener. “The king reasoned
that they were taking away these
peoples’ livelihood and so had
to do something for them. He
set up the King’s Royal Projects,
a series of state-of-the-art
organic farms in the former
opium-growing regions. They
train the indigenous people who
traditionally grew opium to run
the organic farms, and the king
supported the projects until
they became self-sufficient.”
Visiting Thailand, a Buddhist
country, has provided a valuable
experience for Wiener’s work at
St. John’s, where she has just
begun teaching Eastern
Classics seminars.
“I think that the ideas, rituals, and practice of Buddhism
have a very significant effect on
the culture, and experiencing
that difference from our culture
every day and speaking with
Thais about their religion and
the way it affects their daily
life, really enhanced my
understanding and appreciation
of Buddhism.” x
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2004 }
—Andra Maguran
�7
Annapolis’
‘Green’
Dormitory
The newest dormitory on the
Annapolis campus won’t be
hooked up to the college’s
steam plant. Instead it will use
an innovative geothermal heating and cooling system that will
save money and conserve energy. Geothermal systems use the
earth’s constant subsurface
temperature of 51 degrees to
55 degrees to provide more
efficient heating and cooling.
In winter, the system draws
heat from the ground to heat
buildings; in summer it
extracts heat from buildings
and transfers it to the ground.
It’s estimated that the system is
40 percent more energyefficient than conventional airto-air heat pumps.
Tanks of frozen water in
mellon cool the building.
During site preparation for
the system last fall, the campus
playing field looked like the set
of the movie Holes. Dozens of
narrow holes were drilled 300
feet into the ground. High-density polyethylene pipes were
inserted, and a bentonite grout
packed around the tubes to
protect the groundwater from
surface contamination. The
closed-circuit piping will carry
a biodegradable anti-freeze
type solution that will be heated or cooled by the earth. The
grid of pipes ultimately will be
connected to a main feed that
will deliver the solution to a
heat exchanger in the new
dormitory building.
This innovation, says Steve
Linhard, assistant treasurer, is
environmentally friendly,
efficient, and cost-effective.
“After a payback period of
about five years, we’ll have virtually no energy costs for heating and cooling the building,
save for the nominal electricity
cost to run the pumps,” he says
maryirene ruffin
{From the Bell Towers}
The 18,000-square-foot
dormitory will house 48 students and is expected to open
in time for the fall semester.
Annapolis’ playing fields also
will be back in shape for teams
to begin using in the spring.
Linhard, who came to
St. John’s from the Chesapeake
Bay Foundation, has earned the
reputation of “Mr. Green”
around Annapolis. With other
campus and community participants in Annapolis, he was
involved in a project to restore
the marshland around College
Creek by planting spartina and
Workers install a geothermal
system for the new dorm.
other natural grasses and
shrubs.
And as the supervisor of the
renovation and expansion of
Mellon Hall, Linhard promoted
the installation of an environmentally friendly cooling system. That system involves
tanks of freezing water in the
Mellon basement. The system
runs during off-peak hours and
releases cool air through the
building during the day. x
maryirene ruffin
Justice O’Connor Speaks
in Annapolis Forum
On October 11, Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor
attracted a crowd of more than 500 people to the college’s first
“Great Issues” forum in several years. O’Connor spoke on
“The Supreme Court and the Shaping of Law,” and community
members afterward met in seminars to discuss the groundbreaking decision Marbury v. Madison.
“Without Marbury, the rulings of our Supreme Court on questions of discrimination, church-state relations, freedom of speech,
and freedom of the press would be less important and less enduring,” O’Connor said.
The Great Issues Series, sponsored by the Friends of St. John’s
College, was created to engage the Annapolis-area community in
thoughtful discussions and debate. x
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2004 }
�A Coffee
Shop, Now
and Then
Marion Warren’s blackand-white photographs are
among the most distinctive in
the St. John’s archives in
Annapolis. Warren handled
much of the public relations
photography for the college
during the 1950s and 1960s.
The portraits, publicity stills,
and candid photographs he took
are set apart by their rich blackand-white tones, an expert
sense of composition, and a special talent for capturing a
moment in time.
“They called me the besteducated photographer around
because of all the time I spent at
St. John’s,” says Warren, now in
his 80s.
When Philanthropia volunteers and college staff wanted to
replicate an archival photograph for this year’s Annual
Fund appeal, Warren’s Coffee
Shop photo was an easy choice.
Although it was taken in 1954 in
Annapolis, the St. John’s Coffee
Shop experience of dialogue
and community spans generations and speaks to Santa Fe and
Annapolis alumni alike.
Powerful klieg lights were
already set up for the filming of
{From the Bell Towers}
the St. John’s Story, a
promotional movie about
the college that was
released the following
year. Warren stepped
in and took his photo
quickly, recalls Carolyn
Banks-Leeuwenburgh
(class of 1955). The first
woman to apply to the
college, Banks-Leeuwenburgh says the Coffee
Shop was her favorite
haunt.
“It seemed like it was
full all the time. We were
a small class—there
weren’t even 200 students in the whole
school—and people would
just go to the Coffee Shop
and talk about all the
hard work,” she recalls.
After graduating, BanksLeeuwenburgh became an
opera singer in Europe and New
York, taught, raised three children, became a therapist, and
with her husband, Helge, led
travel tours. She served on the
board of the Alumni Association. Now enjoying an active
retirement, she audits classes at
Princeton University.
In the photo, BanksLeeuwenburgh is looking across
at classmate Emily Martin
Kutler, class of 1955. “I don’t
remember what we were laughing about, but clearly, we
weren’t entertaining the rest of
marion warren
8
the group,” Banks-Leeuwenburgh says. “They looked a
little bored.”
Sitting in Banks-Leeuwenburgh’s spot in the contemporary photograph was freshman
Emma Plaut. On campus for less
than a week, Plaut was minding
her own business in the quad
when she was recruited for the
photo.
Plaut is the daughter of
alumni Richard Plaut and Carol
Katrina (A77 and A79). Her
interest in St. John’s was fueled
by her parents’ enthusiasm.
“They dragged me on a visit
to St. John’s, and I sat in on a
seminar,” she recalls. “Then I
went to other colleges where I
sat in on lectures and
what other colleges
called seminars. I thought,
‘what is this? No one’s even
talking. Nobody even looks
like they want to be here.’ At
St. John’s, everybody was really
interested. They all wanted to
be there and they all wanted to
be learning.”
Another subject in the original photo, Everett Wilson (class
of 1956), turned down scholarships to several colleges and
instead enrolled at St. John’s.
He became only the second
black student to graduate from
the college (after Martin A.
Dyer, class of 1952).
“St. John’s was difficult and
rigorous, but I’m glad, because
it prepared me to go to graduate school, where I got
straight-As,” Wilson said.
david trozzo
top: The Coffee Shop circa 1954. Counter-clockwise
from the page-turner at the front table: William H.
Barrett (class of 1956), Emily Martin Kutler (class of
1955), Hugh McKay (class of 1955), Caroline Banks
Leeuwenburgh (class of 1955), Peter McGhee (class of
1955), Barbara Dvorak Winiarski (class of 1955),
Everett Wilson (class of 1956), and tutor Hugh
McGrath. The two students on the right at the front
table are unidentified, as is the man with his back to
the photographer at the back table.
At left: 2003. Counter-clockwise, from the front
table: Alex Constantine (A05), Deborah Mangum
(A06), George Pogiatzis (A07), Emma Plaut (A07),
Joshua Suich (A05), Janae Decker (A05), Natalie Rinn
(A05), tutor Erik Sageng, Dave Prosper (SF02), Lord
Thomas Bainbridge (A06). The student in a white
t-shirt at the back table is unidentified.
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2004 }
�{From the Bell Towers}
Annual Fund Facts
The Annual Fund provides critical support for the college
each year and is a key component of the college’s operating
budget. Tuition covers 70 percent of the cost of
educating current St. John’s students. The remaining
30 percent comes from endowment income, state and
federal grants, and gifts from alumni, parents, and friends.
• The Annual Fund provides about 6 percent of the operating
budget on both campuses: tutor salaries, financial aid,
student services, and college offices.
• Last year, 34 percent of alumni participated in the Annual
Fund, up from 19 percent four years ago.
• This year’s Annual Fund goal: $2.25 million.
• The Annual Fund year runs from July 1, 2003, through June
30, 2004. The college mails out four appeals in that time,
but once an alum makes a gift, no other appeals are sent.
• Reunion classes, led by volunteers from Philanthropia, usually increase their participation rate by 10 to 20 percent.
“At St. John’s, I really learned
how to study, how to read to
understand.”
After graduation, Wilson
went on to earn master’s and
doctoral degrees in counseling.
He worked in psychiatric social
work, became the first director
of the Anne Arundel County
Economic Opportunity office,
then taught at the University of
Maryland. Next, he joined the
Maryland Alcohol and Drug
Abuse Administration as deputy
director, where he remains now
in addition to maintaining a
part-time counseling practice.
Fifty years after his picture
was taken in the coffee shop,
Wilson remembers it well.
He also remembers Hugh
McGrath, the tutor he was
sitting next to. “Oh, he was my
favorite tutor,” Wilson says.
“He was my adviser for my
senior thesis. Because I came
from the Eastern Shore (of
Maryland) and had difficulty
with reading Shakespeare, he
would work with me. He really
befriended me. The school was
so small that any time you asked
for help, you would get it.”
Annapolis tutor Erik Sageng
cheerfully gave up his Saturday
morning to impersonate
McGrath in the photograph,
bringing a book to pass the time
during the lengthy setup for the
photo. Sageng joined the
college in 1990 after earning his
doctorate in the history of
mathematics at Princeton
University.
Taking Wilson’s place at the
table was Natalie Rinn, a junior
from St. Cloud, Minn. She was
passing through the Coffee
Shop on her way to pick up
her mail when she was buttonholed for the photograph. Rinn
spent a semester at Dickinson
College before she transferred
to St. John’s as a Febbie, following her brother Alex (A03).
“I think St. John’s provides
the best college education there
9
is, because it really addresses
being a good citizen and the
best way to live life,” she says.
After graduation, Rinn hopes
to spend a year studying French
or Spanish, then go to law
school.
David Prosper (SF02) was
the primary recruiter for the
contemporary photograph. The
St. John’s community during
Prosper’s more recent years
could be a “weird place.”
“People were eccentric, but
nobody cared if you were eccentric. You could have the most
random and interesting conversations at lunch,” he says.
From setup to the last shot,
the photograph took almost two
hours. Soda cans and water bottles took the place of the classic
Coca-Cola bottles. Cell phones
and PDAs took the place of
cigarettes and ashtrays.
Annapolis photographer
David Trozzo—a steady contributor to The College—had fun
replicating a master’s photo,
although it was painstaking
work. A professional photographer in the Baltimore/ Washington region for 15 years,
Trozzo has earned many
awards for his work. x
{Letters}
Latin Revival
Diversity Initiative
The Fall 2003 issue of The College has some
interesting articles about language, mentioning both Esperanto and Latin. Readers
may be interested in knowing that Latin as
an actual spoken language has experienced
something of a revival in recent years.
Among other efforts, the Familia Sancti
Hieronymi (507 S. Prospect Ave., Clearwater, FL 33756) holds nearly every summer a
cenaculum in which Latin is the common
language for instruction, socializing, and
worship. They also sell tapes and books to
aid in acquisition of oral Latin skills.
Although Esperanto could do a good job
of uniting the world linguistically, spoken
Latin could also do that, as well as uniting
us culturally to our past.
While I applaud The College for its readable and interesting articles about the campuses, alumni, and continuing life of the
mind at St. John’s College, I am extremely
distressed by the sentiment displayed in…
“Admissions and Diversity, East and West”
(Fall 2003). I am very disappointed to see
that our admissions department is looking
“I found that skin color
contributed nothing to
any conversation I ever
had or heard in class.”
Erin N.H. Furby, A96
Thomas Storck, SFGI80
at race as a consideration among its applicants. St. John’s College has been the subject of derision by many of the unwise who
looked only at the race and sex of the
authors on the curriculum without seeing
that the ideas presented in the Program are
universal and applicable to all thinking
people. I have always been proud that
St. John’s did not alter the Program to
appease the sensibilities of the immoderate
fashions of contemporary academia.
I prefer to think that this is a poorly
chosen and written article rather than
think that the admissions offices are truly
falling prey to contemporary university
politics. “Minority” in this article refers to
different groups of people with regard to
each campus, discrediting the implication
of a unified goal held by St. John’s College
continued on next page
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2004 }
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{Letters}
or the solidarity of the described applicant
pool. In Santa Fe, “minority” refers to Hispanic and American Indian high school
students while Ms. Harty only mentions
black high school students as the prospective “minority” for Annapolis. Also,
“minorities” for Santa Fe are being sought
from around New Mexico, while Annapolis
is said to be looking for black students from
all over the country.
I am pleased to learn about the Santa Fe
campus’ grant for recruiting more students
from around New Mexico, but I find the
giver to be rather misguided if the grant
requires the college to be on the lookout
for only certain skin colors. Having the
ability to visit the smaller high schools in
New Mexico is a tremendous boon to
St. John’s College, but why should admissions officers be pressured to seek out
students of one race over another? Meanwhile, I am appalled that the Annapolis
campus was mentioned in this article only
in terms of having a small number of black
students each year. While I was a student at
SJCA, there were foreign as well as American students. Among the American citizens, non-white students were of EastAsian, Middle-Eastern, Indian, Latin
American, Amerindian, and Hispanic
descent as well as black (not to mention
students of mixed race).
I found that skin color contributed nothing to any conversation I ever had or heard
in class. All that ever mattered while I was
in class was the individual perspectives
each person brought to class and the bond
between us created by our struggles with
the text. In my experience, students’ perspectives were more influenced by religion,
age, home state, and economic background than by complexion.
Erin N.H. Furby, A96
Remembering Vernon Derr
Having just read the fall issue of The College, I very much appreciated your inclusion of my note regarding the Class of ’44,
as well as the excellent obituary for our
Vern Derr, in the view of his classmates,
one of nature’s noblemen. A minor caveat:
we few surviving members of ’44 are a jealous lot and object to his promotion to the
Class of ’48! We hope that this true membership in our class may be restored.
J. Rodney Whetstone
Class of 1944
Moving Day
I just received the Fall 2003 issue of your
interesting The College.
My connection with SJC is two-fold. In
addition to four years of attendance, I lived
on the campus from 1913 to 1916. My
father, John C. Gray, was a member of the
SJC faculty for that three-year period as the
chemistry professor. He completed his
teaching career at the Naval Academy. For
most of the time he was on the SJC faculty,
we lived in an apartment on campus. As
you look at the campus from College
Avenue, it was the left-hand building
(Paca Carroll House). My brother, Joseph,
class of 1936, was born in this building, and
he must be the only graduate who was born
on campus.
I was very interested in the “Moving
Day” article. While a student at SJC I lived
in the Delta Psi Omega Fraternity House,
which was on St. John’s Street right next to
the Baptist Church. Unfortunately I do not
remember the historic name of the structure. I thought that it was similar to the
Carroll Barrister House. That kind of information did not survive my several moves.
One time I visited the DPO House in its
Conduit Street location.
I do enjoy very much receiving and reading the SJC alumni publications.
Edward Gray
Class of 1934
Education for its Own Sake
I have just finished reading, cover to cover,
the Fall 2003 edition of The College and I
must say that it gets better with every
issue! I look forward to each edition to
catch up with SJC and all its activities and
those of the alumni. It is the one thing that
keeps me in touch with the wonderful educational program that is the great books
dialogue.
As legal counsel most of my professional
life to a university in the higher education
industry (and make no mistake, higher
education has become an “industry” with
all the pejorative baggage that word conjures up), I feel uniquely qualified to
express an opinion on the position
St. John’s College currently occupies as an
institution in this peculiar environment.
The college stands out because it has
courageously decided not to succumb to
the trends, fads, or “new direction” other
institutions feel they must in order to be
“competitive.” A shining example is the
college’s refusal to submit to the numbers
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2004 }
ranking game amongst other institutions.
When I talk with faculty colleagues at my
and other institutions across the country
about the lack of departments, rigid grading systems, numerical admissions criteria,
and the like at the college, many seem
befuddled. It’s like the Grinch wondering
how it could be Christmas without numerous presents or colorful decorations. And,
like the Grinch, it takes some further
thought to get the point.
The college values education for its own
sake; enlightenment must come from within. To be a true free thinker, one must challenge and be challenged; ask and be asked
difficult questions; work hard at understanding and either confirm convictions or
not be afraid to set aside or modify a way of
thinking. This is, of course, easier said
than done, but that is precisely why the college exists and why I cherish its existence.
“Maybe I’m naive but
I can’t imagine an
educational philosophy
that is more
diametrically opposed to
the St. John’s approach
than this belief in the
supremacy of testing.”
John Scow, A71
There are some things in the human
experience that remain constant. One of
those constants is our dialogue: an openminded but frank discussion amongst ourselves to help us further understand the
human condition. While we cannot solve
all problems or make the world right for all
people, those who have the willingness and
ability to participate in this human conversation advance the interest of peace and
harmony. The college accomplishes this
important feat by conducting a conversation with humans in the classroom (with
precepts, tutorials, seminars) and with
humans from time gone by (the books
which become the subject of the discussion). As the last issue of The College
points out, such a dialogue can even occur
in prison! Just think of the possibilities if
this human dialogue were conducted in the
Middle East.
�11
{Letters}
In looking at other schools offering a
liberal arts education, I remain firm in my
conviction that the new curriculum is the
linchpin of the college’s success. However,
one should not overlook the importance of
keeping the college religion-free. Part of
preserving an open mind is the avoidance
of any sanctioned belief system; the choice
of what and whether to believe must necessarily be left to individual choice.
For the foregoing reasons, the college
continues to stand out, stronger today than
ever, amongst other higher education institutions as the place that offers the truest
opportunity for an enlightened education;
and from my personal experience, it is an
education that will mean more to every student with each passing year. It is a further
credit to the college that it has not been
distracted from its core mission. Even the
Grinch, in that last moment of revelation,
understood that all the flashy decorations
and bells-and-whistles were merely distractions from what really mattered.
Sean P. Scally, AGI89
Small Awakenings
I read with interest your article about the
two St. Johnnies who are making a stab at
the teaching profession. I was surprised to
read that one out of five Johnnies go into
education. I did not realize I have so much
company. On the other hand, maybe it
shouldn’t surprise me that so many of us
get involved in education. After all, what
makes St. John’s so unique is it’s unique
concept of what an education is, and how
its best [attained]. Assuming that, I would
surmise that the St. John’s community
must be in some kind of state of shock over
what is happening in schools across the
country. Of course I am refering to what
might be described as the “test driven”
approach to education. Maybe I’m naive
but I can’t imagine an educational philosophy that is more diametrically opposed to
the St. John’s approach than this belief in
the supremacy of testing. As I recall, at
St. John’s we didn’t even have an official
grading system, and any mention of what
grades one might have was taboo. I never
saw scores of any kind posted on the doors
of classrooms, along with corresponding
student I.D. numbers. In fact one of the
things that attracted me to St. John’s in the
first place was my disenchantment with
high school…
After visiting Annapolis as a prospective
student and witnessing a riveting discussion of the Iliad (wanting to blurt some-
thing out the whole time), I thought to
myself, “Well that’s more like it!” Learning for the sake of learning. Going deep,
tackling the big questions...why are we
here anyway, and what are we supposed to
do with these big brains? And now we are
told that running a school is no different
from running a factory. It’s all about
churning out “good numbers” (sort of an
educational body count). And what happens to that question the kid in the back of
the class asks that’s not covered by the
standards?
The other day a student in my sixthgrade grade class of poverty-level minorities came up with such a question. I was
introducing some of Picasso’s “one-liners.” I said, “These drawings may seem
silly, but the same artist produced paintings that people pay millions for.” A hand
went up. “How can a painting cost millions?” I congratulated the young fellow
for having an original thought, and told
the class that he could only have arrived at
that question after self-initiated deliberation, which I said is a good thing (not to
mention a prerequisite to democracy).
So what is to happen to these small
awakenings of consciousness in the future?
Are they to be relegated from the classroom? Do we care about the “souls” of our
students anymore, or is that just an antiquated concept? Perhaps the modern educational industry has no use for such
anachronisms.
John Scow, A71
Night Crawlers
Just got the Fall ‘03 The College. In regard
to the new dorm sites on back campus:
I had a student aide job as a chemistry
lab assistant in my sophomore year. I was
asked to report to campus a few days early,
in August 1957, to help with the move from
the old lab building, Humphreys, to the
new lab building, Mellon.
The storeroom for the old chemistry lab
was a really scary place. It had all the
supplies and groceries for the current
inorganic chemistry lab, and also a large
collection of old stuff from years earlier
when there was also an organic-chemistry
lab. It was crammed full and had not been
even cleaned, much less culled and organized, for many, many years. I am certain
that there was stuff in there from the “old
school” St. Johns of the 1920-30s. And I
did not have a clue as to what 90 percent of
this stuff was.
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2004 }
So, what to do? The Buildings and
Grounds crew dug a big trench down on
the back campus. I am remembering it as
probably 15-feet long, 10-feet wide, and 6or 8-feet deep. We used a pickup truck to
carry load after load of “stuff” down there
and threw it into the trench. There was no
sorting or choosing—absolutely everything
in that old storeroom was carried out, carefully set into the truck (hey, some of this
stuff would have eaten the truck right up),
driven down to back campus, and thrown
into the trench. It seemed a bit gross,
but…that’s what we were told to do.
By time we got to about the third truckload, it began to get interesting. Strangelooking clouds of smoke and steam began
to rise from different areas of the pit. The
job took on a new slant: You’d pick up an
old, rusty container, with a long-faded
label, and try to pick a likely spot in the
trench to start up a new chemical reaction.
Some stuff smoldered, but nothing ever
really exploded, and no one fainted from
the gases, but it did look touch-and-go
there for a while. The next day, the Buildings & Grounds folks covered it all up
again. Still there I suppose...I’d look out
for the Night Crawlers back there.
Lewis Kreger
Class of 1960
Errata:
James Cobern is a member of the class of
1994 in Annapolis. He was incorrectly
included with the class of 1990 in the Fall
2003 edition of The College.
Benjamin Bloom (A97) is studying at the
University of Miami, not the University of
Maryland.
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 or The College
Magazine, Public Relations Office, St. John’s
College, 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca, Santa
Fe, NM 87505-4599.
Letters can also be sent via e-mail to:
reharty@sjca.edu.
�12
{Johnnies on Finance}
M O N E Y TA L K S …
A N D J O H N N I E S K NOW
H OW T O L I S T E N
By Sus3an Borden, A87
he life of the marketplace is often considered
antithetical to the life of
the mind, the pursuit of
money opposed to the
pursuit of virtue. So why
do a noticeably large number of St. John’s
alumni enter the world of finance? And
why are they so successful?
T
In Richard Connell’s “The Most Dangerous Game,” celebrated hunter Sanger Rainsford is shipwrecked on an
island owned by General Zaroff, a sportsman who hunts
the most challenging of prey: man. Zaroff gives Rainsford
a six-hour head start, and the two men apply all their
“courage, cunning, and…reason” in a contest of kill or be
killed.
Ron Fielding (A70) says that the thrill Zaroff seeks in
matching wits with his peers reminds him of the excitement he finds in working in the financial world.
“You can be more competitive and make money by outsmarting or outfiguring other people who are also very
bright,” says Fielding, who, as vice president with OppenheimerFunds manages $13 billion in municipal bonds.
“Part of the attractiveness of working on Wall Street is
that it’s not soft. There’s a measurement of intellect that’s
applied to problems, and results are measured. It’s not a
place where you can get a promotion by impressing the
boss. On Wall Street, your scorecard is quantified and published for the whole world to see. It’s like Zaroff going up
against the best and brightest.”
A surprising number of graduates, Fielding included,
succeed at the highest levels of the financial world. And
it’s no fluke. A St. John’s education, Fielding says, provides sound training for the high-stakes world of finance.
Graduates can gain an advantage with advanced courses in
economics or business, but the skills they develop at St.
John’s have enduring value.
“Years after you leave business school, there will be new
problems to solve that didn’t come up in your classes,” he
says. “You’ll have to figure them out faster than other people. St. John’s is valuable because it teaches us to analyze
the world for ourselves rather than have someone explain
it to us.”
The story of Warren Spector’s career has a plot similar
to Fielding’s and that of nearly every Johnnie who succeeds in the financial world: A bright mind encounters a
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2004 }
�{Johnnies on Finance}
“A vibrant financial market is truly one of the greatest
assets of the United States.”
christopher huston
Warren Spector, A81
Warren Spector’s ease with the unknown contributed to his
success in the field of finance.
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2004 }
13
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{Johnnies on Finance}
david trozzo
new market where the
rules are not yet established, the textbooks
have not yet been
written, and the best
strategy will reap the
greatest
rewards.
Armed with intellect,
imagination, and analytical prowess, the
Johnnie explores the
opportunity, grasps
its principles, and
fine-tunes a winning
approach.
Spector (A81) had
not been working
long at the banking,
securities trading,
and brokerage firm Bear Stearns when he had the chance to
enter the emerging mortgage-backed securities market,
investments backed by a pool of mortgage loans. “It was
an exploratory time. It was not all derived and established
and written down. Everyone was learning it for the first
time. If you could understand the concepts, you could get
an advantage over other people,” Spector says. “I had had
an education consistent with being in that exploratory
world, an education where no one told me the answers
because no one knew the answers.”
With Spector’s ease with the unknown and the
resources of his firm’s research and analytics department,
Bear Stearns became one of the leading firms in the market, and Spector became an expert in his field. Later, Spector branched out to other parts of the business and, in
June 2001, was promoted to president of the firm, which
has $209 billion in assets.
Lawyer Steve Thomas’ (SF74) version of the story is
roughly similar. Thomas found himself assigned to a project in what was then a new field—structured finance,
which includes mortgage-backed securities. Thomas quickly
became good at it and
was well-rewarded for
his understanding.
“One reason Johnnies do well is that
we’re not afraid to do
things on our own,”
he says. “A lot of people just say ‘I don’t
have the math brain
so I can’t think about
it.’ Johnnies tend
to start thinking
about it.”
Thomas, who is
active on the Johnnie
Ron Fielding (A70) welcomes the
List, an unofficial listchallenges of Wall Street.
serve for St. John’s
alumni, says that he
recently
re-read
postings to the list from the days following 9/11. “It was
weird reading them,” he says. “It brought back what those
days were like. The most interesting things to read were
the posts where people started speculating about why the
towers collapsed. We had a bunch of non-engineers trying
to figure out the structural stuff, and some of them were
astonishingly right.” In Thomas’ mind, St. John’s
deserves the credit: “There’s a sort of intellectual fearlessness you achieve by going to a place that starts you out
reading Homer and Plato.”
There’s a nearly universal prejudice, as pervasive in the
academic world as elsewhere, that thinks of money-making as a brutish pursuit, that hesitates to call “intellectual” the fearlessness necessary to succeed in the financial
world and resists comparing the challenges of the classics
to the challenges of the marketplace. Johnnies in the
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2004 }
�15
{Johnnies on Finance}
“Many of the best venture capitalists are not focused on money but on
developing an opportunity and creating a successful business.”
Stewart Greenfield, Class of 1953
of the people who invested in Enron stock took what
Enron published at face value. But there were some smart
people who didn’t settle for that, who dug in and started
asking the right questions and found answers that,
frankly, weren’t very happy answers. But they were able to
gain tremendously from a financial standpoint as a result
of being a little bit smarter.”
The philosopher must ask: what does it mean to profit
from the wrongdoing of others? Those already uncomfortable with wealth become suspicious: Perhaps a great
crime does lie
behind every great
fortune.
Venture capitalist
Stewart Greenfield
(class of 1953) is
proof to the contrary. Green-field
made millions funding and developing
many of the hightech start-ups that
have revolutionized our working
environments,
such as Seagate,
Compaq, Genzyme, Sandisk,
and Polycom. Yet
he lives relatively
modestly, using
his money to preserve tropical rain
forests and fund
ot her environmental projects.
david trozzo
financial industry give little thought to this prejudice.
They’re more concerned with the intellect of their colleagues, with whom they compete every hour of every day.
Look no further than the debacle of Enron’s deceit and
collapse for a lesson in the importance of analytical practice. According to Bob Elliott (A77), co-founder, coowner, and managing director of the investment banking
firm EHS Securities, Johnnies have the competitive edge
because they know how to ask the right questions: “Financial analysts ask questions to get beyond what is shown to
them on financial
statements,” says
Elliot. “There’s a
lot of information
in t he public
domain that can be
taken at face value.
But there is a gain
to be made from
digging in and
finding out what’s
not on the cover of
the report.”
Elliott says that
it doesn’t matter
if the information
uncovered is good
or bad; there’s
profit either way.
He illustrates this
point with an
infamous example: “Enron was a
public company
that published all
kinds of information about itself,
as it was required
to. 99.9 percent
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2004 }
Stewart Greenfield
found success as a
venture capitalist.
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{Johnnies on Finance}
“The life of the mind depends on
the commerce of thought.”
Harold Hughes, a84
Reading list
Classics: An Investor’s Anthology,
Charles D. Ellis, ed.
the perfect system. In the best scenario it
He says that he is not alone in his choice:
Money of the Mind, James Grant
would have no flaws, but there would be no
“Many of the best venture capitalists are
Moneyball and Liar’s Poker,
Michael Lewis.
opportunity for others to say, ‘Hey, there’s
not focused on money but on developing
a better way to do things.’”
When Genius Failed: The Rise and
an opportunity and creating a successful
Fall of Long-Term Capital ManSpector offers a similar defense of the
business.”
agement, Roger Lowenstein
marketplace: “Financial markets are
Where the focus is reversed, Greenfield
Extraordinary Popular Delusions
among the cornerstones of the success of
sees trouble for the financial world. “Many
& The Madness of Crowds,
the U.S. economy. Do those financial marof the recent problems stem from the fact
Charles MacKay
kets create the opportunity for greed? Yes,
that the emphasis has turned from creating
Engines that Move Markets,
they do. Do they create the opportunity for
a business to creating wealth,” he says.
Alasdair Nairn
abuse? Yes, they do. But the people who
“People who run companies have been
Capitalism, Socialism and
Democracy, Joseph A Schumpeter
benefit from those abuses ultimately get
seduced into producing numbers that are
Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith
brought down. That’s part of how markets
more oriented to satisfying stock analysts
work. A vibrant financial market is truly
and investors than controlling or
one of the great assets of the United States.”
understanding what’s happening with the
Good for the country, granted. But is financier a worthy
business. The drive for earnings growth has become very
occupation for a student of virtue, a lover of knowledge, a St.
corrupting.”
John’s alumnus? Harold Hughes (A84), senior vice president
Elliott agrees about the causes, but says that they are a necat the financial services company Legg Mason Wood Walker,
essary evil in an imperfect—but worthy—system. “The course
says yes, absolutely. “The life of the mind relies on the comof economic conditions and financial markets in the U.S.
merce of thought,” he says. “And the Socratic method is a
means there will always be the potential for an Enron,” says
facilitation of that commerce. The work I do is a natural extenElliott. “But that’s not entirely a bad thing. The alternative is
sion of my St. John’s education.” x
to have a system that somebody in his great wisdom defines as
The Wit and Wisdom of Wealth
Money is a singular thing. It ranks with love as man’s greatest
source of joy. And with death as his greatest source of anxiety.
Money is like muck, not good except it be spread.
Francis Bacon
John Kenneth Galbraith
Money is the worst currency that ever grew among mankind.
This sacks cities, this drives men from their homes, this teaches
and corrupts the worthiest minds to turn base deeds.
Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art.
Making money is art and working is art and good business is the
best art.
Andy Warhol
Sophocles
If there’s no money in poetry, neither is there poetry in money.
Money’s a horrid thing to follow but a charming thing to meet.
Robert Graves
Henry James
Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons.
Money doesn’t mind if we say it’s evil, it goes from strength to
strength. It’s a fiction, an addiction, and a tacit conspiracy.
Woody Allen
Martin Amis
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2004 }
�{Tutors}
17
THE VIRTUES OF
MARTIAL ARTS
Santa Fe Tutors Walk Two Paths
by Caroline Knapp, SF01
rishnan Venkatesh brushing up on
his whip practice is a sight to see. He
begins slowly, giving the whip a few
preliminary spins and twists. Soon,
holding the butt end in one hand,
then the other, he is walking slowly,
meditatively, the whip whizzing and
slicing through the air, its ends
cracking rhythmically.
The practice makes him think of
Euclid. “When the body is lined up correctly, with purity of intention,” explains
Ventakesh, a Santa Fe tutor, “very little
effort will generate immense force.”
The reflection isn’t an idle one. The
tips of the whip can travel at a seemingly incredible 900 miles per hour. And it
isn’t a reflection Venkatesh can afford
to make while practicing: A whip cracker in Australia recently cut off his own
ear.
Welcome to the wonderful intersection of the martial arts traditions and
the Program. For the tutors and students who study a martial art on the
Santa Fe campus, and the alumni who
continue or undertake a martial practice after graduating, it’s a realm where
analogy reigns, experience is everything, and pitfalls lurk for would-be
generalizers.
Students, tutors, and staff members
on the Santa Fe campus currently have
the opportunity to enter into the study of one of two disciplines
of the bu-do, or martial ways.
The college’s karate-do program, which has been run by tutor
Jorge Aigla (6th Dan) since 1985, has an average of 12 participants per year, and includes tutor Bill Kerr, a third-degree black
teri thomson randall
K
belt, and Joaquin Baca (SF95), an admissions counselor and firstdegree black belt, as well as Aigla’s son Andrés, who at 13 just
joined the ranks of the black belts. Aigla’s students can be discovered slipping out the door early from Friday-night festivities:
All three weekly training sessions are mandatory, including
Saturday’s 8 a.m. practice.
Tutor Claudia Honeywell has been training daily in aikido
since her graduate school days, though she asks just two days per
week from students in her St. John’s aikido program. The program, which Honeywell began last year,
aims to introduce students to the basic
principles of aikido; at the end of the
school year there were eight participants, all undergraduates.
In addition to these more or less
“official” martial arts programs, students and tutors in Santa Fe train in a
half dozen other assorted martial arts,
including judo and tae kwan do. Tutors
Michael Bybee, James Carey (A67), and
David Starr hold black belts in various
forms of karate. Venkatesh practices
not only the whip art mentioned above
but also a Korean striking art called Ja
Shin Do and has studied escrima and
Brazilian jujitsu. Tai chi, historically
closely related to the martial arts, is
practiced on the Placita before Monday
and Thursday seminars by a dozen
undergrads and graduate students.
Taken together, these practices form
a substantial undercurrent of martial
arts activity and thought on the Santa
Fe campus. For the tutors and students who undertake both the
study of the great books and the study of one of the bu-do, or martial ways, the relationship between the two is rich with complication, and often with contrast. But it also encompasses elements
of analogy and mutual illumination.
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2004 }
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{Tutors}
“When the body is lined up correctly, with purity of intention,
very little effort will generate immense force.”
teri thomson randall
krishnan Venkatesh
Certainly, the martial arts practiced at the college cultivate
many of the same virtues as the “practice” of the Program. In
particular, campus martial artists focused on how learning to
“listen” and respond with their bodies had sharpened their
conversational skills.
Honeywell, a second-degree black belt in aikido, emphasizes
the sincerity required by both studies. In aikido, an art often characterized by its fluidity, students strive to “act without personal
intent, preconception, or prejudice.” St. John’s students are
familiar with the struggle for sincerity in the classroom. Sometimes, there is nothing more difficult than admitting what one
really thinks, or putting aside one’s own opinions long enough to
be persuaded by a new argument. On the mat, that sincerity might
be expressed by giving one’s partner a “genuine” attack, or by
allowing oneself to be moved by such an attack. Like the intellec-
Tutor Krishnan Venkatesh practices several martial arts.
tual variety, cultivating this spontaneous physical sincerity is the
work of a lifetime.
Venkatesh explains that even in the physically safe space of the
classroom, there are advantages to having a familiarity with the
threat of physical violence. The latter encourages a process of
“calm, intelligent threat assessment” that on the streets might
mean the difference between giving an aggressor an even gaze and
giving him a well-aimed punch. Facing a difficult student, “sometimes it is sufficient to redirect the aggression in a politely educative way, but other times you might need to voice a clear opposition to unacceptable behavior.”
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2004 }
�{Tutors}
All of that said, for Johnnies accustomed to talking their way out
of (or around) situations, these “conversations” on the mat can be
more challenging than the spoken variety. Jorge Aigla, in his book
Karate-do and Zen: An Inquiry, notes that in the dojo, “one constantly deals with facets of students’ lives and personalities that are
simply not disclosed or available in the classroom.” Issues like fear,
self-control, and anger, which in their more subtle forms sabotage
intellectual discussion, arise in the physical conversations between
training partners and are addressed physically. As Honeywell says,
“problems have to be worked out dynamically.” In her aikido class,
she points out, there is no talking.
On a structural level, it’s easy to see why students and tutors
from St. John’s might feel an affinity with traditional martial arts
programs. Barr and Buchanan could have been taking a cue from
the Japanese when they recognized that creating a formal structure for study was one way to encourage creativity and even selfexposure.
Both disciplines are marked by what can seem to outsiders an
absurd degree of formality. While dojo etiquette varies from one
martial art to the next, it invariably includes the use of specialized, formal titles, ritual openings and closing for each session,
and the wearing of clothes reserved exclusively for the dojo. Dojo
observers, like prospective students, are generally allowed to
watch classes in session but are not allowed to participate.
Just as St. John’s students
quickly realize that their study
extends far beyond the hours
they spend reading, martial
artists strive never to completely
leave the dojo. As Honeywell
puts it, “Being a martial artist is
how you live your life. Being a
St. John’s tutor is how you live
your life. There is no ‘on duty’
and ‘off duty.’”
Nor is there a clear distinction
between teachers and students.
As at St. John’s, the best senseis
are those whose teaching is really no more than their ongoing
study. In fact, the dojo, frequently criticized in the West as being
“too hierarchical,” is in some
ways less so than a St. John’s
seminar: in the dojo, students of
all levels train together.
While nearly all of the college’s martial artists can point to
skills cultivated in the dojo that
pass by osmosis into their study
of the great books, all are quick
to assert that martial arts, like
the Program itself, are not a
means to an end. “What we do in
the Program is an end in itself,”
Aigla says. “The Greeks thought
that, and so did the Japanese.”
This commitment to process
may be the single greatest shared
characteristic of the study of
19
martial arts and the study of the St. John’s Program. The freshman
who completes the Metaphysics is no more “done” with Aristotle
than a senior writing on Hegel has “understood” him, or for that
matter, than a faculty member who spends a sabbatical on Proust
has “finished with” Remembrance of Things Past.
One of the great purposes of the Program would seem to be
teaching the simple lesson that our study of great texts is never
completed. In the martial arts, this understanding is often associated with the ZZZ ideogram, the one-stroke circle whose end is its
beginning. Martial artists with varying degrees’ experience continue to study the same basic moves—not to “perfect” them but to
understand them. Accepting study as an endless process seems to
hinge in both cases on recognizing that at the heart of the study
lies a fertile mystery.
Like a Euclid proposition, a karate kata has an internal logic
followed by the student; innovation in both situations would be
inappropriate. And yet, the beautifully executed kata, like the beautifully presented proposition, is an individual expression of a universal truth. The attentive aikidoka, like the attentive reader, misses no
nuance of her partner’s motion, and the technique performed as a
result is as much an expression of the one partner as of the other.
“Why” this should be is at some point no longer a helpful question,
whereas in what way contains a lifetime of absorption.
Certainly for many students, each study makes the other more
possible. Karim Dajani (SF91),
a psychologist and karate-do
brown belt who had Aigla both
as a sensei and in the classroom,
explains that “reading the great
books, I realize how infinite and
exciting our exploration of the
world in and through ideas can
be. Studying karate and medicine, I realize how infinite and
exciting the exploration of my
direct embodied experience can
be.”
Do the two ways lead up the
same mountain? Can virtue be
taught?
“I don’t know if karate-do
makes me a better tutor,”
Aigla says. “Perhaps it might
make me a better person. After
35 years of practice I would
hope that I may do something
for the world of karate-do, and
not necessarily the other way
around.” x
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2004 }
Caroline Knapp, of Berkeley,
Calif., is a freelance editor and
a 5th kyu student of aikido.
Santa Fe tutor Jorge Aigla
runs a karate program for
St. John’s students in Santa Fe.
�20
{Nostalgia}
MEMORY L ANE
Meets
COLLEGE
AV E N U E
by Sus3an Borden, A87
request for stories of alumni’s
earliest memories from freshman
year brought a deluge of responses, spanning five decades, from
Annapolis alumni. Not all of them,
of course, were fit for publication,
as their authors were the first to
note. Many claimed faulty memories and boring first semesters:
“All I can remember is pretty bland,” wrote Matthew Braithwaite (A97). “Just the usual freaking out over Greek, and
upperclassmen trying to electrocute pickles to see if they
would glow.”
Others were concerned that their stories were not suitable
for a college publication: “Would a story that involved skipping seminar, putting on red leather boots and running
around campus in nothing but those boots and a twin sheet
with two other freshmen maenads similarly clad, be too risqué
for your story?” asked Mary Haber (A97).
With so many stories to choose from, we were able to let the
unpublishable remain unpublished. The rest we’ve collected
in this sampling of stories recalling the fun and folly of early
freshman year.
A
Way Back When
Allan Hoffman, Class of 1949
My first day at St. John’s was in September 1945, a strange time
because that August the atom bombs were dropped and the war
ended. Almost all young men were on an accelerated high school
program—you went to school during the summer to get as much
education under your belt as possible before you were drafted. I
was scheduled to graduate from high school in January of ’46,
but when the war ended I had already accumulated enough credits for a high school diploma.
I learned of St. John’s from my brother, who had gone to Harvard as a pre-med and told me that when he graduated he knew a
lot about organic chemistry but little about anything else. We
called and spoke to the dean’s office. They said, “come on down
and pack a bag. If we like you, you’ll stay and send your things
from home.” When I arrived, school had already started—I
missed the opening seminar.
My first impression of St. John’s was that it reminded me of the
prep school I had graduated from: It was kind of Ivy-Leaguey, the
buildings were brick, the campus was small. I felt that it was not
a big step physically. Little did I realize what a step it was going
to be.
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2004 }
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{Nostalgia}
Bookstore Manager Kitty Lathrop (in the campus
bookstore circa 1945) caught Allan Hoffman’s eye.
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2004 }
�22
{Nostalgia}
I went to McDowell Hall
and entered the dean’s office.
There was a desk piled high
with papers in neat stacks
and it seemed that nobody
was there. Then someone sitting behind the desk rose and
I could see her head above
the papers. She was a very
short woman, very plain,
bespectacled. She was Miriam Strange, who was both
the dean’s secretary and the
registrar. She sent me into
the dean’s office and there
was Scott Buchanan sitting
behind a desk, also with
papers in various piles, but
not neat. He was smoking
and during the 20 minutes
that we spoke he never
stopped smoking. I did not
understand 90 to 95 percent
of what he was talking about.
Next, Scott Buchanan sent
me to see the president, Stringfellow Barr, who was very different from Scott Buchanan. He had flaming red hair, was dressed
very nattily in a blue blazer, gray flannel slacks, and a vest that
did not match his pants or jacket but was complementary. We
spoke for about 5 minutes, and I understood 95 percent of what
he said. His final words were, “Well, Mr. Hoffman, if you want to
be a student here at St. John’s, just tell Miss Strange and she’ll
make all the arrangements.”
I told Miss Strange I was going to be a student. She said,
“You’re going to be in West Pinkney on the second floor and I
want you to be in the Coffee Shop tomorrow morning at 9 o’clock
to meet Mr. Klein. He’ll be one of your tutors and he’ll explain to
you more of what we do here. You’re a couple of days behind—
here is the reading list. These are the books you’ll have to purchase.” I found my room in Pinkney, unpacked, and made my
way to McDowell.
When you entered McDowell, on the left were mailboxes, on
the right were bathrooms, and in the middle was the Coffee Shop
and that’s all they sold, coffee, which Leroy poured at a nickel a
cup. There were individual seminar tables and in the middle was
a larger table where students were sitting around talking with
one another. This was the ongoing Coffee Shop seminar.
When the dean and the president weren’t busy, they were at
that table. When they weren’t there, Jascha Klein or Ford K.
Brown or Richard Scofield were. If a space was vacated another
student took his cup of coffee and sat down and joined the con-
versation. If a tutor had to go
to class, chances were some
other tutor would slip in.
This Coffee Shop tradition
was a very vital thing, ongoing from morning with a
break at lunch and very often
continued after lecture.
The next room, the
fireplace room, was a bookstore with couches, chairs, a
long low table, the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun,
and people milling about
looking at books. There was
a stockroom near the
Humphrey’s exit that was
also the office of the bookstore manager. She walked in
and, as plain as Miriam
Strange (her sister) was, this
woman was beautiful: blonde
with a beautiful face, shapely, delightful to look at. Her
name was Kitty Lathrop, and
As in years past, freshmen still
struggle with Greek.
she told me I’d have to buy
Homer, Euclid’s Elements,
a Greek grammar, a lab manual, a T-square and a drawing
board. I took the equipment, went to my room, and read the first
books of Homer’s Iliad. And that was my first day at St. John’s.
Soldier, Scholar
Dick Cahall (class of 1959)
Seth Benardete was a Greek scholar of considerable renown who
spent a year on the faculty at St. John’s. I remember being
awestruck by his grammatical dissection of a passage from Thucydides...incredible erudition! He went into all the tenses and verb
endings and why they were as they were. It permanently changed
me from a Marine to a scholar!
Words of Wisdom
Sharon Bishop (class of 1965)
Memory 1: My first or second day on campus (I’m still unpacking), I hear this exchange outside my Campbell window:
Student One (male): “Hey, what do you know?”
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2004 }
�{Nostalgia}
Student Two (male): “Man is born, he suffers, and he dies.”
Memory 2: I am in the Coffee Shop after seminar with Bob
Bart, one of the seminar leaders, and he says, “Miss Bishop, the
only cause worth losing yourself in is the search for truth.”
23
Grandfather Jascha?
Jerry Caplan (A73)
maryirene ruffin
My excitement at the prospect of my very first St. John’s seminar
was dimmed by the news that our senior seminar leader, Dean
Innocence Lost and
Robert Goldwin, would not be with us for
Found
some time due to a back ailment that
required immobility. Entering the semiHoward Zeiderman (A67)
nar room for our first discussion of the
Iliad, one saw in the place of the senior
Before I came to St. John’s I attended
leader a white-haired, pipe-smoking,
Dartmouth to study mathematics. I had
kind-looking old man, dressed in a dark
John Kemeny who was then the chair up
suit. Just out of high school, I naturally
there and had been Einstein’s math assisassociated a “substitute” teacher with
tant when he was 20. We were a class of
someone good-natured and incompetent,
eight students, and I realized mathematso I had drastically lowered expectations
ics was not my destiny. I quit twice and
for the first few weeks of seminar, assumeventually came to St. John’s.
ing that the quality would depend decidOn my first day in class—Friday—I went
edly on the quality of our senior leader.
to math tutorial. The tutor, Molly
To my surprise however, our guest had
Gustin, gave the assignment. Excited, I
some remarkably provocative things to
rushed back to my dorm room to work on
say about the tragedy of the Iliad and
it. I heard that we should read the postuAchilles as the tragic hero, thoughts
lates and then figure out what the first
which both intrigued and confused me.
proposition must be. So I read those five
Later, during my first after-seminar
postulates over and over again and had
visit to the Coffee Shop, an upperclassno idea what should come next. I had too
man engaged me in conversation, curimuch pride to check. So I was getting
ous to know how things went and who
more and more depressed as it seemed
were my seminar leaders. When I
that everyone else was having a relaxed
explained to him the circumstance of our
and fun weekend. I felt I had stumbled
temporarily losing our “real” seminar
into a place of the most extraordinary
Today’s freshmen, dissecting cow hearts.
leader and identifying for him our “subpeople in the world and I was not one of
stitute,” his eyes widened, his jaw
them. Finally I decided I was not meant
dropped, and he exclaimed with awe and
to be here and planned to drop out. I
envy, “You had Jascha Klein for freshman
decided I would go to the picnic at the president’s house, pack up
seminar on the Iliad ?!” He proceeded to explain to me just who
and leave—one more defeat, the third time I had dropped out of
Mr. Klein was, although the significance did not sink in entirely
college. There I discovered that the assignment was to read the
on that occasion. Still, I left the Coffee Shop that night feeling a
postulates and read the first proposition. So I did the assignment
bit better about my first seminar experience knowing that our
and stayed. However, that weekend always stayed with me. Those
“substitute” was not just someone’s grandfather who had been
hours must have pointed me in the right direction.
gently coaxed to fill in.
Sometime later I finally learned to read the postulates more
innocently. I was reading the fifth as a parallel postulate. However, it isn’t about parallels but about triangles. It states the condiStrange New World
tions under which we would get a triangle. It took me years of
St. John’s to learn to read innocently. Had I been that already I
Leah Casner (A78)
would have at least had a shot at thinking that the first proposition might be the construction of an equilateral triangle.
St. John’s was a whole new world to me. I was so giddy my first
months...I felt I finally had found a place, slightly off kilter from
the rest of the world, where I fit in. When I had been a prospec-
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2004 }
�24
{Nostalgia}
tive student, Tricia Kulp and I were amused in a freshman math
tutorial by Sara Anastaplo’s proof of a line being straight; the
proof was something like, “well, it has to be or it would be
warped, and that’s just wrong.” St. John’s, we felt, was a bit
warped and, unlike the line, we felt that made it right.
must be removed. Nobody thanked me for preserving the tradition. I dutifully passed it on to incoming freshmen in following
years.
Not an Ice Breaker I’d Choose
Chris Denny (A93)
Marion Betor Baumgarten (A82)
I spent the night of Seducers and Corrupters walking back and
forth from the party in the FSK lobby to the sycamore tree on
back campus, sitting down alone under it, and saying to myself,
“How can I possibly spend four years with these lunatics?” The
answer proved to be simple—I became one of them.
My first day at St. John’s: After I spent about 15 minutes in my
room crying after my parents left (that door closing was so, well,
final), I decided to iron something so I would look nice for my first
dinner. I ended up burning my hand on the iron and having to eat
dinner with a giant ice pack on my hand. Which did not attract the
kind of attention I was hoping for...
If You Can’t Beat ’Em…
A Match Made in Iglehart
Paula Rubin Swann (AGI97)
Preserving Tradition
Wendell Finner (A82)
My freshman-year roommate was a returning student, who
hadn’t completed freshman year the year before. He told me that
it was “traditional” for someone to ask at the orientation with
the Instruction Committee why Eastern classics weren’t in the
Program . When nobody else asked the question, I stuck my hand
up and asked. Dean Sparrow’s answer was practical rather than
philosophical—any addition to the Program means something
John [Swann] (AGI97) shows up at the gym for the first time in
January as he’s starting in the GI program in the Spring semester. No one knows that John is a decent ball player (or, that he is
left-handed). We start playing (Hustlers vs. Green Waves) and
I’m stuck guarding 6'4" John (I’m 5'6"). After the fourth or fifth
time John gets a rebound from over the top of my head after I
have him boxed-out, I get upset that I’m not getting an “over the
back” call and decide to take matters into my own hands. The
next time he goes up for a rebound and I have good position on
him, I under-cut his legs and send him crashing to the floor!
While lined up next to each other at the next freethrow, he says to me, “Nice under-cut.” I say back
to him, “If you stop coming over my back, I’ll stop
under-cutting you.” To that, John apologized
which I thought was very sweet of him! After getting to know each other better in class, we started
dating and you know the rest!
Note: Paula and John married June 7, 2003.
Happily Ever After
Annemarie Catania (A97)
I met my fiancé, Allen Ziegenfus (A96), at a waltz
party on my first night at St. John’s. My roommate,
Céline Bocchi (now Abramovich), had been asked
to dance right away. Except for one waltz with a GI
who smelled like wine, I had only been observing
Eagerly taking in a tutor’s wisdom after seminar.
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2004 }
�{Nostalgia}
until this person I’d identified as a potential dance partner sat
down next to me, in conversation with the woman he’d just
danced with. He was facing her, so I couldn’t get his attention (I
found out later he had a crush on her). It took me half the length
of the song that was playing to gather all my freshman courage,
lift my hand, and with one finger… tap him on the shoulder!
Allen danced with me for three more songs, and spent a while
talking to Céline and me. I remember him asking what I thought
of “old Homer” (not much, because I’d barely survived the catalogue of ships at that point), and showing us a pocket watch he’d
bought in China that summer. He held the door for us as we left
the Great Hall, and even got my name right when he said goodnight (instead of calling me Emily or Emory, which often happens when people first hear my name).
As Céline and I walked up the stairs to our new home in Randall, she told me that at some point in history, people considered
three dances grounds for marriage. She was recently delighted to
hear that Allen and I are planning to get married on January 17,
2004.
Not in the Stars
Jenn Coonce (A97)
On the day the dorms opened, my roommate and I and our families were doing the awkward, nice-to-meet you formalities. When
everyone left the room but the two of us, she asked me “What’s
your sign?” When I told her Gemini, she said, “I knew it! We’ll
never work out as roommates. I’m a Virgo.” And we didn’t...
Spartan Existence
Rudy Hernandez (A99)
After I read Plutarch’s “Life of Lycurgus,” I decided that I
wanted to be a Spartan. This involved me giving everything I
owned away except for my sheets and a Melissa Etheridge CD
because Spartans weren’t real big on personal property. x
Coming Soon: Freshman Year, Part II
It is hoped that Santa Fe graduates are hereby provoked to
send along a freshman year memory for a future edition of
The College. E-mail stories to: s-borden@sjca.edu, or put
them in the mail addressed to Sus3an Borden at The College,
60 College Avenue, Annapolis, MD 21401.
In the meantime, here’s a teaser:
Of Rainbows and Aristotle
Philip Horne (SF85)
I’d like to pass along a memory of my first days on the Santa
Fe campus in the fall of 1980. Even before the first class had
convened, I was sitting at my desk reading and rereading the
same sentences from the first assigned lab text—30 or so
pages of Aristotle’s Parts of Animals, which, I think, is
assigned to sober up (and scare the bejeezus out of) the
incoming freshman. I was going to get that first assignment
licked, and had allotted the entire afternoon and evening to
its study so that by class time the following morning I’d have
a sure grasp of Aristotle’s every nuance. Suddenly there was
a great, hollering, screeching, whistling, clapping, cheering
wave of noise—inappropriate in the lower dorms, where it
25
was supposed to be quiet—which interrupted my profound
meditations on Aristotle.
I was not amused. Giving up on the nearly memorized yet
still inscrutable sentences from the text, I turned around from
my desk to look out the window only to witness further horrors. Although we had been warned in our orientation that the
tops of the buildings were strictly verboten, they were now
crowded with students staring into the west, whooping and
hollering. So, leaving Him open on the desk, I went outside to
see what all the fuss was about. As the sun set through the
clouds, there was a great big double rainbow over the mesa.
It was spectacular. Usually in double rainbows, one of the two
is bright, and the other is more muted. Here, both of the rainbows were vibrant. The folks up on the roofs said that a few
minutes before it had been a triple rainbow! Thus the cheering. I joined in the noise, which then faded to a kind of meditative quiet as the sun set and the rainbows themselves faded
away. By then it was dinner and one by one the other students
slipped away. After eating and drinking a glass of flat dining
hall coffee, I went back to Aristotle. There was enough study
time left to read seriously through only the first few pages, so I
sort of skimmed the rest. That’s my memory of the first day or
so in Santa Fe, capital of the Land of Enchantment. x
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2004 }
�26
{History}
“A P R E T T Y P I E C E
OF LAND”
How ROTC Saved St. John’s College
by Ginger M. Doyel
In 1945, the U.S. Navy needed more offices and the
U.S. Naval Academy needed more space. The Academy
looked across King George Street at the tree-lined
grounds of a small liberal arts college that was struggling
to survive, and pictured a site for a sprawling dormitory
and mess hall for midshipmen. Lined up on the Academy’s side were military supporters, civic groups, the
Chamber of Commerce, the daily newspaper, and seemingly, most of Annapolis. How St. John’s fended off the
attack makes for a classic David vs. Goliath story.
bered 800, and its dormitory was designed to house just 2,500.
This lack of space prompted the Academy to pursue a
$70 million expansion. It planned to annex and build academic
buildings on three acres belonging to the city of Annapolis, and
acquire land in West Annapolis owned by the Naval Academy
Athletic Association. The third phase of its plan called for taking
over St. John’s (for a suggested purchase price of $750,000),
razing its buildings, and replacing them with a dormitory. While
the plan’s first two parts met little opposition, the third created a
storm of controversy.
The Naval Assault
onditions were ripe for a thunderstorm on
C
July 26, 1945, as nearly 100 women marched to the
Maryland State House. Led by Mrs. Morden Rigg,
they were coming to protest the Naval Academy’s
plan to annex St. John’s College—a plan that pitted
the U.S. Naval Academy and its many ardent supporters against a small, financially struggling liberal arts college.
Rumors that the Academy had designs on St. John’s had begun in
1940 and resurfaced again during the war. In 1945, the Naval Academy announced its expansion plans and began an aggressive campaign to take over the 32-acre St. John’s campus—a campaign that
would take a fight in Congress to settle.
Underlying the Academy’s effort was a need to expand. World
War II brought sweeping changes to the school, especially an
increase in its student body. While about 3,200 midshipmen
attended in 1945, postwar estimates predicted that this figure could
soar to 7,500. At that point, the Academy could not handle such an
influx; most of its facilities were built when the enrollment num-
From the mayor to the media, most locals, 80 percent according
to the Annapolis newspaper the Evening Capital favored the proposed takeover. First, citizens feared losing the Academy—and the
$17.5 million that the Navy injected into the economy each year.
In 1945, congressmen from the West Coast, Midwest and South
fought to relocate the entire school, or at least part of it, to their
areas of the country where space was abundant.
Not surprisingly, the Evening Capital, sided with the Academy.
Throughout the conflict it ran pro-Navy editorials with headlines
such as: “Back the Academy,” “Annapolis Must Act,” and “Academy Expansion Assured.” The paper’s president and publisher,
Talbot Speer, also belonged to a booster group called the Citizens’
Committee for the Retention of the United States Naval Academy
in Annapolis. Sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce (another
pro-Navy group), the committee consisted of community leaders
including Speer; Annapolis Mayor William McCready; Cary
Meredith, president of the Farmers’ National Bank; Chris Nelson,
president of the Annapolis Yacht Yard; Willis Armbruster, manager of Carvel Hall (the large hotel in Annapolis at the time); and
Annapolis insurance broker Joseph Lazenby. Under Lazenby’s
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2004 }
�maryirene ruffin/archives
{History}
Had the Naval Academy annexation attempt succeeded,
McDowell Hall would have been replaced with a
sprawling dormitory.
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2004 }
27
�28
{History}
the college. Many of its signers were
among the women who protested at the
State House in July. Yet they, like the
others who favored the college, were
clearly in the minority.
usna special collections and archives, nimitz library
leadership, the committee produced a petition with more than 4,000 signatures in
support of the annexation.
The Maryland General Assembly passed a
resolution urging the Academy’s expansion
into Annapolis, the Annapolis City Council
voted to support the takeover, and civic
groups such as the Rotary, Civitan, Kiwanis,
and Lions clubs were all willing to give up
St. John’s for a bigger, better Naval Academy.
But St. John’s also had its champions, especially its alumni. “Save St. John’s” was the
theme of the Alumni Association’s annual
meeting in June 1945 at which Stringfellow
Barr, St. John’s president, addressed a crowd
of 150. During the four-and-a-half-hour session Barr labeled the Navy’s plan a “coup to
try to grab a pretty piece of land” and urged
alumni to voice their opposition.
Alumni answered the call. Many wrote letters to the editor. Herbert Fooks, class of
1906, took up his pen and wrote a passionate
poetic defense of his alma mater,“O, Hallowed Ground of Old St. Johns.” Appearing in
the Evening Capital on July 25 it began,
The College Fights Back
Several alumni, including returning veteran Andrew Witwer, testified before Congress.
“None of us went off to war in order that we
might return and find that the place where we
had begun to learn about a free society was
being moved out from under us,” Witwer
declared, as reported in the St. John’s Yearbook, 1945-46. “It is for such institutions that
men go to war. It is through the lack of such
institutions that men make war.”
In addition to the support of its indignant
alumni, St. John’s received backing from
preservationists, the Severn River Association, and 100 prominent citizens who signed
“An Open Letter” urging locals to preserve
st. john’s college archives
“O, hallowed ground of Old St. Johns!
Let no one dare profane thee,
Nor greed, nor gold, nor want of soul
Seek ever to enchain thee....”
Top: Vice Admiral Aubrey W. Fitch, U.S. Naval
Academy Superintendent during the climax of
the proposed takeover. Bottom: Stringfellow
Barr, St. John’s president.
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2004 }
In late April, St. John’s Board of Visitors
and Governors drafted a policy in
response to the Navy’s intentions,
which at that point were only rumored.
The board, chaired by Dr. Thomas Parran, held that St. John’s would only consider the sale if it were given enough
money to relocate and if the national
interest required it. As Board Secretary
Richard Cleveland later proclaimed, the
school will “cheerfully accede to genuine national necessity, if such necessity
as distinguished from convenience, is
formally declared by the Navy,” as
reported in the June 20, 1945 edition of
the Evening Capital.
The board sent their policy to Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal. The
Academy could only annex St. John’s if
both the House and Senate Naval Affairs
Committees approved its plan. Congressional hearings on the proposed
takeover began in May 1945.
The House Committee tentatively
approved the acquisition on June 4, but
deferred from taking final action until a
subcommittee explored other sites for
the Academy’s expansion in Annapolis.
Much to St. John’s dismay, the subcommittee concluded that the college
should be taken. Other options such as
moving the Academy to 850 acres across
the Severn River were deemed impractical. Architect John Root, retained by
the Navy’s Bureau of Yards and Docks
to make an independent study on the
subject, Academy Superintendent Vice
Admiral Aubrey Fitch, and Chief of the
�{History}
29
Reading list
For more detailed accounts on the college’s history, recent and distant, the following works are recommended:
Bureau of Yards and Docks Vice Admiral
50,000 officers. Since it was impossible
Stringfellow Barr: A Centennial AppreciaBen Moreell concurred.
for the Academy to produce this figure,
tion of His Life and Work, and Scott
St. John’s, they argued, would simply
Secretary Forrestal and Vice Admiral
Buchanan: A Centennial Appreciation of
have to relocate. Annapolis real estate men
Louis Denfeld created a board to explore
His Life and Work, Charles A. Nelson,
interviewed by the subcommittee advised
other options for officer training.
Ed.
that Holly Beach Farm and Hillsmere, both
Chaired by Rear Admiral James
about six miles from the city, would make
Holloway Jr., the “Holloway Board”
A Search for the Liberal College: The
ideal sites. Dorothy Strickland declared
presented three solutions for producing
Beginning of the St. John’s Program, J.
that a 100-acre farm near the South River
more naval offices. The first called for conWinfree Smith.
“would be perfect.” As she wrote in her letverting the Academy into a postgraduate
ter to the editor of the Evening Capital,
school and was rejected. So was the secThe Early History of St. John’s College in
“The lovely old brick college buildings
ond, suggesting an entirely new Academy,
Annapolis, Tench Francis Tilghman
could be torn down and erected on the
perhaps for the West Coast. The last,
same plans...”
called the Holloway Plan, proposed bringOther locals fond of the town’s quirky liting the Naval Reserve Officers Training
tle “Great Books” college tendered suggesCorps (NROTC) to civilian colleges and
tions for its survival, according to a somewhat sarcastic recap in the
universities in order to produce more officers.
1945-6 St. John’s College Yearbook: “The Annapolis Roads Club
While the plan became law in August 1946, Secretary Forrestal
offered us their site and bathhouses and suggested we save McDowapproved it in October 1945 as hearings about the Navy’s plan to
ell Hall by moving it out there to the beach stone by stone. Innuannex St. John’s persisted in Congress. Experts continued to testimerable 10-room ‘great estates’ were offered to us at only three or
fy on behalf of the Academy and St. John’s, including James
four times their normal value, and many chambers of commerce,
Edmunds, president of the American Institute of Architects.
embarrassed by their lack of local culture, invited us to bring our
Unlike the majority, Edmunds believed that the Navy could expand
ideals to fruitification in their sylvan neighborhoods where, they
in Annapolis without annexing the college.
assure us, the folk were particularly warm and responsive to new
Congress was expected to make a final decision on October 24,
ideas...”
yet failed to do so until spring. On May 22, 1946, by a vote of 11-7
Initially, the House and Senate Committees planned to wait until
the House Committee declared that “the national emergency
Congress reconvened in October before making a final decision.
neither justifies nor warrants the proposed acquisition of St. John’s
However, they surprised the public in late July when both approved
campus.”
the acquisition.
After Forrestal notified Parran that the Navy would no longer try
The St. John’s board remained unconvinced that the annexation
to annex the college, Parran asked the Senate to “drive the third
was a “national necessity.” As Emily Murphy documented in A
nail in the coffin of the project,” which it did on June 12. Thanks to
Complete and Generous Education: 300 Years of Liberal Arts,
its alumni, supporters like Mrs. Morden Rigg and her band of outSt. John’s College, Annapolis, meetings followed among board
raged women, and a board that stood up to no less a foe than the
members, Navy officials and Committee Chairmen Senator David
U.S. Navy, St. John’s was able to celebrate its 250th anniversary
Walsh and Representative Carl Vinson. It was in these meetings that
later that year—freed from the vision of a Naval Academy dormitoit became clear that the committees had only approved negotiations
ry taking the place of McDowell Hall. x
between the Navy and the college, not the college’s annexation.
When St. John’s refused even to negotiate, additional hearings were
postponed until October.
Sources for this story include: the 1945-6 St. John’s College
Yearbook; Emily A. Murphy’s A Complete and Generous
Education: 300 Years of Liberal Arts, St. John’s College; the
Showdown in Congress
Evening Capital and Jack Sweetman’s The U.S. Naval Academy:
In the interim, a plan was gaining support that would reduce the
An Illustrated History.
Academy’s need to expand and impact Congress’s final choice.
Officials predicted that the postwar navy would require about
Ginger Doyel is an Annapolis freelance writer and illustrator.
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2004 }
�30
{Homecoming}
Annapolis Homecoming:
Tropical Theme Brightens Rainy Weekend
ith 306 enthusiastic alumni turning
out for the party,
who could complain if a little rain
fell on Homecoming 2003 in Annapolis? A Hawaiian luau
planned for the front lawn came off splendidly in Iglehart Hall, with beach balls and
inflated palm trees livening up the gym,
along with the outlandish Hawaiian shirts
and leis alumni donned for the event.
Held September 12-14 in Annapolis
(a few days before Tropical Storm Isabel
left downtown Annapolis underwater and
caused widespread power outages), Homecoming this year was marked by lively
seminars, a packed awards banquet in the
lobby of the Francis Scott Key auditorium,
and a strong turnout by Graduate Institute
students.
W
Seminars filled quickly and were well
attended. Among the all-alumni offerings
this year was a contemporary book by
Bernard Lewis on What Went Wrong?
Western Impact and Middle Eastern
Response. Reliable standards, including
Sam Kutler’s seminar on Plato’s Republic
and Brother Robert’s on Pascal’s Pensées,
proved equally popular.
The class of 1953 celebrated its 50th
reunion with a special luncheon for the
13 members who traveled to Annapolis for
Homecoming.
Mark Middlebrook, a member of the
class of 1983 and expert on fine wines,
arranged for a selection of vintage 1980s
wine for his classmates to enjoy at the
banquet. And the class of 1993 wins
bragging rights for biggest turnout:
36 members of the class attended their
10th reunion. x
Rain moved the luau indoors, but spirits were sunny. Above: Tutor
Peter Kalkavage regales alumni. Right: William J. Schweidel (Class
of 1963, AGI86) raises a toast to his class as Owen Kelley (A93)
looks on. Top right: Mary Pat Justice (SFGI71) enjoys reunion
conversation.
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2004 }
�{Homecoming}
In addition to the usual picnics and waltz parties, Homecoming
this year featured two big to-dos: Saturday luau for lunch and
an elegant evening banquet in the Francis Scott Key auditorium
lobby. Clockwise from left: Adam Pinsker (class of 1952) and
Francis S. Mason Sr. (class of 1943); 1993 alumni enjoying the
luau; more luau conversation; Henry Shyrock (class of 1938)
and his wife, Pauline Lemarie, with Roland Bailey (class of 1935)
and his wife, Helen.
photos by gary pierpoint
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2004 }
31
�32
{Bibliofile}
MR. PESIC: I think it is, not so much for
practical reasons but just to show that
numbers aren’t as simple as one might
have thought when one thought “well,
there are fractions and whole numbers.”
The word “imaginary” is probably not the
right word, although it is the word that we
commonly use, but maybe it’s right in the
sense that it shows there is an imagination
at work in the realm of numbers so that it’s
a realm of poetry or vision of a certain
sort. In that sense I think it’s very valuable
to know because it opens our minds further and makes us aware that in considering mathematics we are thinking about
something that does call for imagination.
Proof:
A Dialogue
Abel’s Proof: An Essay on the Sources and
Meaning of Mathematical Unsolvability
Peter Pesic
The MIT Press, 2003
he story of Norwegian
mathematician Neils
Henrik Abel is a tragic
one. Abel’s brilliant
paper, On the algebraic
resolution of equations
(1824), failed to win acclaim until after
Abel died. In Abel’s Proof, Santa Fe
tutor Peter Pesic traces Abel’s exploration all the way back to the Greeks in
a quest to understand Abel’s problem
and his proof. Annapolis tutor Samuel
Kutler (A54), a mathematician at
heart, sat down to discuss the book
with Pesic, a physicist.
T
MR. KUTLER: Peter, what’s so intriguing
about Abel’s proof that you should write a
book about it?
MR. PESIC: My interest in mathematics
and Abel goes back to when I was a student
in college. I used to go to the mathematics
library and dip into the books. I was
amazed that anyone could understand such
abstractions. I didn’t understand them
myself, but I was fascinated by the thought
that they were intelligible to someone. I
guess at that point I heard about Abel.
Over the years, in the course of my reading
about mathematics, I kept hearing the
story that he had proved that not every
equation has a solution.
After I became a tutor at St. John’s College, I learned more about the fact that
there were numbers that were not rational.
I began to wonder about their relation to
Abel’s discovery. Is it possible to understand what he proved when he found that
equations that are of the 5th degree or
higher in general don’t have solutions, by
which he meant a solution that could be
expressed in terms of a finite number of
multiplications and divisions and square
roots or cube roots?
I knew that he had found a certain
answer, namely that equations don’t have
MR. KUTLER: You’re a friend of Barry
Mazur, the Harvard mathematician, and
you mention him in your book. He’s written a popular book called Imagining Numbers, and he, too, is interested in producing imaginaries and the complex number
system. Could you describe the differences
between your two books?
solutions, but I wondered: What was the
real question that lay behind it?
MR. KUTLER: I think that is just what I’d
like to hear about, because the way you’ve
written your book is to provide a wonderful
context for Abel’s proof. You went way
back to the pre-Greek and then Greek
works. Could you say why you started so far
back? You could have started with the origin of algebra, but you chose to provide a
very rich context. Why is this?
MR. PESIC: I suppose it’s a temptation of
all St. John’s tutors to go way back before
the beginning of something to try to
understand where it came from, in this
case, algebra. I wanted to write the book in
such a way that it would address people
who were interested in mathematics, curious about it, but maybe also frightened of
it. I thought that beginning way back
would put people at ease and allow them to
reconsider these elements, these origins.
Maybe as a result it would all take a different look for them, as it did for me.
MR. KUTLER: I want to ask something a little bit technical. In order to talk about
Abel’s proof, one has to use the complex
number system. Is it important that all
educated people know about the complex
numbers—imaginaries and the whole complex number system?
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2004 }
MR. PESIC: Barry’s book is really devoted
to the question you just asked me: How can
one understand imaginary numbers? How
did it take so long for us to reach any
understanding, and what understanding do
we have after all? I was interested in something that also seemed neglected. It
seemed to me that Abel had done something very great and important, and I’d
never heard a word about it. So I guess my
book begins where [Mazur’s] leaves off. I
think his really goes as far as Abel; he talks
about complex numbers and how they were
represented in the 17th and 18th centuries
and then stops. He does mention Abel at
the very end, and I guess that’s where I
thought of mine as beginning, although I
wrote mine quite independently of his.
The great challenge of my book was to
try to give an account of abstract mathematics that would neither on the one hand
be completely technical so that it was only
addressed to people that already at a certain point understood it, nor so non-technical that it never really touched the living
heart of what was going on. I looked at
every math book I could find, because I
thought that surely somebody had said
something helpful in all these books that
had been published in the 200 years since
Abel did his work, something that would
help me understand what was the heart of
that proof. And I didn’t discover any such
account.
�33
{Bibliofile}
excerpt:
Mathematical symbols may indicate
hidden truths that have deep human
significance, even as they transcend
the human. Abel’s proof contains a
prime secret; how can a search for
solutions yield the unsolvable? Perhaps if I tried hard enough, I could
understand. I studied modern texts,
but the key remained elusive.
Absorbed in advanced studies,
experts may cease to wonder about
the elementary. They might not
notice the kind of basic insight I was
seeking. To find it, I needed to
return to the sources, retracing the
journey recounted in this book. The
story begins in ancient Greece and
has climatic scenes in Norway and
France in the 1820s. What Abel
found is indeed surprising and
strangely beautiful.
—ABEL’S PROOF
Finally, I worked through Abel’s original paper, which is very short, because he
lacked money to pay for anything longer,
but as a result the paper is telegraphic and
hard to understand. But I still didn’t
understand. The argument made sense,
but I couldn’t see what it was based on or
what was behind it. After a long time, and
trying to read those who came after Abel,
notably Galois, who carried Abel’s ideas
much further, I was able to find something
that suddenly seemed intelligible.
My book tries in a kind of slow, groping
way to reach that realization to make
Abel’s ideas intelligible, maybe even visual, as best I could. This was an interesting
experience, because I was not a mathematician and I was struggling to keep up
with the mathematicians I did talk to or
read. I asked myself, How is it possible to
find a guiding thread in this mathematical
labyrinth? The clue was that things may
not commute. That is the heart of the
story that I tell in the book.
MR. KUTLER: You mention that the death
of Abel was premature and it certainly
was, because he lived, as you mention in
the book, to be only 26 years old. Did you
have a feeling for Abel and when he lived?
And how a mathematician even of great
powers could at 26 years old do something
that no one before him had ever done?
MR. PESIC: For Abel, mathematics was a
felt experience. What for us are abstract
concepts were for him felt and palpable
realities that he experienced with an
almost emotional or perhaps even physical
directness. My book wonders at that kind
of a talent, the kind of sensibility he had,
which I certainly don’t have myself. I am
certainly not an insider to the level of
mathematics as Abel practiced it, yet I
hope that it helped me mediate between
his extraordinary mind and ours, as we try
to understand: What did he really see, and
what did he feel?
Plato and the Founding of the Academy
John Bremer
University Press of America, 2003
John Bremer says he has come into possession of a letter purporting to be from Plato
himself, and addressed to his great
nephew. Bremer, a former St. John’s tutor,
describes how the letter came into his possession, presents its text in English, and in
100 pages of footnotes and other tabulations and analyses develops and clarifies
the letter’s contents.
In the letter, the author elaborates a
scheme of the design of the Republic based
on a 12-hour reading period, beginning at
noon and ending at midnight. The way into
duration is the syllable count. The Republic may be divided into 240 three-minute
units—each of roughly 750 syllables. (Bremer calls them Bremer Units.) The speed is
fast, but not unrealistic. Plato would have
composed on wax tablets, most likely of
equal size, and in this way he could keep
track both of the number of syllables on
each tablet, as well as the tablets themselves—by numbering them. He could follow the time frame in which each part of
the conversation played out. And he could
also—as he surely did—compose each numbered tablet with reference to other
tablets, and often with them side by side.
What emerges when the Republic is
viewed through this lens is an architectural
marvel—suffused with symmetries musical,
astronomical, geometrical, even choreographic. The famous Divided Line, for
example, itself divided in extreme and
mean ratio, comes at precisely the Golden
Section (the point which divides in
extreme and mean ratio) of the duration of
the conversation. An elaborate and precise
ring composition also reveals itself. Bremer has shown this with a table that places
summaries of tablets 1 and 240, 2 and 239,
and so on, side by side.
The design of the Republic for once finds
a concrete exposition in Bremer’s work—a
truly new way to read the ancient text.
— Noam Gedalof, A03
A Reader’s Companion to Augustine’s
Confessions
Kim Paffenroth (A88) and Robert P.
Kennedy, editors
Westminster John Knox Press, 2003
In this book, a tool for teaching and studying the Confessions, 13 scholars look at
each of the 13 books and interpret their
chapters in light of the whole and in light
of the rest of Augustine’s works. In
addition to co-editing this collection,
Paffenroth, an assistant professor of
religious studies at Iona College in
New York, contributed an essay on the
9th Book, “The Emotional Heart of the
Confessions.” In putting together this
collection of interesting essays, the
authors in their introduction say they have
attempted to offer “a useful and
challenging introduction to Augustine’s
most famous work, as well as a unique
contribution to scholarship on the
Confessions.” x
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2004 }
�34
{Alumni Profile}
Inspired by the Classics
Francisco Benítez, SF89, Pursues the Bacchae
by Teri Thomson Randall
he Dionysiac frescoes
found in the Villa of the
Mysteries outside of Pompeii have been a rich
source of inspiration to
Santa Fe artist Francisco
Benítez (SF89). Unearthed in the excavation of the villa outside of Pompeii in
1909, the frescoes were almost perfectly
preserved thousands of years after they
were buried in the eruption of Vesuvius.
The three panels depict a woman undergoing the secret initiation rites—the socalled “mysteries”—of the cult of Dionysus, god of wine, ecstasy, and passion.
Profoundly moved by the frescoes,
Benítez spent three months in Naples
during the summer of 2002, studying
each panel in depth and visiting Herculaneum and other archeological sites. His
latest series of paintings, called The Bacchae after the play by Euripides, reference
the Dionysian frescoes with their intense
blood-red backgrounds, faux architectural
details, and sensually rendered life-size
figures. But their content differs from the
mythological imagery of the original
work, which includes the god Bacchus, his
sidekick Silenus, a winged demon, a faun,
and the ritual flagellation of a frightened
maiden. Instead, Benítez’s paintings
depict beautiful women in quiet moments
of reflection. The walls behind the women
are painted in the style of the ancient
Roman villas, with elaborate faux architectural motifs and painted vistas.
Trompe l’oeil cracks and crumbling plaster also reflect elements of the original
fresco.
In discussing the inspiration for his
work, Benítez describes his years at
St. John’s as a type of initiation, a lifechanging and “intense” experience.
“It made me develop who I was and
come to grips with the gifts I had and
didn’t have,” he explains. “If I didn’t have
that experience, I might have been lost
another 10 years. It’s a place that pushes
you to your limits.”
Benítez took his first formal art class, a
life drawing course, at St. John’s. Several
of his classmates shared his passion for
fine arts, and the group regularly checked
teri thomson randall
T
out art history books from the library and
discussed them together.
His soul-searching at St. John’s led
Benítez to realize that his destiny was to
become a painter. He left the college
after two years to study at the Art Students League in New York City. He
finished his fine arts degree at the University of New Mexico, including a study-
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2004 }
Francisco Benítez (SF89), shown here
with “Bacchic Trio,” renders his figures
life size, a tradition called megalographia that dates back to the classical
Greeks.
continued on next page
�35
{Alumni Notes}
abroad experience at Facultad de Bellas
Artes in Granada, Spain.
Though Benítez is a product of a
contemporary art school education, his
highest aspiration is to emulate the
figurative painters of the Renaissance and
the master painters of the ancient
Romans and Greeks, who Benítez believes
give Michaelangelo and Raphael a run for
their money. “The nuances one finds in
the Old Master figurative paintings are
lost in contemporary painting,” he says,
although contemporary painting, with its
“rawer” depiction of the figure, “expresses our period best.”
Almost from the beginning of Benítez’s
formal art education, he was drawn to the
works of the Old Masters because of their
“sense of atmosphere, and the way the
human body is presented that seems so
unobtainable technically. I wanted to
reach it,” said the artist. “It became an
ongoing struggle to get to that place
1932
where one can express certain realities of
the human experience.”
Benítez soon found that the techniques
of the Old Masters were not given much
weight in his art school syllabi. “In art
school, the past is ignored,” he said. “It is
a dictatorship of the contemporary. Not
that everyone should be obsessed with
history. But there should be room for
everybody.” Benítez had to learn from the
old masters on his own, by studying the
masterpieces in the museums of Europe
and through endless trial and error with
materials and technique.
The seeds for Benítez’s interest in classical figurative painting were probably
planted by his parents. The artist is the
son of the nationally recognized flamenco
dancer and choreographer María Benítez
and her husband, Cecilio, a set designer
who also sculpts and paints. Benítez credits his parents for influencing his interest
in tenebrism, a technique introduced by
mainly humanities, literature, and
history.
1942
HENRY SHRYOCK and his wife,
ERNEST J. HEINMULLER writes: “The
Pauline Lemarie, were featured in
an article by Angus Phillips in the
Washington Post sports section on
November 9. The couple was interviewed on a hike with members of
the Potomac Appalachian Trail
Club. In the article, Lemarie, now
in her 90s, says that she limits her
hikes to five miles, no rocks. “My
husband still likes rocks. He’ll
leap from rock to rock. He’s like a
goat—in more ways than one!”
she’s quoted as saying.
Talbot County Commissioners
have recently appointed me to the
Talbot County Emergency Services Board. This board coordinates fire department and ambulance services.”
1935
“I am still practicing law in this
small upstate New York village,”
writes RICHARD S. WOODMAN, from
Waterville, N.Y. “I wonder where
all of the Class of 1935 are, for I
don’t see any information about
them in the alumni news.”
1943
MARTIN ANDREWS has begun his
sixth year as Commander of the
Nassau-Suffolk L.I. Chapter of the
American Ex-Prisoners of War.
“I have no important news, but I
ask that Marcel Proust’s Swann’s
Way be restored to the fourth-year
reading list (seminar or language
tutorial),” writes MILTON PERLMAN.
1948
PETER DAVIES and his wife, Phyllis,
plan a trip this coming April to
visit son Ken and five grandchildren in Uganda, where Ken is the
country director of the UN’s
World Food Program. Peter writes
that he is “still very active in community activities in N.Y.”
1951
“This past May, I had a quadruple
bypass operation that has now
slowed down my singles tennis
game to such a pace that my classmate H.R. Bixby would have a
chance beating me,” writes
DR. LAWRENCE G. MYERS, from
Vermont.
1947
JOHN BRUNN is continuing his education by taking classes at the
Fromm Institute in San Francisco,
{ The College
Caravaggio, that involves the use of
extreme contrasts of light and dark in
figurative compositions. His father
exposed him to the masterpieces of
Velázquez and Goya. And his mother, he
says, “gave me the sensitivity of expressing strong feelings to the viewer. There
has to be emotional content in the work.
The cerebral has to be balanced with the
heart, the emotions. After living with
them, I don’t think I could have become
anything other than an artist.”
Ultimately, Benítez would like to
expand his Bacchae paintings to a series
of perhaps 20 pieces. In the meantime,
his next body of work will explore what he
calls “the confrontations between Christian mysticism and ancient paganism.”
These works are destined for a group
exhibition in Provence next spring that
will center on the concept of juxtaposing
images and texts. x
John’s College • Winter 2004 }
1955
“We are fortunate to live in a town
with a large university that allows
residents to attend classes (with
the permission of the professor),”
CAROLYN BANKS-LEEUWENBURGH
writes from Princeton, N.J.
“There are a few of us who take
advantage of this opportunity,
after which we swim each day, to
keep from falling apart. Our socalled retirement years are full and
about the same as before except
for our obsession with our grandchildren. Greetings to all of our
friends of yesterday and today at
St. John’s.”
1959
MIKE and BLAKELY MECHAU, classes
of 1959 and 1958 respectively, are
alive and well and retired from the
judicial system and public school
teaching. They’re currently raising fruit in Palisades, Colo. They
recently read Eva Brann’s book on
time with “much enjoyment.”
�36
{Alumni Notes}
1964
2004, he will be teaching at
Semester at Sea, a branch of the
University of Pittsburgh that takes
place during a voyage around the
world.
LORRAINE A. MARTIN was recently
appointed to serve as chair of the
Connecticut Society of Certified
Public Accountants’ Federal
Income Taxation Committee. Martin, who owns the firm of Lorraine
A. Martin, CPA, is also president
of the board of directors for Habitat for Humanity of Greater New
Haven and treasurer of the North
Haven Opportunity for Affordable
Housing Inc.
1968
ANTIGONE PHALARES (SF) writes:
“Our 35th reunion was the best
one yet. The seminar, the meals,
the conversations, the weather,
the landscape, the memories
recalled, all conspired to welcome
us back with open arms. We love
being members of the first class.
Our reunion numbers will always
coincide with the age of the Santa
Fe campus. I just discovered that
one of my neighbors is a descendent of Francis Scott Key (class of
1796). She showed me a
daguerreotype image of Francis
Scott Key and another of the man
his daughter married!! She was as
tickled to show them to a St. Johnnie as I was to see them!”
1969
MICHAEL ANTHONY (A) writes to say
that his wife, Dr. Sharon K.
Anthony, Ph.D., died on February
3, 2003. She taught English for
30 years.
MARIA KAYANAN (A) writes: “After
Send a Piana to Havana, a project
started by BENJAMIN TREUHAFT (SF)
in 1995, opened a school of tuning
and instrument repair in Havana
in 2001. This year the Cuban Government gave the project a large
building in the former Country
Club of Havana (an architectural
gem) so it can expand, provided
the project’s sponsors can raise
the money.
1970
BRONWEN BERLINER (A) writes: “My
sister, Shirley Stickney, died suddenly and unexpectedly on July 25,
2003, at our parents’ home. I am
working as a nurse practitioner in
Falls Church, Va.
News from HENRY CONSTANTINE
(A70) and CHRISTINE CONSTANTINE
(A72): “Hank has taken a job as
marketing director at Zoll Medical
Corp. in Massachusetts. Christine
is still with the New York State
Appellate Court in Rochester. Living apart and commuting madly—
they are still madly in love. Oh,
yeah: Son ALEX is a junior at SJC.”
E. M. MACIEROWSKI (A), associate
professor of philosophy at Benedictine College, was selected as
one of 12 participants in a seminar
on teaching about Islam and the
Middle East to be held in Amman,
Jordan, at the American Center for
Oriental Research in January
2004. The selection was made by
the Council of Independent Colleges; the seminar is being funded
by the Department of State.
JOSEPH P. BARATTA (A) reports:
“My big book, The Politics of
World Federation, will finally be
published (by Praeger Press) in
December 2003.
DR. G. DENNIS RAINS (A) has
published a textbook, Principles
of Human Neuropsychology
(McGraw-Hill, 2002). In spring
1974
1972
RICHARD A. RHODES (SFGI) writes
to say that his local reading group
has met September through May
continuously for more than
40 years.
{ The College
15 years of clerking for Judge
James R. Jorgenson on the Third
District Court of Appeals in
Miami, Fla., I joined the law firm
of Podhurst Orseck, P.A.,
(www.podhurst.com) at the end of
July 2003. The firm is recognized
as one of the premiere aviation law
firms in the country. I am the 13th
lawyer in the firm; I focus on trial
support and appellate practice.
It’s a huge but wonderful change
from the quiet and steady inner
world of an appellate court.
“I’ve been married for 28 years
come November to Mike Masinter,
a law professor at Nova Southeastern University in Davie, Fla. His
areas of expertise are employment
discrimination, civil rights law,
disability law, and federal jurisdiction. We have two sons: Joe, 25,
lives at The Foundation for Independent Living in Coconut Creek,
Florida—a private residential community for adults with cognitive
impairments. Our younger son
Sam, 21, is a senior at Amherst
College, majoring in English. We
also have two basset hounds and
an indeterminate number of cats.
“I can be reached at
mkayanan@podhurst.com.
Hearing from classmates would be
lovely.”
1976
After graduation, BRIAN LYNCH (A)
went to medical school and now
lives in Chicago. He has written a
self-help book based on a theory
that is more and more being supported by the high-end neuroscience that is advancing rapidly.
“I am always interested in advancing the theory through writing
and speaking about it and now
through the book,” Brian writes.
“If there is any interest, please let
me know.” Information about the
book can be found at http://brianlynchmd.com/whatanother/whata
notherdirect.html
Black Wine and
Outdoor Adventures
eter Grubb (A80) writes that life in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, “continues well. We spent the fall of
2002 living in a small village in southwest France,
eating well and drinking the black wine of Cahors,
elixir of former popes. Our children, then 9 and
11, attended French school while my wife, Betsy,
and I took a break from work and life. It was an enriching time.
Our adventure travel business (www.rowinc.com) continues to
go well with some 3,200 people joining our trips in the northern Rockies, Ecuador, and Europe each year. Guest historians
join us on our five-day voyageur canoe trips in the Upper Missouri, along the Lewis and Clark trail. Families with kids as
young as five enjoy our five-day trips on Idaho’s Salmon River.
Our newest project is developing a five-acre outdoor adventure
resort in central Idaho on the Clearwater River. Scheduled to
open in May 2004, it will have log cabins and a variety of programs including spiritual retreats and family adventure camps.
My passion in the arena of natural and cultural history interpretation continues as I pursue various levels of certification
through the National Association of Interpretation. Life is good.
Any Johnnies passing through are welcome to call and visit.” x
P
John’s College • Winter 2004 }
�{Alumni Profile}
37
Restoring Self-Respect
Eileen Renno (A82) helps unemployed Oregonians get back in the job market.
by Sus3an Borden, A87
hen clients first
meet Eileen Renno,
they’re usually not
very happy to see
her. The people she
counsels in her role
as a job coach for Oregon’s Welfare-toWork Program are usually at a low point in
their lives: They have been through some
kind of crisis, they’re traumatized, and
they lack confidence and hope.
“Poverty is one of the most traumatic
things that can happen to a person,” says
Renno. “You forget who you are and what
you can do. You focus on your weaknesses
and assume an identity of helplessness and
hopelessness.”
Renno knows this phenomenon well,
from both professional and personal experience. When she first moved to Southern
Oregon in 1997 she, too, was jobless. She
experienced the trauma of unemployment
and took almost a year to re-enter the workplace. When she finally did, it was thanks
to her sister Catherine’s persistence.
Catherine had joined Renno in a number of
earlier ventures—from restoring and running a restaurant in Shady Side, Md., to
marketing handcrafts from native cooperatives worldwide.
“My sister was carrying my memories for
me because I had forgotten about my successes. She kept bugging me to write my
résumé until I wanted to smack her. When
I finally did start writing, I ended up with a
six-page résumé—exactly what they say not
to do—but it was a good process for me. I
needed to remember what I had accomplished and when I remembered, I regained
my old esteem and self-confidence.” Shortly thereafter Renno got a clerical job with
the National Park Service and a month
later applied and was hired for her current
position by The Job Council, a primary
contractor for Oregon’s Welfare-to-Work
program.
Renno’s job is to help clients become
job-ready by coaching them as they identify
and resolve their own barriers to employment. As part of that process, she works
with them on the technical aspects of their
portfolios. Nearly six years into it, she says
there’s been an evolution in her under-
W
A brush with unemployment helped Renno
find her vocation as a job coach.
standing of what it takes to re-enter the job
market.
“When I was first hired, I was pretty
much an enabler,” she says. “I wanted to
do everything for my clients. I was making
their phone calls, navigating through
bureaucratic paths, generally helping them
in their befuddlement. I learned pretty
quickly that this was disempowering to
people. The hidden message I was giving by
doing so much for them was, ‘I’m capable
and you’re not.’
“My whole philosophy has evolved to a
more solution-oriented exploratory interviewing. Now I see the process as being a
turning around, as helping to create a shift
in energy so people can recognize their
own competence.”
When clients meet Renno, they are told
only her name and that she’ll help them
with their portfolio. She then sets out to
help them develop a résumé — the method
that worked so well when she was unemployed.
“I use the résumé as a tool to help them
remember and explore their successes,”
she says. “We work through the technical
{ The College
John’s College • Winter 2004 }
aspects: ‘Where did you work last? What
skills did you use in your job?’ In the
process of remembering dates, they revisit
the experience, and sometimes an amazing
unfolding occurs. I have had people educate me on so many aspects of employment:
packing pickles, laying sidewalks, carpentry, mechanics. They go into the details of
their work and they get excited. That’s
when I know the magic is happening. They
want to explain it all to me and they start
talking faster and faster. They remember
what it took for them to be able to do the
job: self-management, self-initiative, people skills.”
When Renno began her job, the Welfareto-Work program was first being implemented. Many of the clients she worked
with were people who had been on welfare
for so many years that it was a way of life.
“They were called ‘drawer people’ by social
workers —their files had been stuck in the
drawer for so long. They had severe barriers to employment, presenting issues that
seemed unsolvable: drug addiction, mental
illness, chronic generational welfare use,
and lack of transportation.”
Renno seems to gravitate toward the
difficult cases, both for the challenge they
present and the opportunity to watch people turn their lives around. “ Having gone
through joblessness myself has given me
the insight of how to help people find their
own way to get back on their feet, and it
seems to work. I’ve witnessed a lot of successes.”
Since the Welfare-to-Work mandate came
from the Clinton administration in 1996,
Oregon’s welfare roles have been reduced
by 50 percent. Renno gives special credit
for this success to the active partnership
among social service agencies in Oregon.
“The people we work with are starving in
many ways: for support, for encouragement,
for recognition. We give them an abundant
supply of that, along with whatever professional resources we have to help them, as
well as our respect and belief that they are
capable. The human spirit is amazing; when
you give a starving person a bowl of rice,
they feel so wealthy. It renews them much
more than a healthy person eating a regular
meal. It renews their spirit as well.” x
�38
{Alumni Notes}
Tricked by Joe Six-Pack
Wine Expert Jake Kosseff (A95) Meets Reality T.V.
hannel surfers hunting for
the latest flavor of reality
television might have tuned
into Jake Kosseff’s 15 minutes of fame on The Learning Channel’s Faking It
show. On the show, a rank beginner is
paired with mentors who help him master a
new skill in three weeks of intensive coaching. The beginner is then tested to see if he
can convince a panel of expert judges that
he’s a seasoned professional. Kosseff, a
sommelier and the wine and spirits director
at Seattle’s Cascadia restaurant, was an
expert judge for the “Six-Pack to Chardonnay” episode, in which a beer drinker (the
captain of the U.S. Beer Drinking Team)
was groomed to impersonate a sommelier.
Anyone who was on the Annapolis campus circa 1995 will remember Kosseff’s
contribution to Annapolis wine and spirits
life, both officially (Reality parties) and
unofficially (off-campus, after-waltz-party
soirées). Given his college experience, it’s
C
1978
This update from ROBERT J. PERRY
(A): “I’ve been demoted from professor of physics at Ohio State to
associate executive dean of Arts
and Sciences, and because I’m as
obnoxious now as I was in seminars, I’m also interim senior associate vice president of research,
which amazingly enough fits on a
business card.”
no wonder he loves his job. Koseff buys all
the wine and liquor for the restaurant,
writes the wine lists, and creates specialty
cocktails. His expertise has been well
received: Cascadia won Awards of Excellence from Wine Spectator in 2002 and
2003.
“This is definitely what I want to do. It
draws on all sorts of St. John’s skills: reading and research, communication, and
understanding what people want even when
they can’t tell you directly,” he says. “And I
get to sit around
and taste wine
for the first twoand-a-half hours
of work.”
Kosseff says it
was a fluke that
he appeared on
Jake Kosseff:
TV star
of Educational Technologies in the
Masters of Education Program at
National University. His wife,
AIMEE ROBSON MORRIS (SF80), is an
attorney in San Diego and is on
the Board of Directors for the San
Diego Foster Parent Association.
Their daughter, Ilana, is a sophomore at UCSB. Their home, along
with their son, Sam (a freshman in
high school), and their four foster
boys, was recently among the
blessed surviving the San Diego
fires.
Faking It at all. Cascadia, one of Seattle’s
highest-rated restaurants, was between
public relations companies when the producers called asking for an expert judge. No
one at his restaurant had time to vet the
show, which had not yet aired, and no one
knew what it was really about. The producers only said that they wanted an expert
judge. “It sounded like a documentary
about a sommelier contest,” says Kosseff.
“They didn’t tell me the show’s premise.
And they didn’t say that one of the ‘sommeliers’ was the beer-drinking champion of
Chicago.”
Kosseff flew to San Francisco for filming,
which took place during a four-hour lunch.
The three expert judges were seated at separate tables with “foodies”—wine writers,
restaurateurs—as companions. At each
course the table was served by a different
sommelier—the faker and two professionals.
When lunch ended, the judges were isolated and then interviewed.
In the end, Kosseff voted for the fake
sommelier. “When they interviewed us I
still didn’t know what was going on,” he
says. “I tried to say, in a politic way, that no
one did a really good job, but that I liked
the guy from Chicago. He was the nicest
guy in the bunch.” x
1981
ANDY WHITE’S (A) address through
2004 is c/o United States Educational Foundation in Greece/6
Vassilissis Sofias Avenue/10674
Athens/GREECE.
1982
CHARLES REUBEN (SF) writes: “In
1979
JOE MORRIS (SF) is the director of
Educational Technologies at the
Gillispie School in La Jolla, Calif.,
one of the first one-to-one laptop
elementary schools in Southern
California. (Every teacher and
third-through-sixth-grade student
has a laptop computer). He also
moonlights as an adjunct professor
ARTHUR PAUL HARTEL III (A) has
addition to having recently sold a
cruise ship story to the L.A. Times
about the adventures my 86-yearold mother and I recently shared
on the seven seas, I also dedicated
considerable energy advocating
the continued survival of Amtrak
and ‘long-haul’ passenger train
travel, a cause that (like St. John’s)
won’t get my tires slashed or my
windshield smashed.”
spent the years since graduation
working as an actor, writer, and
editor for film and television. He
lives in Los Angeles.
{ The College
WALTER H. KOKERNOT (SFGI82) has
been appointed division chair of
the English department at Ohio
Dominican University, in Columbus. Walter joined ODU in 1998 as
assistant professor of English.
Prior to joining the faculty of the
John’s College • Winter 2004 }
Ohio liberal arts college, he was
an instructor at Louisiana State
University and a postdoctoral lecturer at Texas A&M University in
College Station, Texas. An expert
in Victorian literature, he lives in
Westerville, Ohio.
1983
STEVEN REYNOLDS (A) is teaching
algebra under an emergency credential in Tranquillity (sic), Calif.
“Clientele are predominantly
offspring of immigrant farmers,”
writes Reynolds. “The language
barrier is surmountable; I can’t
speak to the ambition barrier.
E-mail me at strdar@pacbell.net.”
PETER ROSSONI (SF) writes:
“Healthy and happy living in
suburban Maryland; still missing
mountains, piñon, and deep
discussions! Drop by or drop a line
when in the area!
�39
{Alumni Notes}
1984
KATHERINE ROWE (SF) writes: “I
continue teaching (speech and disabilities), preaching (Episcopal
Church), momming (Sutton 10,
Ailee 7, Kenny, from Thailand,
16), purring (Appalachia, Trinity,
& Raven), wifing (Phil traveling to
Brazil, Italy, and Linda, Mexico),
and breathing (in Colorado).”
1984
LESLIE JUMP (A) writes: “Ned
[Walker] and I were married on
September 28. The wedding was
beautiful, despite a variety of
comic circumstances surrounding
the event, and Hurricane Isabel’s
best efforts to create havoc. The
ceremony was held at a very old
church on the Eastern Shore of
Maryland, Old Trinity.
Ned is a career diplomat who
served as ambassador to Egypt and
Israel, and in various other posts
in the Middle East. I’m settling
into the role of being a ‘diplomatic
spouse,’ learning a bit about the
Arab world and Israel, and consulting.
Within a week of becoming ‘Mrs.
Walker’ I got another title: ‘stepgrandmother.’ Ned’s daughter
Katie had a baby girl, Darby Fiona,
on October 3. The father is also an
alum, Logan Laubach (A02). So
there are three generations of
Johnnies in our extended family.
We’re living in Washington, and
would be happy to hear from you if
you pass through town. We know
all the best kabob joints.”
1985
GINA SORRENTINO (SF) and Bob
Shimokaji are thrilled to
announce the birth of Kira
Michiko and Kenji Yoshiro on
June 27, 2003. “Sleep deprivation,
diapers for two, and college
tuition—parenthood is the ulti-
mate challenge. The fun has just
started!”
1986
BARBARA ROBERTS (SFGI) writes: “I
am a special education teacher for
Denver Public Schools and living
in Wheat Ridge, Colo. I was privileged to, once again, spend the
summer attending talks given by
Bhau Kalchuri, a disciple of
Avatar Meher Baba.”
“My daughter Chloe is now in
third grade,” writes MICHAEL RYAN
(SF). “I will be a registered architect by the end of this year and
remarried to a lovely woman with
two girls of her own by next summer.”
Berkeley in December 2002. They
can be reached at joshua@industriallogic.com or tracy@industriallogic.com
KURT REDFIELD (A) recently com-
pleted his MBA at Columbia Business School, and is the CFO of the
French software company Neartek. Kurt, his wife, Christine, and
4-year-old son, Wilson, live in
Cambridge, Mass.
1991
“Charlotte and I became parents
on August 1 with the birth of Maximilian Blaise and Veronica Joyce,”
writes ANDY SCHUCHART (AGI). “We
are living in Iowa. I am a professor
of social science and humanities at
our community college, and Charlotte practices internal medicine.”
1988
“In April 2002, our third child,
Diana Claire Plenefisch, was
born,” writes IRENE LAPORTE
PLENEFISCH (A). “She is a happy
and healthy sister for Adrian, age
5, and Elena, age 7. Tom and I are
very busy and enjoying every
minute with our family. I am working full time for now but hoping to
get back to my part-time schedule
soon.”
1989
JOSHUA KERIEVSKY (SF) and TRACY
REPPERT KERIEVSKY (SF91) had
their second daughter, Sophia, in
1992
This from BOAZ ROTH (AGI): “We
welcomed our second daughter,
Sela Avital Roth, on July 11,
2003.”
CONSUELO SAÑUDO (SF) is having a
good life but considers this space
too public for news. She would
love to hear from long-lost classmates and friends at
sanudoc@cybermesa.com. Relatively recent news about this and
that at 222.obst-music.com.
KATIE (BRUELL) WATSON (SF)
writes: “Our second son, Andrew
Christopher, was born 6/6/03. He
Happy About the Dancing
ENRY POVOLNY (A94) married Christine Fisher
H
at sunset on Tuesday, Nov. 4, at Honeymoon
Beach, St. John’s, the U.S. Virgin Islands.
On his announcement, Henry wrote:
“Chris wants to thank [St. John’s College] for
how I turned out.” Chris wrote: “He dances,
he fences. It’s like he came pre-loaded with a preferred software
package!” They live in Elmore, Ohio. x
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2004 }
joins Peter Avery, born 7/8/01.
I am adjusting to (and enjoying)
life as the mother of two boys!”
HESSE (GILES) WATTS (SF) and
SHAWN WATTS (SF00) welcomed
their new daughter, Altheia, into
the world on August 12, 2003.
They are living in central New Jersey and can be reached at heatherawatts@hotmail.com
1993
BARBARA ARNOLD (SF) married
Steven (Collier) in Las Vegas,
Nev., in January 2002, and is currently living and writing in the San
Francisco Bay area. She would love
to hear from former classmates:
Arnold@ferae-naturae.com.
WES ALWAN (A) is in Savannah,
Ga., after a 9-month program in
Maine learning traditional wooden
boatbuilding. “I suggest Johnnies
look into the carpenters’ boatshop,” he writes. “I can be
reached at wes@aowanconsulting.com.”
1994
ELI CASTRO (SF) has been firmly
planted in Austin since 1998.
“TRACY LOCKE (SF95) and I got
married, bought a house in the
country, had a baby (the fabulous
Ella, born 2/22/01), and are generally having a great time. I’m still
consulting, and will be finishing
the evening MBA program at UT
next year. Tracy teaches at the
nursing school at UT. Anyone in
�40
{Alumni Notes}
A Letter from Shizuoka
Katherine Greco (SF02) reports in from Japan
K
ATHERINE GRECO (SF02)
has been enjoying her
stay in Shizuoka, Japan.
“I’ve been working really
hard at learning Japanese
and have been enjoying
teaching in a high school. I’ve made a few
good friends—both other teachers from
around the world and Japanese people—that
I see pretty regularly.
In January I made a New Year’s resolution to travel somewhere in Japan each
month, and so far I’ve been doing pretty
well. I live near Tokyo, about an hour by
bullet train, so I’ve been there several
times. I’ve also been to the Hokkaido snow
festival, some smaller towns (good Japanese
practice!), Hiroshima, and Kyoto…
Shizuoka is about the size of Albuquerque, maybe a little smaller. It is right
on the largest train line in the country, and
Shizuoka is big enough for the express train
to stop twice an hour. The city is pretty
clean, although riding a bike every day has
made me a lot more aware of car fumes and
factory smoke.
I live about three or four miles and across
a river from the center of town. My apartment is in the hills, and there are lots of
friendly neighbors. Several people have
vegetable gardens and one old couple
always brings me a few vegetables to try.
I’ve made them cookies, but they didn’t
turn out so well because I had to cook them
Austin or thereabouts, please feel
free to drop us a line at eli@tracyandeli.com.”
ANTHONY CHIFFOLO (AGI) is now
working as managing editor for
Praeger Publishers in Westport,
Conn. “Great company, great
group of folks to work with,” he
writes. Chiffolo has two new books
out this fall. “The first and most
ambitious is called We Thank You,
God, for These: Blessings and
Prayers for Family Pets. As the publisher, Paulist Press, notes, this is
a ‘one-of-a-kind book for pet
lovers that is at once a scriptural
guide, liturgical resource, and
reflection on the joys of living with
in a toaster oven (large ovens are not standard kitchen equipment in Japan). There
are a lot of things that give me a good dose
of culture shock every once in a while, but
my neighborhood is not one of them.
Compared to neighborhoods at home,
mine is really different, but really great as
well. Everything is jammed close together—
there are no yards or anything like that.
However, lots of people decorate the area
around the parking space with really nice
flowers and other potted plants. Another
interesting thing is that there seems to be a
much looser set of zoning standards here.
Within a two-minute walk from my apartment are a temple, a handful of vending
machines, several very nice houses, some
really shabby houses, a junior high, a small
family-run grocery store, a grove of fruit
trees, several very large rusty warehouses, a
mechanic’s shop, and a small park!
My neighborhood is usually pretty quiet
but there are a few interesting exceptions to
this rule. First and foremost are the devil
children who live across the street and who
could probably be heard from Saturn. Also,
every six months or so there are elections,
and several vans drive very slowly down
each street with megaphones shouting slogans... Sometimes there are two or three
different campaign vans in the neighborhood at once, which makes for some very
interesting noise pollution. Finally, about
two or three times a week, someone goes
animals as pets.’ My co-author,
(The Rev.) Rayner W. Hesse Jr.,
and I were lucky enough to garner
some wonderful endorsements
from Bill Keane (creator of ‘The
Family Circus’ cartoon), Dr. Marty
Becker (co-author of Chicken Soup
for the Pet Lover’s Soul), and Marc
Muench (nature photographer),
among others. We have high hopes
for the book.”
Anthony’s second book is called
Advent and Christmas with the
Saints. This day-by-day book, in
which readers encounter the
words of the saints as they relate to
the season, is available from
Liguori Publications. “I have lots
of ideas for more books to write,”
missing, usually a child who comes home a
little too late for comfort, or an elderly person who took a really, really long walk.
When this happens, there is an announcement that describes the person and asks
everyone to keep an eye out for him or her.
This announcement is broadcast at any
time from about 7 a.m. or so to 10 p.m. It
seems that people often go missing on Saturday and Sunday mornings when I’m still
asleep!
There are also several more pleasant
sounds that I hear every few days. Japan
doesn’t have an ice cream man, but it has a
tofu man, a soft rice cake man, a grilled
sweet potato man, a ramen man, an oden
man, a knife-sharpening man, and a few
other men. They all drive around in their
family trucks with the food in the back.
They hang large red lanterns that have the
name of the food written on them out the
windows and on the sides of the trucks.
Each truck also has a megaphone on top
and there are all sorts of sounds that they
play. One is this kind of eerie bbbrrRRRRAAAaaaaadddDDDAAAaaaa noise
while others are homemade recordings of a
man or woman singing the name of the
food, the price, and some comment like
‘delicious and healthy.’ At first I didn’t like
these food salesman noises—they were just
as obnoxious as the other sounds, but more
frequent. Now though, I’ve gotten used to
them.” x
he adds, “just not enough time to
do it all!”
JAMES COBERN (A) writes: “I guess
it is about time to fess up to my
where and whenabouts before our
10-year reunion. Directly after
St. John’s, I spent two years in
bucolic upstate New York at the
Culinary Institute of America
where I graduated with honors.
Who would have thought that a
classical education could be
beneficial in cooking school?
While there I met my future wife,
Amanda. We married in 1998 and
both are working chefs/restaurant
managers in the Washington,
D.C., area. At this writing, we
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2004 }
have almost finalized the adoption
of our first child, Robert, who
came to us at the tender age of
four months from Korea. He is
both smart and good looking—a
dangerous combination for sure.
I’d love to hear from any classmates in or passing through the
area via e-mail: jamanda@
bellatlantic.net.”
KELLY ROCK (A) is working as a
litigation attorney in Washington,
D.C. “This October I was married
to Stephen Smith on a lovely
autumn afternoon in Narragansett, R.I. LARISSA ENGLEMAN (A)
and MERRILL POND (A) were among
�41
{Alumni Notes}
my bridesmaids. I am looking forward to the 2004 reunion.”
MATTHEW TEBO (A) is happy to
announce the arrival of twins,
Nov. 21, 2003.
After graduating from law school,
AMY E. WUEBBELS (A) was selected
to be a Presidential Management
Fellow and has spent most of her
two-year fellowship working for
the Department of State: “So far I
have been posted to Portugal,
Afghanistan, and now Bulgaria,
where I am currently working in
the political section in the American Embassy. I have enjoyed all of
my postings (scuba diving in Portugal, rug shopping in
Afghanistan) but am still angling
for a chance to live in Africa.”
1995
CARRIE (SAGER) ANDERSON (A)
writes: “I just received the recent
issue of The College magazine,
which reminded me that I needed
to write in to say that I have joined
the ranks of motherhood. My son,
Matthew Dean, was born on July
23, 2003. He’s wonderful. I can’t
believe how much I love being a
mother, and how much it has
changed me already.”
MARINE CORPS CAPT. MICHAEL
GAFFNEY (A) departed late last
summer on a six-month deployment to Iraq with USS Peleliu
Amphibious Ready Group. The
unit is an expeditionary intervention force with the ability to rapidly organize for combat operations
in virtually any environment.
Gaffney is based out of Camp
Pendleton.
ALICE BROWN and GREG HODGES
(both A) have moved back to Canada to raise their daughter (Grace
Isabel Hodges, born 10/10/02)
right in a country where medical
care is free and Schwarzenegger is
just the Terminator. Greg is putting the final touches on his dissertation on Lucan’s account of
the Roman Civil War and both
Alice and Greg are teaching at
For the fifth year, Philanthropia, the Alumni Development Council, presents the St. John’s Calendar, featuring historic and contemporary photos of the college. Have interesting photos from
your student days that might make good calendar material? Send them to THE COLLEGE, St. John’s
College Communications Office, 60 College Ave., Annapolis MD 21401. Photos will be scanned and
returned, or if you wish, donated to the college archives.
Trinity College School. Best wishes and fond memories.
DAN NELSON (A) sends an update:
“Howdy, College! Haven’t
checked in with you folks for a few
years, so here’s the latest: quit my
job as newspaper photographer in
Connecticut and moved to San
Francisco last fall to play drums
for GARTH KLIPPERT (SF94). Garth
is married and has a 2-year-old
daughter who is tha bomb. The
band’s now called Top Brown.
We’ve been playing shows steadily
and we’re putting out an album
pretty soon. Things I haven’t
done: gotten married, had legitimate children, gone to grad
school, become a lawyer, done the
Peace Corps, or traveled to Turkey
and Hungary. That last item I
intend to do. Oh, but I do work for
a nonprofit and, indeed, do not
profit from it.
“The doings of other shadowy
alumni in my inner circle are as
follows: ALKA KOTHARI (A95) works
for the World Bank and travels a
lot. She just bought a house in
D.C. JON POMERANCE (A97) is in his
last year of law school at Catholic
U. of America and has diabolical
schemes against the tax-evaders
and tort-frauds of the world. RAY
AMES (A94) e-mailed me a photo
from Iraq last December of an
Army truck covered with dust.
E-mail me if you know anything
later/further, people! FORREST
NORMAN (A97) was doing journalist
stuff in Florida and has moved on
to something more interesting (I
think). I saw some Santa Fe alums
at a party out here and they looked
gooooood, girl. One’s named LIZ
and one’s DARYL. My e-mail’s
zz9zz7zz5@hotmail.com.”
1996
1997
Karen and MICHAEL CHIANTELLA
(A) were married on August 2,
2003. Michael graduated from
SUNY Buffalo Law School last
spring and is currently pursuing
an LL.M. in Estate Planning Law
at the University of Miami.
JENN COONCE (A) writes: “Still liv-
ing in NYC (Brooklyn) and working in the Internet biz. My sister
RACHEL started St. John’s in the
fall—to be joining my little brother,
who’s a junior this year. That
makes five of us—and that’s it,
until we start having kids!”
DOMINIC CRAPUCHETTES (A) expects
LINDA MAY WACKER (SF) is living
in New York City and working at
the Museum of Modern Art as
manager of the department of
photography.
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2004 }
his new board game company to
launch in December. Learn about
it at www.cluzzle.com.
JEHANNE DUBROW (A) writes: “In
May 2003, I completed my MFA in
poetry at the University of Mary-
�42
{Alumni Notes}
land, College Park. Having become
very interested in poetic translation, I spent the summer brushing
up on my Polish in a language
immersion program at the University of Pittsburgh. Now, I’ve moved
halfway across the country to begin
my Ph.D. in creative writing at the
University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
I’m teaching first-year composition
(quite an experience in itself),
working as an editorial assistant at
Prairie Schooner, and trying to
finish up my first poetry manuscript.”
JOHN SWANN and PAULA (RUBIN)
SWANN (both AGI) were married in
the Great Hall on June 7, 2003.
“Many Johnnies were in attendance,” they write. “Special
thanks to JOHN POTTER (AGI96) for
performing an ‘emergency’
ceremony when the original
celebrant was two hours late! He
did a great job for someone who
had just graduated from Princeton
Seminary just three weeks prior!
Thanks, Potter!”
1998
GLEN COPPER (AGI) received a Ful-
perused the Alumni Register and
sure enough—a Johnnie was
responsible. So, I’m concurrently
pursuing my M.Ed. and ‘teaching’
first grade in the South Bronx.
Please interrupt my life of eating,
sleeping, and planning!
Majorie@thecatspants.com.”
1999
ELIZABETH A. BORSHARD (SF) just
moved to New Orleans to start
medical school at Tulane. “I would
love to hear from any classmates in
the area. eborshar@tulane.edu.”
COLBY COWHERD (A) is working on a
J.D. degree at George Mason University School of Law in Arlington,
Va. He can be reached at
ccowherd@gmu.edu.
JEAN DRAGANZA (SF) writes: “After
two years living, working, studying
in Paris, France, I’m heading for
Bamako, Mali with my future husband, Issa Diallo, to continue
living, working, studying…My love
and best wishes to the entire
St. John’s community! I can be
reached at draganzajean
@yahoo.fr.”
bright to teach in Japan.
MIKE and ABBY SOEJOTO (both A) are
A report from ANDREW B. HILL (A):
“I’m getting married sometime in
2004 to a tremendous woman who
did not, sadly, attend St. John’s. I
reside in Fort Worth, Texas. I
recently completed an unsuccessful
bid for the mayorship of my lovely
city, for which I was rewarded with
a whopping 206 votes, as well as
about 60 hours of Digital Beta
footage, which I intend to convert
into something remotely saleable.
Thus, no matter how vague my
connection to the school may be, I
am following in a tradition of Maverick Johnnie filmmakers, or at
least I think I am.”
MARJORIE TRUMAN (A) writes from
N.Y.: “What joy I had recently
when I was assigned a text for grad
school and began reading all these
references to Kierkegaard, NonEuclidean geometry, and Socrates
and Plato as distinct entities. I
Albuquerque, N.M., and I plan to
marry on December 19, 2003. She,
too, is a grad student at Duke
Divinity. We plan to make our
home in New Mexico upon graduation. I would love to hear from any
of my former classmates or tutors
including Michael Adams,
Jonathon Pezold, and Nathan
Zweig.”
pleased to announce the birth of
their first child, Lucila Adele. Lucy
was born on September 30 in Los
Angeles, where Mike is beginning
his second year as an attorney in
the tax department of O’Melveny &
Myers. Abby recently finished the
post-baccalaureate program in
classics at UCLA. They’d love to
hear from anyone, especially those
in or passing through Southern
California (asoejoto@cs.com or
323-572-0343).
ERIN JAKOWSKI (A) is pleased to be
working at the Maryland Film Festival, now entering her third year
as director of operations. She
recently became engaged to Tony
Tsendeas over the Thanksgiving
holiday.
MARK H. JOHNSON (A) is pursuing a
Master of Divinity at Duke University. “My fiancée, Allison Shirley of
2000
GIDEON BOGAGE (AGI) just completed his fourth year teaching middle
school in Massachusetts. “This
year I am teaching 8th grade math
and English,” he writes. “Thank
goodness for a liberal arts education!”
BOB DICKSON (A) is in his first year
of medical school at Duke University, having completed pre-requisites
in the Goucher College Post-Baccalaureate Premedical Program.
“I’d be happy to talk with Johnnies
about the medical school admissions process. Feel free to contact
me at robertpickettdickson
@yahoo.com.”
PAIGE FORREST (A) is still living in
Pittsburgh and loving it. She’d love
to hear from any of her classmates
at forrest.paige@medstudent.
pitt.edu. “If any of you are in the
area, let me know!” she writes.
CHRISTOPHER “CASEY” VAUGHAN (A)
is living in St. Augustine, Fla.
“Anyone who wants to come
surfing feel free to contact me at
cvaughan@flagler.edu.
2001
MARSHALL HEVRON (A) writes:
“After a six-month, all-expensespaid trip to Iraq (courtesy of
USMC), I find myself back in
Washington, D.C., working in the
Senate. Drop me a line if you’re in
town.” mahevron@hotmail.com.
DANIEL WEILAND (A) is attending
post-baccalaureate school at Ore-
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2004 }
gon State University—and thriving:
“The rain is refreshing and the air
is sweet. I live in a big house, so
anyone who knows my name has a
dry place to stay here on the West
Coast. I’d love to hear from you!”
2002
JOSEPH CHERNILA (SF) and ALANA
HOLLINGSWORTH CHERNILA (SF)
write: “Joey and I had a daughter
on April 10, 2003! Her name is
Sadie Pearl Chernila.”
AUSTIN HATCH (AGI) and his wife,
Elizabeth, announce the birth of
their second child, John Austin
Hatch, on June 4, 2003. Austin has
begun a Ph.D. program in English
literature at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.
RACHEL SEAY (A) is still enjoying
teaching music and studying in San
Juan, Puerto Rico. “Mighty fine
beaches we’ve got here. Contactable at res_sjc@yahoo.com” x
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 April
2004; deadline for the alumni
notes section is February 15.
In Annapolis:
The College Magazine
St. John’s College, P.O. Box 2800
Annapolis, MD 21404;
reharty@sjca.edu
In Santa Fe:
The College Magazine
St. John’s College
Public Relations Office
1160 Camino Cruz Blanca
Santa Fe, NM 87505-4599;
alumni@sjcsf.edu
Alumni notes on the Web:
Read Alumni Notes and contact
The College on the web at
www.sjca.edu — click on Alumni.
Let us know if you do not want a
classnote posted to the Web.
�43
{Obituaries}
Henry Leong Soon
By Perry Plummer, SF70
Henry Leong Soon, a member of the class
of 1969 in Santa Fe, died on September 23,
2003, in Albuquerque, N.M., at the age of
56. Henry died from cardiac complications
resulting from a four-year fight with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, an autoimmune
disease with no known cause.
Henry’s illness forced him to resign from
his work as a computer programmer and to
chain himself to an oxygen cannula. Even
so, he had to restrict his physical activity in
order to merely keep his oxygen levels in
the poor range. This was hard for Henry
because he had been an avid outdoorsman
who hunted birds and waterfowl and was a
devoted martial artist, with a black belt in
Kojasho karate and a brown belt in judo. It
was doubly hard because he had to make a
transition from being in control to being
dependent. Denied any but the most modest activity, Henry took up gourmet cooking again, wrote a few short stories, and
renewed his interest in fishing. He was easily stoic and generous, with courage and
cheerfulness to the end. He collapsed on a
fishing day-trip with his daughter, and died
several hours later at the hospital.
St. John’s was a significant experience
for him and for me. We had continuing discussions about philosophy, virtue, education, politics, and the commonweal, the
role of violence, humor, religion, and
philosopher-kings. And of course there
were the hilarious stories about the people
and life at the college: the food service, ties
at dinner, dorm life, tutors, smoke so thick
at seminars that sometimes someone would
crack a window open, March Madness,
haircuts by David Moss, the erection of the
fortress-like “girls’” dorms meant to lock
up the women past curfew until the fire
marshal forbade the locked bars, in loco
parentis, the evening half the students
were suspended for protesting (by breaking) the inane dorm rules, the dialectic
comparisons of LSD and marijuana, etc.
In one of his last e-mails to me, Henry
wrote that he had grown more conservative
as he grew older: “But I also got more optimistic and more trusting in the Will of the
People, not the will of the philosopherking, even though he be me. The
inefficiency of the American system is also
one of its greatest strengths and protections, I believe. Lots of people talk about
the ‘good old days.’ Me, I think we are living in the best of times right now and I
believe that things will continue to get better, thanks to the Constitution, freedom,
and capitalism…
“I think America offers possibilities
instead of promises, choices instead of certainties…I like that. It lets me be a little
rebellious. I wouldn’t want any government
official telling me what I should think and
should do—there’s plenty enough people
trying to do that sort of thing as it is.”
Henry’s religious views changed as well,
as he came to embrace concepts of Zen
Buddhism and Taoism. “This is an oversimplification, but I like the way the Tao Te
Ching promotes the virtues of the simple
and the humble,” he wrote. “I like the way
Zen advocates that true knowing is nonintellectual, and I like the way the existentialists emphasize that choices define
your being. And I like the Golden
Rule, too.
“So, I think that what you do
defines who you are—what you do is
more important than what you
believe…And so far, I’m glad that
my beliefs have let me handle this
illness pretty well, all things considered.”
Henry’s wife, Denise, and his
children, Maile and Garrett,
survive him. x
Henry Leong Soon, an avid sportsman, enjoyed an active life.
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2004 }
William D. Grimes
William D. Grimes, class of 1952, a
research analyst who became an antiques
dealer, died Oct. 23 at his home in Olney,
Md. He was 74.
A native of Pittsburgh, Grimes served in
the Marine Corps before coming to
St. John’s. After college, he began his
career with the Naval Ordnance Laboratory
in Silver Spring, and later in White Oak,
Md. His work included operations research
analysis and missile engagement studies.
After his retirement in 1984, he continued
working in the antiques business he had
founded with his wife, Diane Grimes.
An avid participant in local theater,
Grimes performed lead roles in plays for
children and performed onstage and contributed backstage in Olney Studio of
Dance productions. He was a former president of the Friends of Olney Theater.
Stan Davis
Stan Davis, the founder of Santa Fe’s
largest construction firm and an ardent
supporter of the Santa Fe campus, died in
July at age 80. A partner in Davis and Associates, Davis built the John Gaw Meem
Library, dorms, and many other prominent
buildings in Santa Fe and throughout the
state. The Colorado Springs, Colo., native
started working in the construction business in 1946 and came to Santa Fe in 1948.
When Davis was the contractor for the
Meem Library, he paid to have the beams
carved at the library after the college ran
out of money and couldn’t afford the work.
ALSO NOTED:
ROBERT C. BORNFIELD, class of 1951,
July 3, 2002
REV. JOHN R. COOPER, class of 1937,
Oct. 30, 2003
THE REV. CHRISTIAN A. HOVDE, class of
1945, May 22, 2003
VERNON TSOODLE JR., Santa Fe class of
1981, Nov.12, 2003
WILLIAM R. WHITE, class of 1939,
Aug. 6, 2003
�44
{ A l u m n i Vo i c e s }
Petra: The Lost City of Stone
hen Vivian Ronay
(class of 1965) first
visited Petra in
1986 as a tourist,
the city was deserted. She saw it
almost as it must have looked to Swiss
explorer J.L. Burckhardt, who rediscovered
it for the Western world in 1812: an empty,
ancient city cut into the high desert cliffs
of southern Jordan.
The Nabataeans, builders of Petra, were
traders, a tribe of pre-Roman Arabs who
dominated the region beginning around
300 B.C. Their group extended from northwestern Saudi Arabia to Damascus in Syria.
Distinctive facades carved into sandstone
cliffs and boulders marked Nabataean cities
along the ancient spice route in this region.
Petra was one of the major crossroads of the
east-to-west route for silk and the primarily
north-to-south frankincense route, and its
inhabitants lived on tolls and taxes. According to the Old Testament, a battle took
place from the heights of the tallest mountain in Petra. Another cliff top, said to be
the burial site of Aaron (Haroun in Arabic),
the brother of Moses, has been a holy place
for Christians and now Moslems.
In 1988, Ronay received an assignment
from The World and I magazine and spent
a month with the Bedul Bedouin of Petra.
Bedouin culture is the root and origin of all
the countries in the Arabian Peninsula
W
(with the exception of Israel) and pre-dates
Islam. Ronay photographed and took notes
regularly as she joined the Bedouin in their
daily activities. She returned almost every
year between 1988 and 1992; however,
other assignments prevented her return
until 2001. This past spring, during the
Iraqi War, she made another trip to a
rather deserted Petra for final images and
research for her current show.
During the 1988 visit, her friendship
with a son of one of the five sheiks of Petra
gave her the equivalent of an “all-access
pass” to be honored by any Bedouin while
hiking on her own. Granted access to every
facet of life in Petra, Ronay has photographed Petra during the day and night,
in tents, and in the Nabataean caves in
which only a few families remain. She’s
grown close to many people in the community and fended off many a marriage proposal, some made in jest, some serious.
Her evocative photographs provide a sense
of the individual lives of the Bedouin, their
interesting culture, and a spectacular
desert environment.
In the mid-1980s, the Bedouins agreed
to move out of the caves and into a small
village set on the edge of Petra National
Park where they live today. In her more
Above: Bedouin women herd goats to
graze in central Petra.
At left: Bedouin travel the traditional
way.
Opposite top: This picture of Abu Gassim,
a sheik of one of the five tribes of the
Bedul Bedouin of Petra, is among Ronay’s
favorites.
Bottom: The Khazneh, or Treasury, the
most famous of Petra’s monuments, is
carved from red sandstone that shines
brilliantly in the light of the sun.
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2004 }
�45
{ A l u m n i Vo i c e s }
recent trips, Ronay has been dismayed to
see the traditional ways of life eroding now
that these tribes are living in built structures with modern conveniences. Their old
agrarian community has been replaced
with a market-based economy thriving on
tourism. (Petra is among the most popular
tourist destinations in the Middle East.)
“Because of tourism, some of the people
of Petra have gotten very wealthy, and it’s
created disparity and a lack of trust. When
I visited in 2001, everyone came to me to
talk about these new troubles. Western
anxiety just hadn’t existed there before,
and now it seems it has seeped into every
nook and cranny,” she says. “I was
stunned.”
Ronay believes that such a resilient culture will adapt to change with the help of
the Petra National Trust, created by the
Jordanian government to preserve the heritage and way of life of Petra. “They will be
able to find a solution,” she says. x
Ronay’s exhibit, “The Bedouin
Tribes of Petra,” will be on display
at the American Museum of Natural
History in New York through July,
in conjunction with the archeological
show, “Petra, Lost City of Stone.”
The exhibit then travels to five other
venues in the United States and
Canada. To see more photographs
or get details on the exhibit, visit
Ronay’s Web site at: www.petraphotos.com.
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2004 }
�46
{Alumni Association News}
From the Alumni
Association
President
Dear Johnnies,
Homecoming events on either campus are
many and varied. One opportunity, often
overlooked but always exciting, is the Gathering of All Alumni. After the picnic and
before the games on Saturday, we meet to
catch up on news from the college and from
the Alumni Association. The program lasts
about an hour and
provides a year’s
worth of news and
notes.
The President of
the Association
Board (that’s me)
gives a short
report on what’s
happening in the
Alumni Association, including status of old projects, new initiatives, and
strategic opportunities.
Treasurer of the Association Board (that’s
Bill Fant) reports on our financial status as
an Association. As they say, “follow the
money,” and you’ll see how we meet our
commitments to you and to the college.
A highlight of the meeting is the campus
update. The president and the dean both
share information about what’s happening
on the campus, with the Program, and with
students and tutors. I never know what will
be more surprising: the things that change
or those that stay the same!
Honorary Alumni awards come next. As
you know, each year the Association selects
members of the community who are not
alumni of the college to join the association
as Honorary Alumni. Those selected are
familiar and beloved tutors, staff, or friends
of the college. We invite special friends of
the awardees to say a few words in presentation, and the recipients take a turn at the
microphone. No one talks better than a
Johnnie, and when the topic is a friend and
colleague, the speeches are moving and
impressive. These presentation and acceptance talks are priceless. They inform or
remind us of personal and professional traits
that bring people in and make them treasured members of the college community.
Elections, by-laws revisions, announce-
ments, and so on are the “business” of the
meeting, and we move through them quite
quickly.
As the meeting closes, we honor those
alumni who have passed away in the preceding year. We call it In Memoriam. For me, this
is one of our most meaningful community rituals. Regardless of whether I know them,
whether they are from Annapolis or Santa Fe,
whether their time was before or after mine, I
am always moved to hear their names and
dates of attendance read in the midst of a
weekend when we rekindle old friendships
and build new ones around the Program and
the community that supports it.
So, the next time you’re at Homecoming,
take a bit of time out of your Saturday afternoon to connect (or reconnect) with the
larger community of the college. Attend the
All Alumni Gathering to remember the past,
and explore the present of the college as an
institution and as a community.
Sincerely,
Glenda H. Eoyang, SF76
Six Honored at
Annapolis
Homecoming
Three Annapolis alumni received Awards
of Merit, and the Alumni Association
welcomed three new members into the fold
by selecting them as honorary alumni of
the class of 2003 during homecoming
festivities September 12-14 in Annapolis.
Arts writer and consultant Adam
Pinsker, class of 1952, has enjoyed a long
and fruitful career in the arts. After
St. John’s and a stint in the Army, he studied at the music conservancy of Stuttgart,
Germany. He went on to manage symphony
orchestras in New Jersey and Buffalo, managed the Pennsylvania Ballet, served as
executive director of the Association of
American Dance Companies, and spent
more than a decade as executive director of
Dance St. Louis.
William Warfield Ross, class of 1947,
helped to found the Washington law firm of
Wald, Harkrader and Ross. He was a founding member and served on the executive
committee of the Lawyer’s Alliance for
World Security, which is focused on limiting the use of nuclear weapons and minimizing the risk of other weapons of mass
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2004 }
destruction. Among many other professional and civic activities, Ross has been
involved in the American Bar Association
and the ACLU.
A member of the class of 1963, David
Krimins earned a master’s degree from
Johns Hopkins University and a medical
degree from Hahnemann Medical College
in Philadelphia. After completing his
internship at the Medical College of Virginia, his residency at Abington Memorial
Hospital in Pennsylvania and his pulmonary fellowship at the University of
Rochester and Strong Memorial Hospital,
Krimins served as a major in the U.S. Army
Medical Command on active duty. He
specializes in internal medicine and pulmonary medicine, and has been a member
of the medical staff at AAMC since 1979.
An Annapolis staff member, Fred H.
Billups Jr., and two long-serving tutors,
Malcolm Wyatt and George Doskow,
became Honorary Alumni during the All
Alumni Gathering as part of Homecoming
weekend.
In his 35 years as a tutor Doskow taught
the entire undergraduate program and
much of the graduate program. He provided leadership as dean in the early 1980s,
and throughout his time as tutor helped
the college continue to re-examine its principles, said tutor Geoffrey Comber. “The
college has gained immeasurably from
George’s 35 years of service,” Comber said.
Malcolm Wyatt joined the college in
1958. He received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Virginia, and held a Fulbright Fellowship for
the study of mathematics at the University
of Nancy in France. He served as assistant
dean and as director of the Graduate
Institute.
Bud Billups has served as treasurer in
Annapolis since 1991. Before then, Billups
was executive director of the Pew Charitable Trusts in Philadelphia; he also served
for many years as an executive with Exxon.
At the time Billups joined the college,
President Christopher Nelson said, the
college was spending too much of its
endowment principal annually, staff
turnover and absenteeism were high, and
facilities were suffering. But in Billups’
tenure, the college has balanced the budget
or had solid surpluses for 12 years, cut
endowment spending in half, and has seen
its bond rating improve. Billups also supervised 150 construction and renovation
projects in Annapolis. x
�47
{Alumni Association News}
Iron City Alumni
Form Newest
Chapter
CHAPTER CONTACTS
Call the alumni listed below for information
about chapter, reading group, or other alumni
activities in each area.
ALBUQUERQUE
Bob & Vicki Morgan
505-275-9012
BALTIMORE
Deborah Cohen
410-472-9158
ANNAPOLIS
Beth Martin
410-280-0958
BOSTON
Ginger Kenney
617-964-4794
AUSTIN
Bev Angel
512-926-7808
CHICAGO
Lorna Johnson
773-338-8651
gary pierpoint
A group of Pittsburgh-area alumni transformed an enthusiastic reading group into
an official chapter this fall, receiving their
charter at Homecoming festivities last
October in Annapolis.
Given their creativity in putting together
seminars and sharing hosting duties, it’s no
wonder the chapter has had little difficulty in
attracting new members and getting alumni
together. For example, member Carol Brinjak (SGI96), who works for the Pittsburgh
Opera, arranged for the chapter to attend a
dress rehearsal of Benjamin Britten’s A Midsummer’s Night Dream; participants later
gathered for a dinner seminar on the play.
For another meeting, John Newell (A86),
a classics professor at the University of Pittsburgh, led the group in a discussion of Parmenides’ On Nature. “He brought us his
translation and notes, which were very helpful,” says Joanne Murray (A70), who has
been leading the chapter until a president is
elected. “The poem is pretty—opaque.”
Murray had been active in the Washington, D.C., reading group (which also later
became a chapter) and had good intentions
to form a chapter when she moved to Pittsburgh, where she is a material scientist for
Alcoa. She says the chapter owes a great debt
to Robert Hazo, class of 1953, who planted
the seeds by getting alumni together for seminars at Pitt.
“He wanted to expose his honors students
(at Pitt) to seminar-style discussions, and a
whole bunch of us (alumni) showed up,”
Murray says. “After we did the seminars on
American founding documents we decided
to keep going as a group.”
So far, the group has met only for seminars and opera performances, but “we keep
threatening to have a social function,”
ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE
ALUMNI ASSOCIATION
Alumni Board member Carol Freeman
presents a charter to Joanne Murray.
Murray says. Other seminar readings have
included Sartre’s “The Wall,” Melville’s
“Bartleby the Scrivener,” Dostoyevesky’s
Notes from the Underground, and Kuhn’s
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.
It takes patience and persistence to get a
chapter off the ground, Murray says. Seminars have drawn groups as small as three
people, but at the chapter’s most recent
seminars, “we had to keep bringing in more
chairs,” she says.
“It’s always a little bit slow. You start with
six people and get everybody’s schedule
coordinated,” Murray says. “You have to be
sensitive to every single person in the group
in order to get a critical mass together.”
While the group could have continued as
an informal gathering of alumni getting
together to read and talk about books, chapter status brings a valuable connection with
the Alumni Association.
“We benefit from the communications
from other chapters. I go to (association)
board meetings. Carol Freeman (AGI94)
sends around a list of readings and chapter
activities. It’s good to know what other chapters are doing and reading and what’s successful,” she says.
As a big city with a small-town atmosphere, Pittsburgh has been a great place to
start a chapter. “It’s easy to make connections in Pittsburgh,” she explains. “And of
DALLAS/FORT
WORTH
Suzanne Gill Doremus
817-927-2390
DENVER/BOULDER
Lee Goldstein
720-283-4659
MINNEAPOLIS/
ST. PAUL
Carol Freeman
612-822-3216
NEW YORK
Joe Boucher
718-222-1957
Whether from Annapolis or Santa Fe, undergraduate or Graduate Institute, Old Program
or New, graduated or not, 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 Alumni Association news
and events of interest.
President – Glenda Eoyang, SF76
Vice President – Jason Walsh, A85
Secretary –Barbara Lauer, SF76
Treasurer – Bill Fant, A79
Getting-the-Word-Out Action Team Chair –
Linda Stabler-Talty (SFGI76)
Web site – www.sjca.edu/aassoc/main.phtml
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.
course, all St. Johnnies are bonded for life.
You just have to put one St. Johnnie in a
room with others, and it’s instant seminar.”
The other founding members of the Pittsburgh chapter are: Bill and Natalie Blais
(both SF94); Sylvia Denys, an invited member; Marcus Eubanks (A88); Herb Feinberg
(A50); Ed Gelblum (A55); Henry Higman
(A48); Ken Joseph (A70); Meghan Hughes
(SF00); Judith Toliver Neely (A97); Ken
Shen (A86); Christopher Kurfess (A95,
EC96); Jeff Palmer (A96); and Clarence Watt
(A96). The group’s Web site, which includes
its reading list and planned seminars, is
www.hellos.com/sjc/ x
NORTHERN CALIF.
Jonathon Hodapp
831-393-9496
SANTA FE
Richard Cowles
505-986-1814
WASHINGTON DC
Jean Dickason
301-699-6207
PHILADELPHIA
Bart Kaplan
215-465-0244
SEATTLE
Amina Stickford
206-269-0182
PORTLAND
Dale Mortimer
360-882-9058
SOUTHERN
CALIFORNIA
Elizabeth Eastman
562-426-1934
ISRAEL
Emi Geiger Leslau
15 Aminadav Street
Jerusalem 93549
Israel
9-722-671-7608
boazl@cc.huji.ac.il
SAN DIEGO
Stephanie Rico
619-423-4972
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2004 }
TRIANGLE CIRCLE
(NC)
Susan Eversole
919-968-4856
�{St. John’s Forever}
robert S. Nugent
48
Santa Fe’s
Movie Star
mong the guests at the
first commencement in
Santa Fe was Englishborn actress Greer Garson, framed by these two
graduates. Best known
for her Academy Award-winning performance in Mrs. Miniver, Garson became a
patron of the Western campus of
St. John’s College during its early years.
A
Garson and her husband, Colonel E.E.
“Buddy” Fogelson (an oil man, rancher,
and lawyer), lived part of the year at their
Forked Lightning Ranch, north of Santa
Fe. Fogelson served on the Board of
Visitors and Governors from 1963-69,
and in 1963 hosted a board meeting at the
couple’s ranch. Fogelson made a gift
toward the preparation of architectural
plans while the campus was on the drawing board.
Garson took interest in the college’s
library and served as a member of the
volunteer Library Committee. She created the first library endowment—one that
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2004 }
At the first graduation of the Santa Fe
campus are, left to right: H. Glenn
Ballard (SF68), Greer Garson, and
James Liljenwall (SF68).
will purchase a book for the college each
year, in perpetuity. The koi pond and
garden between the student center and
academic complex were also funded by
Garson, as a memorial to her mother,
Nina. Although Garson became involved
in farming and breeding race horses, she
continued to act on Broadway and in
films. She died in 1996 at the age of 91 and
is buried in Texas. x
�{Alumni Events Calendar}
teri thomson randall
New Alumni: Michael Givens, Lynsey
Rubin, and Tevis Thompson, at last
summer’s Graduate Institute commencement in Santa Fe.
Santa Fe
Annapolis
A Call for Entries
Last year’s Alumni Art Show in Santa Fe
drew entries from award-winning documentary filmmakers, accomplished clay
artists, painters, and photographers, many
of whom who had shown their work across
the country. Participation in the annual
show has grown each year, and the reception that takes place as part of Homecoming has become one of the highlights of the
weekend in Santa Fe. Entries and inquiries
for this year’s show are welcome from both
Santa Fe and Annapolis alumni. For details
call Maggie Magalnick in Santa Fe, 505984-6199, or e-mail maggie@sjcsf.edu.
Annual Croquet Match
St. John’s vs. the U.S. Naval Academy
April 24, 2004
Homecoming: October 1-3, 2004
Reunion classes are 1934, 1939, 1944,
1949, 1954, 1959, 1964, 1969, 1974, 1979,
1984, 1989, 1994, 1999
Summer Alumni Program
Week 1: June 27-July 2
Week 2: July 4-July 9
Homecoming : July 2-4, 2004
Reunion Classes: 1969, 1974, 1979, 1984,
1989, 1994, 1999
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2004 }
�P ERIODICALS
P OSTAGE PAID
P UBLISHED BY THE
COMMUNICATIONS OFFICE
P.O. BOX 2800
A NNAPOLIS , M ARYLAND 21404
ADDRESS SERVICE REQUESTED
�
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Santa Fe, NM
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2004
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Text
The
College
St. John’s College
•
Annapolis
w i n t e r
•
2 0 0 3
Santa Fe
TheWife
of Bath
Reflections on
C h a u c e r’ s P i l g r i m a n d
Moder n Marriage
�On the Wife of Bath
t’s easy to imagine the Wife of Bath among the guests on the Jerry Springer
Show. The screen caption: “I was a lusty oon!” Unapologetic about her
appetites and seductive wiles, the oft-wed Wife would acknowledge that she
married older men for their money and was on the prowl for a man half her
age while burying her fourth husband. And—would Dr. Phil buy this?—she
blames her nature on astrology: “I followed my inclinacion/by vertu of my
constellacion.”
Several of the pilgrims in Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales share their observations on the matrimonial state, but none with the candor and outrageous good
humor of the Wife of Bath. Her lengthy, spirited prologue suggests the poet himself
had great fun with this pilgrim. Using her voice, he delivers wisdom he had acquired
from Ptolemy, Seneca, and Ovid, among others. In this edition of The College, managing editor Sus3an Borden revisited the Wife of Bath’s commentary on marriage
with five Johnnie couples, covering everything from fighting fair to what becomes of
two sets of Program books.
From a host of official documents, much is known about Chaucer’s public life, but
details on his personal life are sketchy. He was born in London around 1340, the son of
a successful wine merchant. He was lucky to survive the bubonic plague as it raged
through the city during his youth. He gained a post as a page in the household of the
Countess of Ulster. Here Chaucer gained knowledge of Latin, French, and literature,
though it’s unclear what formal education he received. He traveled to Spain and France
on diplomatic missions and served in the war with France.
Chaucer’s wife, Philippa, also served in the royal court. Biographers differ on
whether this marriage was a happy one, but there’s nothing to suggest Chaucer suffered at the hands of a shrewish wife. The couple had at least two children. Pensions,
various annuities including free wine, and plum positions as a customs official, and
later, the king’s clerk of works provided Chaucer with social standing and a comfortable lifestyle—along with the freedom to pursue poetry.
Chaucer began writing The Canterbury Tales the year Phillipa died, 1387, and of
course, never completed it. He died on October 25, 1400. Because of his service to
the crown, he was buried in Westminster Abbey, and later was moved to the east aisle
of the south transept, becoming the first tenant of Poet’s Corner.
A brief aside: The introduction of a great books character, instead of an author, to
our magazine’s cover startled our designer, Claude Skelton, who put Aristotle on the
first cover of The College. The selection delighted artist David Johnson, who said he
had great fun drawing the Wife of Bath.
Alert readers will also notice another change: The College has a new editor. Rest
assured that founding editor Barbara Goyette (A73), now vice president for advancement in Annapolis, will continue to offer a guiding hand and good advice in our quest
to offer a lively and thoughtful publication.
I
–RH
The College (usps 018-750)
is published quarterly 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
postmaster: Send address
changes to The College
Magazine, Communications
Office, St. John’s College,
Box 2800, Annapolis, md
21404-2800.
Annapolis
410-626-2539
reharty@sjca.edu
Rosemary Harty, editor
Sus3an Borden, managing editor
Susanne Ducker,
art director
Advisory Board
John Christensen
Harvey Flaumenhaft
Roberta Gable
Barbara Goyette
Kathryn Heines
Pamela Kraus
Joseph Macfarland
Jo Ann Mattson
Eric Salem
Brother Robert Smith
Santa Fe
505-984-6104
tshalizi@mail.sjcsf.edu
Laura J. Mulry, Santa Fe editor
Advisory Board
David Levine
Ginger Roherty
Tahmina Shalizi
Mark St. John
Magazine design by
Claude Skelton Design
�The
w i n t e r 2 0 0 3
2 9 , i s s u e 1
College
V o l u m e
The Magazine for Alumni of St. John’s College
Annapolis
•
Santa Fe
{Contents}
14
Fruitful Pursuits
page
d e p a r t m e n t s
2
Alumni involved in various aspects of the
wine industry explain why they’re so
taken with wine.
20
Johnnies on Marriage
page
The Wife of Bath had strong opinions on
marriage; alumni who married fellow
Johnnies reflect on her wit and wisdom.
page 14
• Modernist Architecture and Mellon Hall
• American Orpheus
• Graduate Institute Student Gets Johnnies
on Board
• Science at St. John’s Makes the Top Ten
• Animal Tales from Santa Fe
• Studying Conifers in the Mountains
• Santa Fe’s New Advancement Chief
• Announcements
• Philanthropia
• Letters
alumni voices
27 homecoming
30 bibliofile
24
Engaged in Discovery
12
page
Curtis Wilson is still on a quest to learn
all he can about early astronomers.
• Peter Pesic’s New Book on Physics
• Alumni Books
44
Dance of the Muses
32
page
Exploring the poetry of Homer and
Aeschylus through dance.
from the bell towers
alumni notes
A LU M N I
page 20
P RO F I L E S
33 Peter Ellison (A73) finds new challenges
as a Harvard dean.
34 Environmental lawyer and tutor Martha
Franks (SF78) brings idealism and a practical approach to the water rights issue.
38 Jonathan Aurthur (A68) searches for
answers to his son’s suicide in The Angel
and the Dragon.
42 Ben Frey (A02) finds art in bookbinding
obituaries
46 alumni association news
48 st. john’s forever
40
page 24
on the cover
Wife of Bath
Illustration by David Johnson
�2
{From the Bell Towers}
The Neutra
Chronicles
Austrian-born architect
Richard Neutra made his mark
in modernist architecture in
sunny California with simple
structures featuring flat roofs,
expansive glass walls, and interiors open to verdant hillsides
or colorful desert views. Neutra
was particularly known for
blurring the lines between the
exterior and interior, believing
that architects should “place
man in Nature…where he
developed and where he feels
most at home.”
How did St. John’s College,
its landmark building a 200year-old Georgian mansion,
decide on Richard Neutra as
architect for its new campus
building in the mid-1950’s? A
campus plan already called for
a quasi-colonial building. Correspondence between the
famed architect and then-president Richard Weigle yielded
evidence for part of the story of
Mellon Hall. Along with hundreds of documents on minutiae such as carpet color and the
fabric for the stage curtains in
Francis Scott Key Auditorium,
the letters show Weigle admired
Neutra, and suggest that he
hoped to gain distinction for
the college by selecting a
celebrity architect.
Neutra made the cover of
the August 15, 1949, Time
magazine, the headline asking,
“What will the neighbors
think?” The story, included
with a set of press clippings
kept in the files, detailed Neutra’s success and described him
as second “only to the lordly
Frank Lloyd Wright.” (Wright
by this time had distanced himself from Neutra, refusing to
allow his designs to be included
david trozzo
The story behind
Mellon Hall
in Annapolis
Last September, the College unveiled a greatly improved Mellon Hall. the $12.9 million renovation undertaken in April 2001 added new space, upgraded and improved mechanical systems and
generally produced a more pleasant and functional building. A new wing of the building houses
a pottery studio, a darkroom, and the Hodson Trust Conference Room (shown above). A solarium
café honors Neutra’s vision of uniting interior spaces with nature. A red tile floor installed
throughout the building brightens long, unbroken corridors. A new environmentally friendly
cooling system—geared to operate at off-peak hours—circulates cool air during the day. Francis
Scott Key Auditorium has new heating and air-conditioning systems, enhanced theater lighting
and sound, refurbished seating, new fire suppression systems, and improved lobby space. Science
labs were renovated and upgraded.
in an exhibit alongside those of
his former protégé.) It’s likely
that something in Neutra’s
rhetoric resonated with the
ideals of the Program, not yet
two decades old. A yellowed
clipping in one file includes a
Neutra quote that must have
seemed particularly cogent: “A
school,” says Neutra, “is essentially a container out of which
organic life can bloom.”
Philosophy aside, Neutra’s
prominence must have appealed
to a college still struggling to
boost enrollment from 220 to
300 and still managing limited
resources. The architect was at
the peak of his popularity when
he came to St. John’s to give a
lecture at the same time the
college was forging ahead with
its building plans. Paul Mellon’s Old Dominion Foundation came through with $1.5
million of the estimated $2.1
million project cost. (The phi-
lanthropist Mellon was briefly a
member of the class of 1944.)
Neutra’s fame could only help
to shine the light on this small
college.
The files reflect Neutra’s
personal commitments to a
relatively small and obscure
project; he didn’t just loan his
famous name to the design.
While Neutra’s partner,
Robert Alexander, handled
many of the project’s details,
Neutra made several trips to
Annapolis to oversee construction and corresponded closely
with Weigle. His letters—some
in his bold, slanting script—
reflect that he considered himself as much a philosopher as
an architect, and that the New
Program at St. John’s intrigued
him. Neutra accepted the job
for considerably less than his
regular fee (though not as low
as Weigle had tried to bargain
for, one letter shows). The
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 }
contract was signed on April
15, 1955.
The familiarity between the
two Richards, and between
Weigle’s wife, Mary, and Neutra’s wife, Dionne, grew over
the years, as reflected in handwritten notes from Pakistan
and postcards from Rio. The
letters and notes are all written
in the graciously charming
rhetoric of a time gone by. Neutra once loaned Weigle his car
when the president made a
business trip to California in
1959: “I quite fell in love with
that little Nash,” he wrote to
Neutra. In 1957, Neutra—who
at one time offered to raise
money for the college’s
planned California campus—
thanked the Weigles for a
Christmas gift: “Smoked tuna
is one of my great favorites!”
Apparently, Weigle’s public
relations goals for the building
were successful. President
�{From the Bell Towers}
American Orpheus
3
I was studying at the Stuttgart Conservatory on the G.I. bill when
Mellon Hall first opened in 1958. [Musician and tutor] Victor
Zuckerkandl wrote me to say he had been approached by [thenpresident] Dick Weigle, who had told him that Paul Mellon was
planning to give the school $30,000 to do something “really
grand” for the opening.
Weigle asked Vicki if he had any ideas and Vicki said yes, he had
a wonderful idea. He had just learned that the first great opera
ever written, Monteverdi’s Orfeo, had never had a stage production in the U.S.
“How would that be appropriate, Dr. Zukerkandl?” asked
Weigle.
“Well,” Vicki said, “Wasn’t Francis Scott Key the American
Orpheus?”
Vicki told me that Weigle looked dubious and said he would
think about it. He asked if I had any other ideas for the opening
because he feared that Weigle wouldn’t buy the “American
Orpheus” connection. I wrote back to say that I did. I had just
learned about the following astonishing chain of circumstances:
Lorenzo da Ponte was born just outside of Venice in the middle
of the 18th century to a Jewish family. His mother died when he
was young and his father remarried a Christian woman. The whole
family was converted to Catholicism. Da Ponte went to seminary,
became a priest, and went on to have a very colorful life.
He moved to Vienna where he was the official composer to one
of the imperial theaters, writing a number of libretti for operas
including Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Cosi
fan Tutte.
Da Ponte fell in love with an English contralto and married her.
They fled the Holy Roman Empire to England where he produced
opera for about 20 years, then moved to the U.S. in the early 19th
century. Da Ponte first had a grocery store in Philadelphia, then in
Elizabeth, N.J., where one of his customers was William Livingston,
the son of a prominent American family.
William Livingston became fascinated by Da Ponte and had him
appointed the first professor of Italian literature in the U.S., at
Columbia College. Da Ponte took a house in Manhattan and
Nathaniel Sickles, the son of a well-known New York family,
moved in with the Da Pontes and was tutored by Lorenzo’s son, a
professor at the school that was to become N.Y.U.
Sickles became very friendly with Lorenzo and fell in love with
his step-granddaughter (who was generally believed to be his real
granddaughter). Around 1840, they married. Sickles became a
New York state assemblyman and was eventually elected to Congress.
Sickles and his wife moved to Washington and his wife began a
very public affair with St. John’s alumnus Philip Barton Key (class
of 1822), who was the district attorney of the District of Columbia,
as his father, Francis Scott Key (SJC class of 1796), had been. Sickles became enraged by the affair, followed Key to Lafayette Square,
and shot him dead.
“So Vicki,” I said, “any one of the Da Ponte libretti, particularly
Cosi fan Tutte, would be appropriate for the opening.”
Vicki was delighted by the story, but as it turned out, an alternate plan for a suitable opening production was not necessary.
The previous Sunday he and some old friends from Austria had
visited Fort McHenry. They spent the day walking all around the
battlements. As they were leaving, they passed a large bronze statue of Francis Scott Key. Engraved on the marble plinth were the
words: “Francis Scott Key, the American Orpheus.” x
Dwight D. Eisenhower attended dedication ceremonies for
the building in 1959, attracting
a great deal of media attention.
The building was also included
in a Newsweek feature on distinctive new campus buildings,
along with a project at Yale.
Before and after the building
was occupied, flaws came to
light: The roof leaked. Adhesive oozed from between floor
tiles. The reflecting pool—such
a successful element in so many
Neutra projects—couldn’t hold
water. The solar louvers
designed to save energy
trapped pigeons and never
worked properly.
Walking an architecture critic through the building last
September, Ziger/Snead architect Joseph Celucci, who headed up the recent renovation,
flaws that might have been
avoided had the project been
adequately funded from the
outset.
Nevertheless, St. John’s still
possesses an architectural jewel:
one of the last remaining Neutra
buildings on the East Coast, an
ambitious design that tried to
strike a balance between the
upper and lower campuses,
between old and new, simple
and ornate. And Mellon Hall,
Celucci added, really is a good
Neutra building. It exemplified
what the architect did best, and
for the most part, remained true
to his ideals. Stand in the lobby
of the Francis Scott Key auditorium, and it’s easy to imagine
what Neutra had in mind.
In a letter to the editor of
Architectural Record, dated
July 1959, Neutra wrote of his
Monteverdi’s Orfeo was performed on January 31 and
February 1, 1959, in celebration of the opening of Francis Scott Key
Auditorium and Mellon Hall. As we celebrate the building’s recently completed renovation, ADAM P INSKER (class of 1952) tells the
story behind the college’s decision to stage the opera.
Richard Neutra
explained that a tight construction budget in the 1950s was
one factor in the building’s
shortcomings; later renovations, including the $12.9 million expansion and renovation
completed this fall, corrected
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 }
goals for the building and
compared St. John’s to the
great universities of Europe.
St. John’s, he said, would
endure as they have: “There is
a great stimulation—I almost
said a thrill—to meet [the]
most advanced thinkers of our
age in old, long-lived universities and see them teach modern science way beyond the
horizon of former centuries,
right in halls and buildings
which have been built in those
now long bygone days. The
faculty of St. John’s in
Annapolis has this fascinating
capacity of Time-binding, and
from the start we have among
ourselves discussed and tried
to grasp and express this faith
in values that last beyond historic and modish realities.” x
—by Rosemary Harty
�4
{From the Bell Towers}
Johnnies
On board
We Do That
“Sail like Odysseus, without
having to be tied to the
mast!” So went the siren call
for recruits to the newly
formed Johnnie Sailing Club,
the inspiration of John
Bergquist, a Graduate Institute student with an Alberg
30-foot sailboat and a job as a
naval architect in Annapolis.
Bergquist placed posters for
the new club all over campus,
offering students sailing lessons, a chance to join the racing team, or simply the opportunity to get out on the water
for those disinclined to join
the crew club. So far, about 40
undergraduate and graduate
students have signed on.
Bergquist is a naval architect with a bachelor’s in naval
architecture and master’s in
marine technology, and his
work has included programming for tanker performance
testing, industrial fabrication,
and service on commercial
vessels. He arrived at the
Graduate Institute last fall in
search of personal enrichment.
“I graduated with a glorified trade school education,”
he says. “It was very practical,
but I had maybe two classes in
the liberal arts.”
Bergquist found a way to
merge liberal arts and sailing
in the Johnnie Sailing Club,
begun last spring when he
acquired a boat named Calliope (the muse invoked in the
Odyssey and the Aeneid). Last
July, Bergquist and some fellow students started to take
part in Annapolis’ famed
sara white wilson
A Graduate
Institute student
brings serious
sailing to St. John’s.
Wednesday night boat races
on his boat, and Bergquist
hopes to have some students
hardy enough to participate in
the Annapolis Yacht Club’s
winter frostbite series.
In the Johnnie way, it wasn’t enough just to take students racing and cruising;
Bergquist also offered a series
of Wednesday evening classes
on sailing and seamanship,
covering topics such as the
physics of sailing, racing tactics, and navigation. “He has
a wonderful understanding of
fluid dynamics, both aero and
hydro,” says sophomore
Christopher Muscarella. “It
adds a component more than
mere boat handling and adds a
Heeding the siren’s call on
College Creek.
depth of understanding that
many sailors lack.”
Bergquist’s yacht is a great
addition to the water sports
program, says athletic director Leo Pickens. “Our boats
aren’t really rigged out with
all the bells and whistles for
racing,” Pickens says.
Ultimately, the new club
offers a way to leave Hegel or
Heidegger behind for a few
hours on the Chesapeake.
“Sailing is a form of
escapism,” says Muscarella.
“In Santa Fe, they have mountains. In Annapolis, we have
the water.” x
–Beth Schulman
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 }
Many at St. John’s clipped a
full-page article from the September 24 New York Times
science section and crowed
about it in that self-satisfied
tone of people who love to be
proven right.
That’s because the article
on the “10 Most Beautiful Science Experiments of All
Time” featured seven that are
performed regularly in the
college’s laboratory program.
State University of New YorkStony Brook Professor Robert
P. Crease, also the historian at
Brookhaven National Laboratory, asked physicists to nominate the most beautiful experiments of all time and wrote
about the results for Physics
World.
The simple experiments
were chosen, according to
the Times, on “beauty in the
classical sense: the logical
simplicity of the apparatus,
like the logical simplicity of
the analysis, seems as
inevitable and pure as the
lines of a Greek monument.
Confusion and ambiguity are
momentarily swept aside, and
something new about nature
becomes clear.”
The experiments on the list
that students on both campuses regularly perform are:
Galileo’s experiment on
falling objects; Young’s light
interference experiment;
Millikan’s oil-drop experiment; Newton’s decomposition of sunlight with a prism;
Galileo’s experiments with
rolling balls down inclined
planes; Rutherford’s discovery of the nucleus; and
Young’s double-slit experiment applied (by Planck and
Einstein) to the interference
of single neutrons. x
�5
{From the Bell Towers}
A Duck’s
Tale
Courage and perseverance in
the face of hardship and
tragedy pay off. A recent
blessed event on the Santa Fe
campus proves it. But first
some background: In the
spring of 1999 some feckless
folk gave their kids two baby
ducks for Easter and were surprised to see them grow. Not
wishing to deal with these
messy but harmless critters,
they traumatized their children
by handing the ducks over to
the Santa Fe animal shelter—
which does its best to save anything but is not well equipped
to deal with waterfowl. Most of
the offers to give them
“homes” were motivated by
visions of duck à l’orange.
What were the animal protectors to do?
Betsy Starr (née Hamilton,
SF88), protector of God’s more
innocent creatures, was working for the shelter at the time
and brought them home. Mr.
The unexpected ducklings
and their parents.
Starr, tutor and clandestine
friend of animals, built them a
fenced yard behind the casita
on the south corner of lower
campus. The ducks proved to
be a male and a female
(Ambrose—later renamed Utka
for theological reasons—and
Blossom).
That fall, tragedy struck.
Their prefab igloo was not
secure against predators, and
Blossom fell prey to a raccoon
out for a midnight snack. Rescued by Mrs. Starr from his
wife’s fate, Utka was given a
plywood fortress and saved
from loneliness by the arrival
of the beautiful orange Peach.
Thus these ducks began two
years of persistent procreative
endeavor. The broody Ms. Peach
produced nearly an egg a day
from April to October in 2000.
Realizing that Peach was longing for a full nest, Mr. Starr
rearranged the fowl apartment
to accommodate egg-sitting,
and for the next year and a half
Peach produced what is called a
“clutch” of eight to twelve eggs
every couple of months and sat
on them until they started to
smell bad. The two nesting
ducks had a fertility problem,
and the Starrs, partly relieved
and partly sorry, resigned
themselves to using the unfertile eggs for pisyanki,
omelettes, and the like. The
relief was short-lived. After
another barren summer, while
the Starrs were on vacation,
Peach valiantly produced
another clutch with her attentive partner’s more efficacious
help. Upon return the Starrs
noted that brooding was again
in process. Expecting more
reproductive disappointment
for the poor ducks, they decided to leave them to their bravely fruitless work.
Sunday morning, September
1, 2002, Mrs. Starr went out to
feed Utka and Peach, and heard
unfamiliar peeping sounds.
Investigating the mystery, she
found a new-hatched duckling
emerging from an egg, and
some tiny siblings already moving about the nest. From the
first week, during which the
four baby ducks could (and did)
all swim together in a little
water dish, they have in six
short weeks grown into very
fine, stalwart adolescence.
Apricot, Posey, Gwyneth, and
Lance (as they are tentatively
called) are doing fine, and their
proud parents seem very
pleased. x
—David Starr, tutor, Santa Fe
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 }
Allanbrook
Honored
The Cultural Arts Foundation
of Anne Arundel County
selected Tutor Emeritus
Douglas Allanbrook as one
of the recipients of an
“Annie” award for lifetime
achievement. The honor recognizes individuals who have
made significant contributions to the cultural life of
Annapolis and Anne Arundel
County.
A renowned composer
and harpsichordist, Allanbrook joined St. John’s in
1952. In November, the college celebrated his 50 years
at St. John’s with a recital of
his works and a reception.
Allanbrook continues to
teach French at the college.
He is an active member of the
board at Yaddo, an artists’
residential community in
Saratoga Springs, N.Y., and a
member of the advisory board
for the Great Books of Western Civilization program of
the Encyclopedia Britannica.
Allanbrook is at work on a
novel and his sixth string
quartet. x
�6
{From the Bell Towers}
Philanthropia’s
New Direction
“I started to
feel that it
would be a
good idea to
help educate
alumni about
the needs of
the college.”
Brett Heavner
Not long after graduating from
law school at Duke University,
Brett Heavner (A89) noticed
that something was missing in
his life. That something, he
says, was a mailbox full of fundraising letters from St. John’s
College.
“My law school contacted me
all the time, so I was surprised
that I was not pressured in the
same way by St. John’s to give. I
started to feel that it would be a
good idea to help educate
alumni about the needs of the
college.”
Today, Heavner is in a position to do just that as chair of
Philanthropia, the alumni
organization dedicated to
alumni fund raising. A major
part of the group’s efforts is
devoted to educating alumni
about the needs and financial
workings of St. John’s.
Heavner’s first involvement
with Philanthropia was in 1998,
when he was asked to attend a
brainstorming session for the
relatively new group. (Philanthropia started in 1997.) He
quickly signed on as reunion
class leader for the class of ’89,
then chair of the reunion class
leader committee, and now he
leads the entire organization.
A great deal has changed
since that initial brainstorming
session, says Heavner. “When
Philanthropia was first being
developed, the college
Advancement Office was not
fully staffed. We did much of
our own legwork, we had a
strategy committee, we had
committees that planned different aspects of fund raising.”
Now that Philanthropia is up
and running and the college
has hired more staff to support
the group, Heavner says that
the volunteers’ role has shifted.
“Volunteers can focus more on
recruiting fellow alumni and
contacting classmates,” he
says. “We are also getting more
comfortable in our relationship
with the Alumni Association.”
Early on, he explains, there
were questions about possible
competition with the Association. “That doesn’t make
sense,” he says. “We don’t
want to compete. We’re really
just a group of volunteers who
want to educate fellow alumni
about the needs of the college
and to foster the habit of regular giving.”
As Heavner became involved
with Philanthropia, he found
one of its educational mes-
sages—alumni participation—
particularly interesting. “One
of the things that struck me is
that the percentage of participation by alumni is as important as the dollar amounts they
give. When St. John’s goes for
corporate or government
grants or nonprofit funding,
they’re competing with other
colleges, and one of the things
these organizations look for is
the amount of support the college has from its alumni.”
When Philanthropia started,
St. John’s was toward the bottom: about 22 percent of alumni gave to the college. Other
liberal arts colleges, such as
Williams, Bowdoin, and
Amherst, ranged from 57 to 66
percent. Five years into Philanthropia, St. John’s alumni participation has climbed to 29
percent.
“I certainly didn’t understand this as a recently graduated alumnus,” says Heavner.
“I think I, like many others,
thought, ‘if I’m really
strapped for cash in graduate
school, I don’t want to send
something stupid like five
bucks so I’ll just wait until I
have more money.’ But now I
understand that those five
dollars would have gone further, they would have made
St. John’s more competitive.”
Under Heavner’s leadership, Philanthropia is working
on developing special class
gifts during reunion years,
communicating regularly with
all alumni and encouraging
them to give to the Annual
Fund. They also sponsor social
events each year throughout
the country.
“We’re heading in a new
direction now that we’ve had
fairly successful reunion class
programs,” says Heavner.
“We’re trying to keep the
momentum going by having
class archons who will take
responsibility for maintaining
addresses, sending out end-ofyear holiday postcards, maintaining and updating class web
sites, and keeping in contact
between reunion class years.”
Heavner’s relationship to the
college is not, of course, all
about fund raising. He says that
his class has always been fairly
close and, living in Washington, D.C., he sees a number of
alumni regularly. His brother,
Bryce (A93), is also an alumnus.
In addition, the Annapolis
campus holds a special place in
his heart. Although he and his
high school sweetheart, Christine, had split up during college, the two reunited in 1996
to attend the Lafayette Ball for
St. John’s 300th anniversary.
The couple married a year
later in the Great Hall. Look
for them and their two toddlers, Graham and Tess, on the
sidelines of this year’s croquet
match. x
The Freshmen: A Few Facts
St. John’s College welcomed 263 freshmen to the college last
September: 124 in Annapolis and 139 in Santa Fe. Counter to
the trend many liberal arts colleges are seeing, men still outnumber women: (72 to 52 in Annapolis; 80 to 59 in Santa Fe). More
than 50 percent of the students at each campus were 18 at the time
of enrollment. Santa Fe draws the highest number of students
from California (27), Colorado (15), and Texas (12). In Annapolis,
Marylanders dominate (17) with Virginians close behind (14).
New York and Pennsylvania yielded 10 freshmen apiece.
Santa Fe enrolled 34 students who had received National Merit
honors, Annapolis, 47. Most students at both campuses attended
public secondary schools. x
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 }
�7
{From the Bell Towers}
Michael Franco: Energizing Advancement in Santa Fe
teri thompson randall
Here’s a fact about Michael Franco that clearly
defines the mettle he is made of: He had the
nerve, growing up outside of Boston, to be a
diehard Yankees fanatic—“not fan, fanatic,” he
says. That takes courage in Red Sox country.
Learning from and later working with Jesuits
at Boston College, Franco adapted the Jesuit
philosophy of “don’t ask for permission, ask for
forgiveness” as he climbed the ranks of college
advancement. “I’ve always interpreted that saying as a call to act and to follow through on
what you believe,” he says.
Franco, who joined St. John’s last summer as
the vice president for college advancement in
Santa Fe, brings many years of experience in
college advancement with institutions including Boston College, Roger Williams University,
Michael Franco
The Rhode Island School of Design, and the
University of Rochester.
In a recent Board of Visitors and Governors
meeting in Annapolis, Santa Fe President John
Balkcom praised Franco for prompting the
campus to re-examine entrenched ways of
doing things and for bringing new energy and
ideas to the advancement efforts and management of the college.
A short six months spent on the job, and
Franco has discovered the key facts that will
shape his approach to the work before him.
While other institutions he has worked for have much larger alumni bases from which they can draw financial support (Boston College counts 135,000 alumni, for example), St. John’s has something else—what Franco calls “the power and centrality of the
Program.”
“Everything we do here begins and ends with the Program,”
Franco says. “The real key to our message is the receptivity of our
audience. In a short time, I’ve seen what strong emotional ties our
alumni have to the college. I’ve seen that in the letters people
send, the passion and intensity of their loyalty.”
Franco says his most recent position, as
advancement vice president at the Rhode Island
School of Design, best prepared him for the challenges of St. John’s. “Some of the strategies and
programs we were able to start in Rhode Island are
good lessons for me as I begin to help define what
the advancement role for the Santa Fe campus
needs to be,” he says.
Although very different institutions, the two
schools share in common a loyal alumni base, and
fund raising at both share the same dynamics,
says Franco. “If you stay true to your mission,
your alumni will support you.”
Franco grew up in Fall River, Mass., a gritty
blue-collar town (home of Lizzie Borden), the
youngest of three children of a Portuguese father
and Irish mother. His father worked as a galvanizer, which Franco says, “basically involved pouring molten lead into molds.” The economic boom
that benefited other towns in the Boston area
never reached Fall River. In a town where many of
the young people didn’t go beyond high school,
Franco went on to earn a bachelor’s at Boston
College, a master’s at Boston University and a
Ph.D. at the University of Rochester—a source of
great pride for his family.
“I’m a survivor—I think people who come out
of Fall River share that in common,” he says. “I
don’t look back; I keep going.”
Franco and his wife, Susan, were grateful to trade Rochester
winters and muggy Boston summers for sunny Santa Fe. But the
transition from a brick house in downtown Providence to an adobe
house on a dirt road has taken some getting used to for the city
dwellers.
“I refer to our house as the wild kingdom,” Franco says. “At
any given moment there are raccoons in the chimney, coyotes
running through the yard, mice aplenty. My wife even saw a bear
the other night.” x
“Everything we
do here begins
and ends with
the Program.”
Announcements
The Santa Fe and Annapolis
campuses each welcomed four
new tutors this fall.
New Tutors at Santa Fe
MICHAEL ANDREWS received a
bachelor’s degree in history
from Montana State University
in 1992. He received an M.A. in
1997 from Tulane University,
and is expecting to receive a
Ph.D. this coming year. His dissertation, “The Endless
Republic: Liberty, Tradition,
and the Flight from the Past,”
is a study of the origins and the
subsequent development of the
idea of liberty and related concepts such as individualism and
personal autonomy.
MONIKA CASSEL received an
A.B. in comparative literature,
magna cum laude, from Princeton University in 1992. She pursued graduate studies in comparative literature at the
University of Michigan, where
she received her Ph.D. in 2002.
The title of her dissertation is
“Poetesses at the Grave:
Transnational Circulation of
Women’s Memorial Verse in
Nineteenth-Century England,
Germany, and America.”
INGO FARIN was born in East
Germany and raised in West
Germany. He received an M.A.
from the Free University of
Berlin in 1985, and expects to
complete a Ph.D. in philosophy
from Indiana University this
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 }
August. Farin’s dissertation is
“Before Being and Time: Heidegger’s Life Philosophy.” His
areas of interest have recently
included phenomenology,
hermeneutics, existentialism,
and critical theory, as well as
the history of philosophy.
A 1994 graduate of St. John’s
Santa Fe campus, KENNETH
WOLFE received a Ph.D. in
classics from the University of
California, Berkeley, in 2002,
with a dissertation on “The
�8
{From the Bell Towers}
Announcements
Relation of the Form to the
Intellect in Plotinus.” His special interests include ancient
philosophy, intellectual history, social history, and Greek
and Latin literature.
New Tutors in Annapolis
SRIRAM NAMBIAR received a
bachelor’s degree in chemical
engineering from the Indian
Institute of Technology in
Madras, and a Ph.D. in philosophy from the State University
of New York, Buffalo. He specialized in the history and philosophy of logic, mathematics,
and natural science. He wrote a
dissertation on George Boole
and he taught in the departments of chemistry, education,
and philosophy. He has also
been a research assistant in
experimental and computational studies of the thermophysical properties of chemical
mixtures, and in experimental
and theoretical studies of fluid
mechanics of soil erosion.
LOUIS PETRICH received a
bachelor’s degree in English
(continued)
from Northwestern University,
where he began his studies in
an integrated science program
but shifted majors when his
interest turned to poetry. He
received a master’s degree
from the Committee on Social
Thought at the University of
Chicago, where his work
emphasized philosophy and literature, especially the plays of
Shakespeare. He spent many
years in theater activities. As a
member of the Peace Corps in
Czechoslovakia, he taught English language and American
culture and literature.
JASON TIPTON received a
bachelor’s degree in neurobiology, with a minor in philosophy, from the University of California at San Diego. He then
received a master’s degree in
philosophy and another one in
ecology and evolutionary biology from Tulane University,
from which he also received a
Ph.D. in philosophy, with a dissertation on Aristotle’s Parts of
Animals. He has published articles on Plato’s dialogues and on
“This [diversity]
initiative
allows for
a more
concentrated
effort.”
–Lawrence Clendenin
Aristotle’s biological writings,
and a number of scientific articles on fish, his research specialty. He has worked in the
Aegean studying the life histories of marine life that Aristotle
discusses.
A graduate of St. John’s
Graduate Institute in Annapolis, JOANNA TOBIN received a
bachelor’s degree in medieval
and Renaissance studies from
Wellesley College, after which
she worked at a classical repertory theater in New York. She
then worked at fund raising and
producing large events for a
Washington foundation. Her
rachel martin
From Concept to Structure
At Santa Fe last fall,
freshmen studying
Euclid’s ELEMENTS
were assigned a project
to create a visual representation of interpropositional connections. Given free rein,
students pursued a
variety of media, from
paintings to flow
charts. Shown here is
Nichole Miller, who
drew from her experience constructing
three-dimensional
installation art to create this elaborate representation of the
relationships between
propositions in Book 1.
Her installation was
on exhibit in the lobby
of Weigle Hall.
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 }
political experience includes
working in the 1992 Clinton/
Gore campaign and working for
Vice President Al Gore and Tipper Gore. She will soon complete a doctorate in government
from Georgetown University
with a dissertation on Emerson’s view of democracy.
Diversity in Santa Fe
The Santa Fe campus has a new
initiative to increase diversity
on campus and has begun to
reflect on ways to better support minority students.
JOAQUIN BACA (SF95) joined
the staff in August as assistant
director of Admissions. In addition to regular admissions
functions, Baca is working with
tutor Victoria Mora to attract
and support a more diverse
population at the Santa Fe
campus. Admissions Director
Lawrence Clendenin (SF77)
explains that hiring a full-time
staff member dedicated to
looking “wider and harder”
within the region for potential
Johnnies should yield an
increase in minority applicants.
Baca’s role will be to increase
an awareness of the college for
students who might not otherwise consider St. John’s, particularly among Hispanics, who
make up 42 percent of New
Mexico’s population, and
Native Americans, who make
up 9.2 percent of the state’s
population.
“There has always been an
effort to find students from the
region, but this initiative
allows for a more concentrated
effort, with some added strategies,” Baca says. “It may also
help that I am from the area,
am bilingual, and am very
familiar with issues minority
students face.”
Prior to joining the Santa Fe
admissions staff, Baca assisted
in the start-up of a charter high
school, where he served as a
teacher, service-learning coordinator, and technology coordinator. x
�{From the Bell Towers}
9
Metamorphosis
in the Mountains
Students in Santa Fe study classification
by taking a careful look at conifers.
teri thompson randall
Jonathan Katzman
among the conifers.
devise their own systems of
classification.
First stop for the class is
“A large part
of this lab is to
see things as
they really are.”
–Karen Powell
7,400 feet, the same elevation
as the campus. Working under
the guidance of tutors Hans
von Briesen, David Pierotti,
and Ewen Harrison, the students pair up to examine the
piñon pines and junipers that
also dot the hillside around
campus.
“The students should be
forewarned to take copious
notes because once the specimens are brought back to the
class, it is hard to put them
on the tree again,” the writ-
teri thompson randall
Carl Linnaeus advised “attentive and diligent observation”
to all who take on the task of
classifying plants and animals.
Each year, students in freshman laboratory on the Santa
Fe campus take that advice to
heart as they follow in the
footsteps of the “Father of
Taxonomy,” trekking 10,000
feet above the high desert
floor to a marvelous outdoor
classroom: the Sangre de
Cristo mountains.
Fresh in their minds on this
expedition are Linnaeus’ Systema Naturae and Genera
Plantarum, Goethe’s Metamorphosis of Plants, and
Thoreau’s Faith in a Seed: The
Dispersion of Seeds and Other
Late Natural History Writings. At three different elevations, the Santa Fe freshmen
study the conifers, record as
much detail as they can, and
bring specimens back to the
laboratory, where they will
A mountain laboratory.
ten assignment reads, echoing Linnaeus’ advice. “Usually, too few questions are
asked, not too many!”
Chris Lintecum, from
Kansas City, Missouri, holds
a branch between his fingers
and studies it carefully.
“See how the needles are
contracting into the pine
cone? Strange, I’ve looked at
these all my life,” he says to
his partner. “It looks like it’s
contracting, but on the inside
it’s expanding, forming new
parts. Each tip has the potential to form new pine cones.”
Each successive stop provides greater variety of flora.
At the third stop, a lofty
10,000 feet, different species
thrive: corkbark fir, Engelmann spruce, aspen. The
weather is different here,
too—cold and damp, more like
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 }
winter than mid-September.
An early morning storm has
left white patches of hail on
the steep mountain slope.
The students work quickly
and are eager to return to
the vans.
On the ride back to campus
the conversation shifts to
another metamorphosis—
their own. They’re aware of
the power of asking questions
in a new way.
“A large part of this lab is
to see things as they really
are—to get rid of your preconceived notions,” notes Karen
Powell, from Fort Pierce,
Florida.
“I can’t imagine going to
school anywhere else,” Lintecum says. “I could be sitting
in a lecture right now.” x
—By Teri Thomson Randall
�10
A Gift
of Greek
Grammar
While other colleges ply freshmen with snack packets and
CD cases—often from vendors
and credit card companies
eager for access to college students—St. John’s in Annapolis
this year gave students a truly
meaningful and advertisingfree welcome gift: a copy of the
Liddell-Scott lexicon of
ancient Greek.
In his convocation speech to
the freshman class, President
Christopher Nelson talked
about translating ancient
Greek in tutorials, and how this
part of the St. John’s Program
helps lead students to a new
way of seeing: “Spend time
with your lexicon and consider
the many different ways a sentence can be translated and
understood,” he told the freshman class. “Your lexicon will
be more than an aid to vocabulary and translation. It will also
be an aid to philosophy. It will
{From the Bell Towers}
help you ask and try to answer
that big, big question: what is
this thing in front of me?”
Although the fall convocation marked the first year for
the gift, Harvey Flaumenhaft,
dean, said the gift so perfectly
symbolizes initiation into the
world of St. John’s, that it
already smacks of tradition.
A Delicate Balance
“ Spend time
with your
lexicon and
consider the
many different
ways a sentence
can be translated
and understood.”
–President Christopher Nelson
“Within a couple of years,
people will think we’ve been
doing it for centuries,” Flaumenhaft said. x
At the Santa Fe campus, students in freshman laboratory bring
their experiments on gravity to the Coffee Shop. Students have
grown adept at balancing the venerated St. John’s chairs over
the center of gravity. “It creates quite an interesting tableau,”
says lab director David Pierotti.
{Letters}
Crime and Punishment
There is little I can disagree with in your
article “Crime and Punishment” in the
Summer 2002 issue of The College. However, I would like to add an additional perspective derived from my experience as an
assistant public defender in the rural Florida county where I live. Everything I have
read or heard about the criminal justice
system elsewhere in the country suggests
that my perspective is in no way unique,
and my observations can be extrapolated,
although obviously with modifications, to
the country as a whole.
In rural Florida, a significant percentage
of criminal activity is a direct consequence
of the extremely unequal distribution of
wealth in our society. What I am getting at
is not solely the unequal access to parental
care, mental health treatment, educational
and job opportunities which is, in any case,
perhaps more characteristic of poverty in
rural areas of this country than elsewhere.
Instead, what I wish to suggest is that many
crimes (or, more accurately, much of what
is prosecuted as crime, since prosecutorial
discretion is fundamental to the system)
are directly connected to poverty, plain and
simple. These are crimes that apply to all
strata of the population but which disproportionately affect the poor. More than
that, they are crimes of poverty, since
those who are not poor are effectively
immunized against them.
Where I practice law, the crime most
emblematic of this situation is known as
“DWLSR”: driving with license suspended
or revoked (with knowledge), a first-degree
misdemeanor in Florida and punishable by
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 }
up to one year in the county jail. There are
numerous reasons why the Department of
Motor Vehicles can suspend your driver’s
license in this state. Most common is failure to pay traffic fines, fines for previous
criminal acts, or child support.
During the past year, I have represented
several dozen individuals whose only
crimes, at the time they were incarcerated
and for which they were sentenced to up to
11 months in jail, were one or more counts
of driving with a suspended license. In at
least one of these cases, the driver was
operating a moped; in many of them, the
drivers used their vehicles to get back and
forth to minimum-wage jobs; for all of
them, there is no available public transportation. While it is true that my clients
had their licenses suspended originally—
and thereupon suffered their draconian
�11
{Letters}
punishments—because of a history of previous brushes with the law, their criminal
history more often than not consisted of
offenses intrinsically no more dangerous
to the community than driving without a
driver’s license. These offenses included
possession of illegal drugs, trespass, and
earlier charges of driving with a suspended
license.
Most crimes in this county (and most
crimes in this country) are minor ones.
Sentences are imposed that serve to keep
these minor criminals—economically,
socially, and culturally marginal—increasingly more marginal, in a downhill spiral
that can last for years or generations. The
solutions to this problem are obviously
highly complex, and what I have sketched
above is necessarily somewhat oversimplified. However, I have tried to make at least
this point: that, at bottom, drastically
unequal distribution of wealth in this
country leads to crime, among other social
ills, and efforts toward redistribution will
help solve those problems.
—Peter Coen (A68)
Statistics vs. Ptolemy
In response to the article “Statistics vs.
Ptolemy” of the Summer 2002 issue of The
College, I have a few comments. The main
issue of the article seems to be the degree
of preparation that the Program at
St. John’s is able to provide for the vast
array of careers awaiting the interests of
liberal artists. The specific qualm raised in
the article is that Johnnies are not adequately prepared in the areas of mathematics necessary for continuing studies in the
social sciences. I would like to add, from
my present experiences, that the mathematics and science studied at St. John’s in
no way substitute for the preparation that
college undergraduates in the areas of
physics and astronomy receive. I completely disagree, however, with the sentiment
that this reveals any lack, gap or limit in
the scope of the Mathematics Tutorial.
I agree with Mr. Eric Rosenblatt when
he comments, “students are not all finding
careers appropriate to their abilities.” But
I disagree quite strongly that any existing
“math gap” is the reason that students
avoid particular career paths. There are
many topics in the fields of social sciences,
particularly in economics, which require
higher mathematics than the topics that
are studied in the Mathematics Tutorial at
St. John’s, and of careers in hard sciences
there are more required levels of mathematics than I could name when I started
my graduate studies. However, from the
Mathematics Tutorial, I received a broad
and detailed exposure to the evolution of
mathematics and the role of mathematics
in intellectual and scientific development.
This foundation, obtained with considerable effort, gave me the confidence that
any traditional study of mathematics was
accessible with similar diligence, effort,
and practice.
In reference to his experience in graduate level classes, Mr. John Lawless comments, “the advantage [of the people in
graduate school] is that they’ve seen a lot
of this stuff before. They have a broad
exposure to basic math.” Thus far, it has
been my experience, with physics and
mathematics classes, that while most of the
students have seen and solved more problems and are more familiar with the tools
of mathematics than I am, one rarely finds
the student with skills that resemble a mastery (or even a capacity for recollection) of
the mathematics he has studied previously.
The physics and mathematics textbooks
that I now use all provide approximations
of the works we read in the Program and in
the space saved, the books include examples, problems, and solutions. Yes, I am
“behind” in my abilities to solve these
problems when compared to the students
who have four years of experience studying
physics and mathematics to the exclusion
of other topics. Rather than bemoan the
situation, I consider my disadvantage on
this level to be a credit to the traditional
system of education…
Perhaps it is useful to consider the idea
that the Mathematics Tutorial enables us to
study mathematics as a language (herein lies
the “beauty” to which we frequently refer)
while traditional studies treat mathematics
as a tool for simplifying analysis. While I
share Mr. Lawless’ frustration that certain
things should come easily, and do come
more easily for students trained to use this
tool, I do not look for fault within a program
that has provided me with the unflinching
interest to master topics of mathematics and
science…I chose to take a nontraditional
path with the expectation that no doors
would be closed when I reached its end,
rather I merely supposed that some doors
may become heavier with time.
…Mr. Rosenblatt is doing a great service
to the St. John’s community in his hiring
policies…In the effort of making
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 }
physics/astrophysics more accessible to
students at St. John’s, I have organized similar meetings at St. John’s College, bringing professors from George Mason University who offer summer research fellowships
to interested students. (The professors
there prefer students from St. John’s College to undergraduates of their own school
for their untiring efforts and interest in
fully comprehending the motivation and
goals of their research.) At these meetings I
shared my experiences studying physics
and astronomy and information about the
courses one needs in addition to the Program to have a background that is comparable to a student with a traditional undergraduate physics degree. At the first
meeting, three people attended; for the
second meeting, more than 20 students
were willing to wait while the professors
were unavoidably delayed in traffic (God
bless cellular phones). From the second
meeting, seven students worked as contracted research assistants for the summer
(2002), and two of those students are
presently enrolled at GMU, pursuing
degrees in astrophysics. From this it is
clear that an awareness of the available
opportunities is far more important than
preparedness in the career decisions of St.
John’s students. And further, with interest
and effort, all skills are acquirable, while a
love of knowledge is not.
—Jessica K. (Reitz) Gambill (A01)
Correction
A story in the summer 2002 issue of The
College on Andrea D’Amato, manager of the
college bookstore on the Santa Fe campus,
misspelled her name. We regret the error.
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 or The College Magazine, Public Relations Office, St. John’s
College, 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca, Santa
Fe, NM 87505-4599.
Letters can also be sent via e-mail to:
reharty@sjca.edu, or via the form for
letters on the web site at www.sjca.edu.
Click on “Alumni,” then on “Contact The
College Magazine.”
�12
{ A l u m n i Vo i c e s }
THE LEGACY OF
D AV I D G R E N E
A Tutor Remembers a Teacher and Mentor
by Amirthanayagam David (A86)
...the odds is gone
And there is nothing left remarkable
Beneath the visiting moon.
–Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra
D
avid Grene died September 10 in Chicago. He was
a living legend, and his
life was legendary. He was
already a professor of classics at the University of
Chicago when the New Program was first
instituted at St. John’s. Over the years he
took an interest in the development of this
program, which was entirely a creature of
his adult life; from his perch in the Committee on Social Thought he taught a number of our tutors and an even more significant number of prominent teachers of our
tutors. Among the faculty in Annapolis
who studied directly with him are Laurence
Berns, Joe Macfarland, Robert Williamson,
Paul Ludwig, Louis Petrich and I.
In the normal course of things, a teacher
like David is only to be met with in books.
He was a peerless philologist, from a generation that genuinely knew philology, and
it was indeed an important part of the
experience of studying with him to
encounter his compendious acumen. But
David’s philological knowledge was merely
one of several paths into the mystery of
author, word, and sentence that made a
text a living presence in his classroom. He
had a queerness to his mind and imagination that made Euclid, for example, incomprehensible to him, and the memorizing of
traffic symbols an arduous task. He was a
small-built man, but he was athletic—he
was a horseman—and in his intellect, movement, and voice he was a commanding
presence. Mr. Berns relates how singular
an honor it seemed to earn David’s recognition, by saying or writing something
insightful. His colleague Wendy Doniger
remembers that “he lived on meat—particularly bacon and steak—cheese, butter,
eggs and Tanqueray gin... He was a real
person. He was bigger than life.”
For half the year every year David was a
farmer, and a number of us students,
including the late Allan Bloom, were at
some time initiated by him into the realities of cow and pig, horse and donkey. The
stock of his memoirs, from Wicklow to
Trinity, from farming in Illinois to Belturbet, County Cavan, from studying in
Vienna under Radermacher during
Hitler’s rise in the ’30s (Hutchins sent
him) to Hutchins’ Chicago and the Committee on Social Thought, is a thing of
wonder in itself. Yet David was able to
dramatize these realities in the classroom
so that somehow they formed an entry
point for the dramatization of literature,
philosophy, history—the distinction
becomes moot—and one began to feel the
presence of an author as a protagonist:
mortal, historical, and yet ever-present.
Even the philology seemed to come alive in
a new way. One became self-conscious,
about one’s accent as much as one’s ideas;
one felt intimidated, and yet challenged to
speak. It was a rare critical formulation
that could survive this experience.
Translation was a private matter with
David; in class almost all the translating
was done by students. His gift as a translator did not lead to his conducting master
classes. Many of us can testify to a common
experience, of preparing a text of Aeschy-
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 }
lus or Pindar or Sophocles painstakingly
for hour after hour, coming up with formulations that seemed (at the time, and to us)
very clever or even brilliant, but then
showing up at his class and having our
minds go blank when he called on us to
translate. Suddenly the Greek appeared
before us as an obstacle course that we had
never seen before, and which we were
asked to run on a full stomach. He was
completely galvanizing that way. Perhaps
his power had to do with our own feeling
that he was on the “other side” of the line
that Greek drew before us, a Poseidon
feasting among the Ethiopians; he also
seemed somehow on the other side of the
author’s mask, a fellow worker with him in
the art of turning thought, and the movement of thought, into Greek. There was
also a curious knack to his timing, a way he
would call on you that simply left you
naked. At the heart of the obstacle course
was always a tightrope over an abyss. No
other teacher I have known was so able to
initiate one into the “going across” of
translation. If you missed your step, you
remained scarred and subdued until the
next attempt. But there were also times
when it felt like one was dancing on that
tightrope, and on those happy occasions in
David’s company I have had no more exhilarating an experience as a student or a
teacher.
David grew very fond of St. John’s graduates. His companion of the last 17 years was
Stephanie Nelson (A83), now of Classics in
Boston University. She was our pioneer in
Chicago. There were also Allen Speight
(A84), now in philosophy at BU, David Neidorf (SF80), Cindy Rutz (SF82), Mark
Shiffman (A89), Eric Lavoie (A88), Brian
Satterfield (A94), and Zena Hitz (A95).
�13
{ A l u m n i Vo i c e s }
“Suddenly the Greek appeared
before us as an obstacle course
that we had never seen before.”
sara white wilson
I am particularly
grateful for his early
study, Man in His
Pride: A Study in the
Political Philosophy of
Thucydides and Plato,
later reprinted as
Greek Political Theory.
David’s treatment is a
healthy antivenom to
the kind of pseudoanalytic reductionism
and juvenile unliterariness that dogs the use
and abuse of Plato’s
writings in departments of “philosophy”
and also to the programmatic approach
to Thucydides in “departments” of history.
But David’s greatest legacy is his translations, which should continue to bring him
students. He was bold enough, hubristic
enough, brilliant enough—and, to be sure,
there was also his extraordinary feeling for
stagecraft—to think that one could translate the Greek tragedians into English
verse. His achievements here represent a
genuine conduit for the ancient playwrights into a modern world and idiom.
The rhythms of Greek are not translatable,
not even the iambs, but David, in my view,
was particularly good at capturing the
rhythmic movement, together with the
movement of thought, of whole speeches
in Greek drama. His aim was unique in his
time: to give “access” to the tragedies to
students who were not intending to study
Greek.
Ms. Nelson writes in an e-mail that “the
idea of a great books course is so usual now
that we tend to forget that it was David’s
David Grene’s greatest legacy:
his translations.
completely new idea that a translation
didn’t need to serve only as a pony for
beginning Greek students that made the
course possible. He really did issue in a
whole new era that way.” David’s passing
underscores the nearly complete dependence of our program on translations, and
the traditions of scholarship and teaching
(that we sometimes misleadingly call “secondary”) that underlie works of translation. But David’s renderings do represent a
body of invaluable commentary for students of Greek as well. David knew enough
not to translate Homer into English
(though I, knowing less, was always pestering him). The long line he found for Hesiod (a translation of Works and Days is
included in Ms. Nelson’s God and the
Land, Oxford 1998) will always leave me
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 }
wondering what his
Homer might have
been.
The most remarkable achievement,
however, was his
Herodotus. There he
found an uncanny
match in the neverland
of a quasi-Hibernian
storyteller for the diction and character of
Herodotus’ own neverland of antique Ionic.
The experience of
being “behind the
mask” is simply
extraordinary; only the
achievement of
Hobbes with Thucydides is a fit comparison in English prose (although David himself would never have allowed the comparison). Herodotus’ thought in form and
rhythm, gesture and posture, lives and
breathes in those pages of David’s. And
David lives on in them too.
He was a man of wonders who faced the
challenges of his aging body and the relentless mortality of his friends with a vivid,
fiercely loyal and capacious heart. He was a
bodhisattva of the Tanqueray vine with an
Apolline absolutism of conviction. But his
absolutism was always grounded in human
feeling, never in abstract principle. The
one thing that could not survive in his
classroom was pretension or dishonesty.
The ingenuity of the genuine was David’s
virtue, and academia everywhere is a drearier, less principled place without his animating and enduring spirit. x
�14
{Pursuits}
A BEAUTIFUL
WINE
Four Johnnies Pursue Perfection from the Vine.
By Rosemary Harty
The Winemaker
tag’s Leap Wine Cellars is situated in a
valley formed by the uplift of two mountain ridges. If you want to know beauty,
says the winery’s founder, Warren
Winiarski (A52), stand here until the
light begins to fade in the evening.
“To the east of us is a spectacular outcropping of volcanic rock that forms a palisade—that’s the Stag’s Leap ridge,” he
says. “Particularly at sunset, the palisade
is illuminated with a very special, very warm, magical glow.
“That’s our fire.”
In another form, beauty is in the product of these vines
before him, of years of planting and harvesting, of choosing
and rejecting, of waiting. Not all wine drinkers are prepared to think of a fine wine as beautiful, but a winemaker
does, Winiarski says. True, it’s a very subjective beauty—
one assigned scores by magazines like the Wine Spectator
and awarded prizes by judges in international competitions. If Warren Winiarski needed any proof that he knows
how to make a beautiful wine, it came in 1976 when French
experts in a blind tasting in Paris gave his 1973 Cabernet
Sauvignon top marks over the very best French wines. The
competition made headlines across the world and Winiarski’s cabernet put California wines on the map.
But how do you make wine beautiful? For Winiarski, it
goes back to something he learned from the Greeks. To illustrate, he sketches out a Golden Rectangle on a legal pad.
S
The golden proportion within the framework of the rectangle makes it pleasing to the eye, he explains. In wine,
that perfect, pleasing proportion is also sought. Take the
extreme and the means in a geometric structure and you
have balance and structure. In viticulture, contrast the
products of coarse volcanic soils and gentler alluvial soils
in just the right proportion and you have the start of something beautiful.
“You have soft elements like the smooth, supple, fruity
characteristics, and then you have hard elements like tannin. The challenge is to get astringency and softness related to each other in a certain way.”
Balance, understatement, subtlety—these were not the
guiding principles of winemaking in California in 1970.
That’s when Winiarski left the University of Chicago,
where he was a lecturer, and began making wines in the
Napa Valley. Californians were then making wines that
were “very powerful expressions of the varietal character,”
he says. Winiarski left Chicago with an objective: “I couldn’t believe from what I knew about California wine and
French wine that we could not do better with the fruit that
we had in California and make more expressive, more beautiful wines,” he says.
In 1970, Winiarski bought a plot of land on the Silverado
Trail. He later acquired land adjoining the vineyards of
Nathan Fay, a winemaker whose wine possessed that elusive unity Winiarski had sought. That land became the
Stag’s Leap vineyard, and the grapes that grew here gave
Winiarski the starting point he was looking for.
“At St. John’s, we talked about the four classical virtues”
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 }
�15
{Pursuits}
“To extend
the pleasure
of wine...
overstatement
is an enemy.”
Warren Winiarski
of truth, beauty, goodness and unity, he explains. “In
wine, they’re expressed as understatement. To extend the
pleasure of wine, the appreciation of its beauty, overstatement is an enemy.”
A great deal goes into the science of winemaking, but the
soil Winiarski knew had promise was the beginning of it all:
Volcanic soils are coarse
particles; alluvium, very
fine. “One produces
wines that are like fire:
concentrated, spirited,
intense,” he says. “The
other, alluvium soils, are
soft, yielding, supple.
“Somewhere in the
middle of the vineyard,
you have these soils that
are mixed. So putting
this together, you can
relate those means and
extremes in a way where
you have an iron fist surrounded by a velvet
glove.”
In the quarter-century
since Winiarski helped
put California wines on
the map, his winery has
become immensely successful, his wines sought
after. The Cellars Cask 23 that won in Paris goes for well
over $125 a bottle. These days his role in the winery
involves “setting the stylistic goals and objectives for the
vintage.” How that’s accomplished is carried out by others. His family, including Kasia (A84) and Julia (SF92), is
involved in the business. Recently, Winiarski shared his
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 }
�16
{Pursuits}
think carefully about what happened when the sweet pear followed the sharp cheese.
“Any time that you’re thinking carefully and precisely
about a sensation, you have an
opportunity to learn how the
mind is truly embodied,” he
explains.
Schoener’s wine study group
became more serious about
studying viticulture, comparing domestic and European
wines, and learning how to
The Quest
taste wine. One of the first students to join the group was
A little over a decade ago, Abe
Zach Rasmuson (A95). OrigiSchoener (A82) tried to explain
nally a reluctant participant,
his love for wine to beer-drinkRasumuson ended up heading
ing friends. This led to a wine
to Napa Valley and asking Warstudy group comprising other
ren Winiarski for a job at
St. John’s tutors, a few students,
Stag’s Leap after graduation.
college administrators and
He started out as a cellar and
friends. But the more Schoener
lab assistant and within three
learned about wine, the more he
years was assistant winemaker
wanted to know. And pretty
at Robert Sinskey Vineyards.
soon, Schoener went from careHe’s now making wines at
fully choosing the best wine to
Warren Winiarski
Husch Vineyard in Mendocino
accompany special dinners to a
County.
Napa Valley wine cellar, up to
To learn more about wine, Schoener was also willing
his elbows in grapes and immersed in an experiment to
to start at the bottom. He took a sabbatical from St.
see if he could make a pure and beautiful wine.
John’s and headed West. His job as a field sampler at
All this from the simple question, “what’s so great
Stag’s Leap involved monitoring about 100 acres, walkabout wine?”
ing the vineyards daily to monitor the ripening of the
This devotion to the science of winemaking goes back
fruit and bringing samples back to the winemaker.
to Schoener’s work as a scholar and a tutor. Tracking his
Through Rasmuson, Schoener later became acquainted
steps from Annapolis to Napa Valley shows how interrewith John Kongsgaard, vice president and founding
lated are the worlds of Johnnies and California wine.
winemaker at Luna Vineyards and his wife, Maggy, parSchoener arrived at St. John’s from Toronto with a
ents of two St. John’s students: Alex, a sophomore in
Ph.D. in Ancient Greek philosophy. He had studied the
Santa Fe, and Helen, a junior in Annapolis. When his
philosophy of science from Anglo-American and French
job at Stag’s Leap ended, Schoener went to Luna to
perspectives, put that together with his study of Homer,
work a few days over the Christmas break and eventualand started thinking about “how the body was thinkable
ly extended his leave to take a paying job and learn
and how the mind was embodied.”
everything he could about winemaking.
Body and mind come together very logically in wine
Schoener bought a half-ton of grapes and made wine
study, Schoener says, because to really appreciate a parunder Kongsgaard’s direction. The next year, they
ticular wine one has to “think in an embodied way.”
bought grapes together and Schoener was the winemakSchoener wanted to get his students in sophomore
er for three tons of Chardonnay. “It went really well, so
music to try this kind of thinking when approaching a
the next year, I organized myself to become a small propiece of music. He couldn’t bring wine, so he laid out
ducer, made some more contacts and bought some more
gorgonzola cheese and pear slices and asked students to
grapes”—this time for the Scholium Project, his own
expertise with Sante Fe alumni
and friends in a winetasting.
Beating the French in 1976 was
satisfying in a way that transcends business, he adds—the
chance to make history.
“There’s a bottle of that wine
entered in the Paris tasting in the
Smithsonian. In your own lifetime when you have something
in the national museum, something that you made, that’s pretty
satisfying.”
“I couldn’t believe that we
could not do better.”
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 }
�{Pursuits}
17
venture in winemaking. He chose the word that refers to
The Family Business
explanatory notes or commentary in ancient texts, or a
At one time, Daniel Speck (A96) had planned to study
note amplifying a course of reasoning, to reflect the fact
architecture. After spending most of his formative years
that he is expanding on others’ work.
toiling in his family’s winery, Henry of Pelham, he initially
“Scholium is a word that connotes the opposite of preplanned another path for his life.
tension and that was a good name for what I was doing,”
“I was adamant that I wasn’t working in the winery,” he
he explains. “It was always a question of [my] following
recalls. “But after graduating from St. John’s, I needed
other people, studying them, creating something that
some cash, so back I went. Now I can’t imagine doing anywas going to be good.”
thing else.”
A year ago, Schoener invested about $4,000 in a ton
Neither, apparently, can Speck’s brothers: Paul (A89),
and a half of high-quality grapes. He fermented most
president; and Matthew (A92), vice president and viticulof the crushed grapes in white plastic containers about
turist. All three had worked almost every job at the winery
three feet high. His approach is to give the microbes
their father, Paul, started in 1982. Concord and Niagara
enough oxygen to ferment the grapes, but not enough
grapes were growing on the farm, but the old vines were
to spoil them. Most winemakers add yeast to the
ripped out and one-year-old vines
crushed g rapes, but Schoener
imported from Europe were planted
does not. He also minimizes the
in 1984. Four years later, the first
use of antibacterial and antifungal
crop was harvested and a year later,
chemicals, in particular sulfur
the first batch of wine—2,500
dioxide. The sulfur dioxide procases—was ready for sale. The winduces a “f latter, simpler wine,”
ery, located in St. Catherine’s,
and what Schoener seeks is comOntario, focuses on vinifera grape
plexity.
varieties: Chardonnay, Riesling,
“The tradition at Napa is to
and Cabernet Sauvignon.
really control the microbiology, to
Daniel Speck, director of sales
turn [the wine] into a sterile fluid.
Abe Schoener
and marketing, remembers the
My approach is really just the oppobackbreaking, often tedious work
site: don’t start with sterile, start
on the 150-acre estate. Summer
with something infected with all
vacations were spent as indentured servants. But the work
kinds of things.”
was ultimately satisfying. And when Paul Sr. passed away in
Two years ago, his experiment failed and three-quar1993, it was natural for his sons to take over a business in
ters of a ton of grapes emerged tasting like vinegar. But
which they had already invested so much work and passion.
Schoener learned something from that experiment.
Henry of Pelham wines, he explains, are more “Old
His white wine made with Chardonnay grapes is
World” than California—whites are crisp and zesty, reds a
called Les Tenebres, translated as “the shadows” or “the
little more “austere and structured.”
ghosts.” His goal was to produce a white wine that did“California is kind of like the Mediterranean, and our
n’t evoke any fruit but the grape. The principle behind
wines are more like those from the Burgundy region, Borhis approach is to “start with really good fruit but for
deaux and Champagne,” Speck says. “Our reds are not
the wine to be not about the fruit, but the fermentaapproachable for five years—they’re meant for aging, and
tion.” The red wine, called Babylon, took its name from
that’s usually due to the tannin structure.”
the ancient Jewish world and is meant to connote someFrom an agricultural viewpoint, soil, weather, and
thing “strange and exotic.”
canopy management are critically important for the busiNext year, Schoener will have a license to sell his first
ness. Canopy management means developing the vineyard
batch of The Scholium Project. Last fall, he moved from
in a way to “balance the vigor of the vine with the crops you
amateur to professional when he became the winemaker
leave—choosing where we leave grapes and where we don’t.”
at Luna. He incorporates some of his risky techniques in
“When you strip it all away, it all comes down to farmhis official work for the winery, but not all of them,
ing,” he says. “Wine is 50 percent packaged goods and 50
because “there’s too much at stake” for a commercial
percent produce. It’s got more in common with lettuce than
venture.
Coca-Cola. And if anything is a constant, you have to be
“Don’t start with sterile,
start with something
infected with all
kinds of things.”
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 }
�18
{Pursuits}
“You’ve got to
have good
grapes.”
Daniel Speck
growing grape varieties that you can produce great wines
from. You’ve got to always have good grapes.”
In addition to toiling on the land, Speck has also enjoyed
making wine. The Pinot Noir, for example, is made entirely by hand: hand-harvested, crushed and fermented in
open-top fermenting tanks. “Instead of getting in there
with the feet and trodding it, we use a stick with a flat surface on the end. In the past we’ve used canoe paddles.
That’s ‘punching down’ the ‘cap,’ the skins that float to the
top in fermentation, back into the fermenting wine to keep
extracting flavor. The more common method is the ‘pumpover,’ pumping wine from the bottom of the tank up and
over to wash the cap down. It’s less desirable because it
introduces more oxygen.”
Henry of Pelham’s big sellers are Rieslings and Chardon-
nays. The winery’s Baco Noir
Cabernet (“a weirdo variety like
a Shiraz,”explains Speck), and
ice wine are also popular. To
make ice wine, grapes are left on
the vine until they freeze. “When
you crush it you only get a few
drops, and it’s incredibly intense.
It makes a great dessert wine.”
Most of the wine is sold in
Canada, but the winery is beginning to make inroads in the U.S.
market. Speck has new contracts with Red Lobster, a Canadian Italian food chain, Air
Canada and British Airways.
Speck isn’t sure he’d enjoy the
wine business as much if he
weren’t in a family business.
“There’s a guy nearby who has
started up a really nice winery,
but just looking at it you can tell
there’s some problems. I would
think it would be hard trying to
figure it out, because it’s only
him and he’s surrounded by
people new to the business. Our
family had more people to pool
from, and we know how to talk to each other. That kind of
conversation is really critical.”
The wine business can be “really brutal,” says Speck.
“There’s no easier way to take a large fortune and make it a
small one.
“But there’s nothing more satisfying than getting together with the family to open a bottle of wine that’s 10 years
old. I remember putting those vines in. It’s a personal
wine.”
The Devotee
A beautiful wine “perfectly expresses where it is from,”
says Mark Middlebrook (A83). It tells the story of where the
grapes were grown and who made it. It opens a window to
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 }
�{Pursuits}
19
and appreciate something that tastes good and adds an
history and creates a bridge between different cultures. To
increment of pleasure to their lives.”
Middlebrook, the wine he tasted in a tiny village in BurIn past months, Middlebrook has put his computer
gundy still bears the imprint of the Cistercian monks who
skills to work in the shop by launching an e-mail newsletonce made wine in that valley centuries ago.
ter and web site for the shop and establishing a database
“There is a sense of longevity and of connecting with
to track inventory.
these monks in some way over all these centuries,” he
Initially devoted to Spanish wines, Middlebrook has
says. After earning a master’s degree in structural engicome to appreciate Italian wines, especially those of the
neering at UC-Berkeley, Middlebrook started his own
Piemonte (Piedmont) region in the northwestern corner
company, Daedalus Consulting, to provide CAD (comof Italy. Late last fall, Middlebrook spent a week in Italy,
puter-assisted drafting) consulting to engineering and
learning about the vineyards, meetsoftware companies, developing
ing the people, drinking great
custom software applications and
wine, and eating truffles.
writing articles and books.
“The Piemontese wines made
However, he’s become so enamfrom the Nebbiolo grape, most
ored of wine that, like Abe Schoennotably the wines from around the
er, he’s made major changes and
towns of Barolo and Barbaresco,
sacrifices in his life to pursue this
Mark Middlebrook
are arguably the best in Italy. Nebinterest. He recently chose to scale
biolo, like Pinot Noir in Burgundy
back his work as a computer consultand Riesling in Germany, makes
ant in order to sell wine in a small
wines that ‘speak’ in highly specific
and selective shop in California.
ways about the particular place they
His romance with wine, and his
come from—the soil, the slope, the
particular interest in the “specificiexposure to sun and wind, the vine
ty” of a vintage, began when he first
configuration, the vintage.
drank a glass of wine in Rioja during
“Some of this specificity is due to
a trip to Spain in 1997. After returnthe grape varietals themselves.
ing to California, Middlebrook startNebbiolo, Pinot Noir, and Riesling
ed reading and tasting. He took three
are said to be “transparent” varimore trips to Spain for research, and
etals, because the elements of teron one venture, encountered Bill
roir come through the vine, into
Randolph (A75), a wine aficionado
the grapes, and ultimately into the
living in Paris. Randolph later guided
glass particularly clearly.”
Middlebrook and his wife, Cheryl
Middlebrook draws a parallel
Koehler, through the Burgundy
READING LIST
between exploring great books in
region. He also joined Middlebrook
American Vintage: From Isolation to Interseminar and exploring wine. “We
for Northern California alumni chapnational Renown—The Rise of American
spend time at St. John’s conter wine tastings at Stag’s Leap Wine
Wine, by Paul Lukacs.
fronting and discussing objective
Cellars. Eventually Middlebrook
The World Atlas of Wine (5th Edition), by
questions about ethics and truth.
came to believe he needed to devote
Hugh Johnson and Jancis Robinson.
At one level, wine is simply a matmore time to exploring wine, so he
Pocket Wine Book, by Hugh Johnson.
ter of taste. It’s also part of the
went to the Paul Marcus wine shop,
social ritual of a meal.”
where he had been a customer, and
The Oxford Companion to Wine, by Jancis
But on another level, our aesthetasked for a job.
Robinson.
ic experience—how we come to
“It’s been even more rewarding
The Wine Bible, by Karen MacNeil.
know something, how we come to
than I’d imagined it would be. Besides
Touring in Wine Country, a series, Mitchell
learn—is involved in studying and
tasting lots of wine, I get to talk with
Beazley publisher.
thinking about wine.
lots of people who have a great variety
Vino Italiano: The Regional Wines of Italy,
“It’s a really rewarding world to
of insight and experience. There is
by Joseph Bastianich and David Lynch.
be a part of.” x
the occasional snooty collector, but
— suggested by Mark Middlebrook and Warren
most people who work in the trade
Winiarski
and shop in our store simply love wine
“ Good wine tastes
like it comes from
somewhere specific.”
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 }
�20
{Johnnies on Marriage}
THE WIFE OF BATH’S
GUIDE TO
MARRIAGE
Johnnie Couples Compare Life to Literature
by Sus3an Borden, A87
haucer’s much-wed pilgrim,
the Wife of Bath, is often considered an authority on marriage. Perhaps she was—in the
14th century. But here in 2002,
we have other ideas. The College magazine consulted five
happily-married Johnnie couples for their take on
the advice and analyses of the Wife of Bath. We
publish here a sample of their wit and wisdom.
all over my face—I would be horrible at poker. I’m not the
type of person to lie about anything.”
Jim confirms her story with a sarcastic snort. “The very
fact she thinks flirting is a lie is so sad,” he says. “I see it as
dramatic license, an entry to a conversation, a story told to
arouse interest. It’s a joy, a pleasure, a type of play.”
However, when it comes to the particulars of the Wife of
Bath’s flirting techniques, Jim is determined to set the
record straight: “As for ‘oh, I was dreaming about you last
night,’ that happened both ways and we both enjoyed it.
She just forgot.”
Wiles of Courtship
Wife of Bath Says
Wife of Bath Says
You say that all we wives our vices hide
Till we are married, then we show them well;
C
I made him think he had enchanted me;
My mother taught me all that subtlety.
And then I said I’d dreamed of him all night,
He would have slain me as I lay upright,
And all my bed was full of very blood;
But yet I hoped that he would do me good,
For blood betokens gold, as I was taught.
And all was false, I dreamed of him just—naught.
Johnnies Say
Could Andrea Williams Ham (SF77) have pulled off such a
boldly provocative flirtation when she was dating her nowhusband Jim Ham (SF77)? Absolutely not. “I’m not flirtatious, not a game player,” she says. “What I’m thinking is
The Newlywed Game
Johnnies Say
“Hon, do I have any vices?” Kathy Ertle (A84) asks her
husband, John Ertle (A84).
“Well, you did drink back in college and you didn’t hide
that very well and some people consider that a vice,” he
cautiously suggests.
As for his own vices, John says he was upfront about them
from the start: “Marry the man today and change his ways
tomorrow—right?”
Kathy agrees: “I already knew he wasn’t perfect.”
“Really?” John asks, somewhat surprised. Apparently,
this is news to him.
“Before I married you, absolutely,” Kathy says, sans
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 }
�{Johnnies on Marriage}
21
“Sitting across the seminar table for
two years taught us to disagree.”
Jim Ham
backpedaling.
Johnnies Say
Jacques Cartier (A58),
Kathy Ertle does not hesihusband of Diana Barry
tate to acknowledge her
Cartier (A56), introduces a
familiarity with the Wife of
more philosophical spin to
Bath’s fighting strategy:
the matter: “Both parties,
“Oh yeah, going on the
not just the woman, try to
attack, isn’t that what you’re
put their best case forward
supposed to do? The best
and conceal things they
defense is a good offense,
don’t want known. They’re
that’s what I’ve heard.”
usually trying to conceal
“Fighting is unavoidable,
these things from thembut never fight in front of
selves as well, since most
your children,” advises
of us possess relatively litJacques Cartier. He’s also of
tle self-knowledge, espethe “never go to bed angry”
cially when we’re young.
school. “Whatever erupts
Kathy and John Ertle
We don’t know what we’re
during the day, get it sorted
hiding. Time reveals it to
out before bedtime. You
both of us. It can come as a pleasant or a disagreeable surdon’t want to start the next day with the residue of yesterprise.”
day’s fight. And don’t be too stiff-necked to apologize when
Lovers’ Quarrel
Wife of Bath Says
I could complain though mine was all the guilt…
Or else, full many a time, I’d lost the tilt.
Whoso comes first to mill first gets meal ground;
I whimpered first and so did them confound.
They were right glad to hasten to excuse
Things they had never done, save in my ruse.
you’re wrong—and even when you’re right.”
Jenna Palmer (SF93), married to Jim Michel (SF92),
describes the world of fighting Johnnie couples: “You
always hear about how in normal relationships, usually the
woman is much more verbal and the man gets angry or
even violent when he can’t keep up with his wife’s words.
But a Johnnie guy is very verbal. He can really argue well.
And Jim is an attorney—we were together when he went to
law school. In his first year in particular, he was quite a
debater. I found myself at a loss for words. I was the one
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 }
�22
{Johnnies on Marriage}
who resorted to slamming the
door.” With law school behind
them, the couple fights less frequently. “Now he gets most of his
arguing out with opposing counsel,” Jenna says.
Jim and Andrea Ham rarely fight,
and Jim gives St. John’s partial
credit for this. “Sitting across the
seminar table for two years taught
us to disagree,” Jim says. “So many
people I know are incapable of having a conversation or discussion or
disagreement without it becoming
personal. Or without having someone be right. We learned at St.
John’s that there may not be a right answer.
When we went through the Program, we read
the Bible and Darwin simultaneously. In our
seminar we had people who later became nuns
and a number who ended up at Los Alamos doing
DNA research. Both in the books and in our
classes, we had the full spectrum of ideas.”
What Women Most Desire
Wife of Bath Says
Some said that women all loved best riches,
Some said, fair fame, and some said, prettiness;
Some, rich array, some said ‘twas lust abed
And often to be widowed and re-wed.
Some said that our poor hearts are aye most eased
When we have been most flattered and thus pleased
And he went near the truth, I will not lie;
A man may win us best with flattery;
And with attentions and with busyness
We’re often limed, the greater and the less.
And some say, too, that we do love the best
To be quite free to do our own behest,
And that no man reprove us for our vice,
But saying we are wise, take our advice.
Johnnies Say
David Kelsey (A61) married
Marta Hoekstra Kelsey (A62) in
1962. Their four decades together have seen one adventure after
another. Looking back, David
says it hasn’t been riches, fame,
or flattery that Marta wanted in
their marriage. “I think it’s a
sense of being a team that’s
important,” he says. “There’s
also a trust, an ability to depend
on the other person without
questions.
“It’s always been that way for
us. We’ve done lots of weird things, and
we’ve always done them together. In 1964 a
group of people paid us to take them to Alaska. We packed up two four-wheel vehicles
with trailers and drove all the way to Alaska—
Fairbanks, Anchorage, Denali—with our 16month-old son and an Irish setter.
“We once found an old boat half-sunk in a
river, dredged it out of the muck, and decided to live on it. We already had a sailboat and
we eventually decided we would take both
boats down to St. Croix.” This trip (which
included a shipwreck on Ambrose Island)
David and Marta Kelsey,
turned out to have been remarkably illthen and now.
advised (“totally stupid” are David’s words).
But in spite of it, or because of it, their marriage has flourished.
“Our marriage has been very satisfying for 40 years, with
love and respect, consideration, communication. We have a
sense of taking life as an adventure, doing interesting
things and not settling for what everybody thinks you might
oughta do.”
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 }
�{Johnnies on Marriage}
23
“Giving up your set
of program books—
I think that shows
commitment.”
Jenna Palmer
A Life of Love
Partners in Books
Wife of Bath Says
Wife of Bath Says
Praise be to God that I have wedded five!
Of whom I did pick out
and choose the best
Both for their nether purse
and for their chest
Different schools make divers
perfect clerks,
Different methods learned
in sundry works
Make the good workman perfect,
certainly.
Of full five husbands tutoring am I.
By God, he smote me on the ear, one day,
Because I tore out of his book a leaf…
Johnnies Say
It’s a question directed at the heart of
Johnnie marriages: What do you do
with your two sets of program books?
Andrea Ham lets us all in on this little
corner of the life of married Johnnies:
“Some of our duplicates are in boxes in
the garage, some are in the living
room, some we had to give back to my
sister [India Williams (SF73)], some we
passed on to our kids for high school,”
reports Andrea. “I’m standing here in
the living room looking at the bookcase
where most of our great books are.
Some are Jim’s, some are mine. It’s a
total mishmash.” With graduation a
quarter-century behind them, Andrea
says that the books still play a role in
their marriage. “We’ll periodically
have conversations where we run to the
bookshelf to pull out the book that supports our point.”
Jenna Palmer and Jim Michel have
finally narrowed down their collection
to a single set. “Jim always sprung for
the hard cover and took meticulous
care of his books. I had mostly the dogeared paperbacks,” reports Jenna. “I
finally sold most of mine, so we can
never split up. Giving up your set of
program books—I think that shows
commitment.” x
Johnnies Say
“Our marriage has lasted a long time,”
says Jacques Cartier of his 44-year (and
counting) marriage. “It hasn’t all been
easy, we’ve had a number of difficult
times. But we’ve learned to accept
each other, our strengths and our weaknesses. We live and let live for the
most part.
“There are those people who really
want to be married, who want to be
together with someone and because
of that they manage to get through the
difficult times. I think of the Symposium, of the two halves that want to
complete each other. There are others
for whom I don’t believe that desire
is there, who don’t have a fundamental sense that this is the best way
to live life.”
Top: Jim Michel and Jenna Palmer
Bottom: Andrea and Jim Ham
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 }
�24
{The Program}
STARS IN HIS EYES
Curtis Wilson Remains Engaged in Discovery
By Rosemary Harty
I
s Newton’s theory of planetary motion exactly
right, and is it sufficient to account for everything in the moon’s movement around the
earth?” Like a dedicated student in seminar,
tutor emeritus Curtis Wilson (HA83) has been
doggedly pursuing that question for more than
40 years. Since becoming fascinated with pre-Newtonian
theory, Wilson has carefully explored the brilliant theorizing and errant conclusions of scientists drawn to study
the stars. He has pondered their ideas and examined
their proofs, read their life stories and taken note of their
enemies and personal demons.
“
They continue to intrigue him a dozen
years after his “retirement” from St.
John’s. At least once a week he spends the
better part of a day conducting research in
the rotunda library of the U.S. Naval
Observatory in Washington, D.C., where
oversized portraits of historic figures such
as George William Hill, a 19th century
astronomer who studied the moon’s orbit,
bear witness to his labor.
“One feels,” Wilson says, “that one is
surrounded by these people.”
Indeed, when Wilson describes these
historic figures, he talks about them as if
they are living, breathing people still
engaged in discovery. He becomes as
caught up in their biographies as their
scientific methods, relaying stories of
Laplace’s political savvy with Hill’s reclusiveness. Some of these men he views with
great admiration, and he’s grown to dislike some of them intensely. However,
each one has played a role in advancing
modern astronomy, and Wilson has given
none of them short shrift in his study.
In graduate school at Columbia, Wil-
son studied medieval science, the precursors of Galileo, and, he notes wryly, “I
did what I was told.” When he came to
St. John’s in 1948, he was, by nature of the
Program, required to learn astronomy—
“of which I knew a little, but not enough,”
he says. He soon fixed on Kepler’s laws of
planetary motion as an object of interest.
“I kept hearing about the three empirical laws of Kepler, but everything I read
never explained in detail how he got to
those laws,” Wilson says. He was
intrigued by the reasoning that led the
17th century scientist to conclude that
planetary motion must be elliptical. So he
began researching Kepler, through his
first tenure as dean of St. John’s (1958-62)
and the two years he spent as one of the
first tutors at St. John’s College in Santa
Fe (1962-64).
Kepler followed him to the department
of history at the University of California,
San Diego, where Wilson moved with his
wife, Rebecca, and two sons. After his
father’s death, he made the decision to
move to California in order to be near his
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 }
mother, who lived near San Diego.
The dean who hired him at UC-San
Diego in 1966 emphasized that Wilson
needed to publish scholarly work quickly.
At 46, Wilson found himself encountering for the first time the pressure of “publish or perish” if he chose to seek tenure
as a member of the university’s history
department.
“I worked fiercely, to the point of illness,” Wilson says. The result was a
paper: “Kepler’s Path to the Ellipse,”
published in Isis. “It was,” he says, with a
smile, “a very good article.”
In the paper, Wilson demonstrated that
Kepler was aware that conjecture—rather
than empirical data—was involved in his
coming to the conclusion that the moon’s
path was elliptical.
“Kepler’s ellipse was not satisfactorily
verifiable as what we would call an empirical law,” Wilson explains. “What Kepler
adopted did have some empirical support
but it was theory laden; his dynamics was
wrong.” Only Kepler’s third law—that the
period for a planet to orbit the Sun
increases rapidly with the radius of its
orbit—is empirical, says Wilson.
Wilson became a full professor at UCSan Diego. But when asked to return to
St. John’s as dean in 1973, he was ready to
go. While he had enjoyed the physical
environment in California, he found “academic politics at the university was not
pleasing. I just wanted to do my scholarship. And in the classroom, I had students
who were very competent, but I couldn’t
get them to say a word in class.”
Back in Annapolis, Wilson—by now an
internationally recognized expert on the
history of astronomy—continued pursuing
his scholarship around his duties as dean
and his return to the St. John’s classroom,
publishing papers on Copernicus, Newton, Kepler, and Horrocks among others.
Wilson’s initial inquiries into the Keplerian Revolution brought him to Jeremiah Horrocks, whose improvements on
�david trozzo
Kepler’s theories led him to correctly predict the transit of Venus across the face of
the sun. Although he died at 22, Horrocks
was, in Wilson’s view, “the greatest
astronomer in the 17th century after
Kepler as far as lunar and planetary theories are concerned.” Understanding Horrocks prepared the way for Wilson to
begin to answer the questions he had fostered about Newton’s theories. Newton
led to Euler, and Euler to Laplace. While
many topics were covered in the St. John’s
laboratories and math tutorials, Wilson’s
interest took him ever more deeply into
the history of astronomy.
Wilson’s deep knowledge of these individual scientists has led him to form some
sharp opinions of their approach to science and the times in which they lived.
Laplace, for example, made great contri-
Curtis Wilson in the college observatory.
“I keep discovering
things I don’t know.”
butions to astronomy in the late 18th century, including his work on the inclination
of planetary orbits and the motions of the
planets. While admiring his science, Wilson is not terribly fond of Laplace, who
tended to adapt his scientific postulations
for the sake of political expediency when
necessary. (Laplace should be given credit
for managing to escape the guillotine in
the Reign of Terror.)
Lagrange made clear what he thought
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 }
of Laplace’s style in a letter written in
September 1777: “I have always envisaged
[mathematics] as an object of amusement
rather than of ambition, and I can assure
you that I enjoy the works of others much
more than my own, with which I am
always dissatisfied. Thus, you see that if
you are free of jealousy because of your
success, I am not less so because of my
character.”
“There is nothing charming about
Laplace,” explains Wilson. “He may have
had charisma but he was a very opportunistic politician who got along well with
the nobility. Although his mathematics
were opportunistic, he discovered a lot of
important things.”
Wilson’s modern heroes include
George William Hill, who worked for the
U.S. Nautical Almanac Office, later
�26
{The Program}
absorbed into the U.S Naval Observatory.
Hill, who discovered a way to accurately
determine the motion of the lunar
perigee, won the gold medal of the Royal
Astronomical Society of London in 1887.
“That’s the beginning of modern-day
lunar theory,” Wilson says. “It took 10
years for him to gain recognition for his
discoveries, and when he went to receive
the honor at Cambridge, they didn’t
know who he was and put him up in a
janitor’s closet.”
Wilson recently completed a paper on
Dutch astronomer Peter Andreas Hansen
that is pending publication in the Archive
for History of Exact Sciences, to which he
has been a faithful contributor.
Today, Wilson is up to Ernest William
Brown, whose professor at Cambridge—
George Howard Darwin—told him
Wilson is not terribly
fond of Laplace,
who tended to adapt
his scientific postulations for the sake of
political expediency.
“somebody ought to develop Hill’s theory on the orbit of the moon.” “Brown
went to work,” says Wilson. “He came
to the U.S., taught at Harvard and then
at Yale, and worked out the details of
the theory Hill had outlined.”
When he’s not researching and writ-
ing, Wilson practices Beethoven’s piano
sonatas and t’ai chi, and visits family
with his wife, Rebecca, who served for
many years as public relations director
for the college.
Fascinated by his subject matter, Wilson works on. He comes to the St. John’s
campus almost every day. His enthusiasm and energy seem boundless.
Although he is pleased to continue to
publish papers, something more fundamental drives his scholarship these days.
“I keep discovering things that I don’t
know,” Wilson says.
He talks about Kepler—who started it
all—with great admiration.
“His theory is so wrong,” Wilson
says. “But I admire his stick-to-itiveness, his imagination, his courage. He
was an utterly charming person.” x
Honoring a Scholar, Thanking a Colleague
I
n academe, a Festchrift is akin to
the ultimate birthday party, with
tributes serving as the gifts.
Last April, the St. John’s
community was honored to host
such an event for Curtis Wilson,
tutor emeritus. The event was organized by George Smith, professor of philosophy at Tufts University and acting
director of the Dibner Institute, and
Jed Buchwald, editor of the Archive for
History of Exact Sciences. And though
the event was timed very near to Wilson’s 81st birthday, enduring admiration for a scholar and a colleague,
rather than a chronological marker,
prompted the event.
“[Wilson] has done far more than
anyone else to provide all of us with a
deep understanding of the three centuries of orbital astronomy from Kepler
through Simon Newcomb,” said Smith,
later adding, “Curtis, you are universally recognized to be a paragon of your
field.”
Speakers noted Wilson’s two decades
of service on the editorial board of the
Archive, his contributions on planetary
astronomy to the General History of
Astronomy, and his books, monographs, and many papers.
The papers contributed in Wilson’s
honor will be published by the Dibner
Institute in 2003. Among the contributions is this story from I. Bernard
Cohen, professor emeritus at Harvard
University:
“My path first crossed Curtis Wilson’s when I was writing a small book
about planetary theory before Newton.
My concern was to understand the significance of Newton’s Principia. I had in
fact written a number of chapters, and
had even arranged that this small book
would be published in a new series
being edited by Michael Hoskin.
One of the features of the book was
an analysis of the various approximations that were used by astronomers in
place of Kepler’s area law. These
approximations made use of the empty
focus of the ellipse and postulated a uniform motion with regard to this empty
focus. Various forms of correction were
then introduced to make this approximation agree more closely with the data
of observation. One of the features of
this book was to find out how good
these approximations were.
I had difficulty in comparing these
approximations with published tables
and so… a student of mine and I tested
the accuracy of these approximations by
comparing the positions determined by
them with the results of solving
Kepler’s equation.
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 }
We did this work on one of the new
giant mainframe computers, where
we were fortunate to be awarded a halfhour of computer time at 1:30 in the
morning…While we were studying
the results of our computer research,
I received my copy of Truesdell’s
Archive for History of Exact Sciences
containing a long monograph by Curtis Wilson, his study ‘From Kepler’s
Laws (So-Called) to Universal Gravitation: Some Empirical Factors.’ This
monograph was a detailed study and
analysis of the approximations to
Kepler’s area law that was used in the
decades before Newton.
“My first reaction was one of extreme
frustration…even though my book dealt
with the subject somewhat differently, I
was aware that Curtis’ beautiful analysis
had taken the subject so far that there
was no need of my book on a similar
subject. Accordingly, I consigned my
book to the graveyard of unpublished
works. In discarding my partly finished
book, there was one great source of satisfaction in that Curtis had done so
masterful a study that it was a real joy to
welcome it. In this work Curtis showed
himself to be a master of older astronomy, someone who would make a real
contribution to our knowledge during
the decades.” x
�27
{Homecoming}
HOMECOMING,
E A S T A N D W E S T,
In July in Santa Fe, and October in Annapolis, Homecoming celebrations
were lively, well attended, and of course, overwhelmingly sentimental.
Top: Chris Labonte (SF92)
with Anna Zinanti in Santa
Fe; Bottom: Taking a break
at the picnic in Annapolis.
O
moe hanson
scott caraway
verheard at
Homecoming:
“And you! You
look exactly the
same!” “No,
you look exactly
the same!” Whether these
observations made by 30-somethings at a wine and cheese party
in Annapolis were truthful or
not, Homecoming in Santa Fe
and Annapolis this year was all
about the gleeful rediscovery of
old friends.
There was much sharing of
memories (foodfights, Freshman
Chorus, and spectacular senior pranks)
and much catching up (new jobs, babies,
and adventures abroad). And proving
themselves still pursuing the examined
life, Homecoming attendees packed lectures and took part in seminars, even after
long nights of waltzing, talking, and Napa
Valley wine.
In July at Santa Fe, the campus enjoyed
its largest event ever, with 130 participants. Homecoming opened on Friday
night with a barbecue dinner on the
Placita, followed by a rock ‘n’ roll party at
the coffee shop. On Saturday, alumni could
choose from seminars on Chekhov, Borges,
Plato, Shakespeare, and Dinesen. They
were released from the classroom to an
alumni fiesta picnic on the soccer field—
where the food was great and a mini-baby
boom was in evidence—then lured back
inside for a Saturday afternoon lecture on
“The China-Burma-India Theater: Untold
“And you! You look
exactly the same!”
“No, you look exactly
the same!”
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 }
Stories from 1945,” by Elaine
Pinkerton Coleman (SFGI88).
A uniquely Santa Fe Homecoming offering, the All-Alumni Art Show drew a large and
enthusiastic crowd to the art
gallery. And during the annual
Homecoming dinner in the
Peterson Student Center dining
hall, Awards of Merit went to
Peggy Jones (SFGI94) and
Stephanie Forrest (SF77). A President’s
Brunch for alumni at the Hunt House
capped the weekend.
In Annapolis, Friday afternoon events
included an alumni career panel. Aaron
Lewis (A96), press secretary for Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, described a job
interview with another politician. Prepared to discuss current political issues,
Lewis instead was asked who he thought
had invented calculus: Leibniz or Newton.
After a very enthusiastic welcome from
her audience, Eva Brann delivered her lecture, “The Empires of the Sun and West,”
to a packed house, with alumni and students spilling out into the corridors of the
FSK Auditorium. Her observations about
human sacrifices in the Aztec empire prepared lecture-goers for a wine and cheese
reception.
In spite of reports of very late hours kept
at waltz and rock parties Friday night,
�28
{Homecoming}
scott caraway
moe hanson
In spite of reports of very late hours kept at
waltz and rock parties Friday night,
attendance was healthy at Saturday seminars.
attendance was good at Saturday seminars;
Sam Kutler had 14 alumni ready to plunge
into The Demons, a 600-page tome.
The class of 1952 had an afternoon picnic enlivened by class member Warren
Winiarski’s Stag’s Leap wine. The wine
also was served at the evening banquet,
perhaps inspiring the enthusiastic participation in class toasts.
A member of the class of 1932, Henry
Shryock, who had the honor of being the
oldest alumnus present, drew a standing
ovation with his heartfelt toast that closed
the evening: “On behalf of the old program, I’d like to toast the New Program—
St. John’s forever!” x
moe hanson
Clockwise from top: Taking a moment to
read in Annapolis; Jules and LeRoy Pagano
(A48); Santa Fe President John Balkcom
(SFGI00), flanked by Lee Goldstein
(SFGI90)and Alice Mangum Perry (SFGI92).
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 }
�29
{Homecoming}
At a Glance: Homecoming 2002
37, 42, 47, 52, 57, 62, 67, 72, 77,
82, 87, 92, 97
67, 72, 77, 82, 87, 92, 97
Freebie gifts
Travel mugs with McDowell
Hall picture
Paper cubes with four-season
views of the campus
Touch of nostalgia
The St. John’s Story on continuous replay in the Coffee Shop
President John Balkcom’s jaunty
straw boater at the Fiesta Picnic
Hot seminars
Plato’s Phaedo, led by Peter
Kalkavage
“Sorrow-Acre” by Isak Dinesen,
led by Don Cook, tutor emeritus
Honorary alumni
John Sarkissian, Al Toft,
Robert Williamson
Daniel T. Kelly Jr.,
Gregory D. Curtis
Awards of Merit
Candace Brightman (1967),
lighting designer for the Grateful Dead; Howard Zeiderman
(1967), tutor and founder of the
Touchstones Discussion Project
Peggy Jones (Graduate Institute
1994), founding board member
of the St. John’s College Library
and Fine Arts Guild; Stephanie
Forrest (1988), professor of computer science and researcher at
the University of New Mexico in
Albuquerque
Uniquely Johnnie
Homecoming Feature
Great books story hour for kids
Alumni Speaking Volumes
lecture
Top: Susan Zinanti (SF93), Heather Watts
(SF00), Taeko Onishi (SF92) at the Santa Fe
banquet; Below: Picnickers in Annapolis.
moe hanson
scott caraway
moe hanson
Reunion years
scott caraway
Santa Fe
moe hanson
Annapolis
Lawrence Black, Jenn Coonce, Lori Freeman, and Tafetta Elliott spell out their
graduation year.
Top: Pauline Shryock enjoys
the Annapolis Homecoming
banquet; Bottom: Annapolis
students Hayden Brockett and
Jenny Lowe at the waltz party.
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 }
�30
{Bibliofile}
The Clash Between Quantum Theory
and Human Individuality
Seeing Double: Shared Identities in
Physics, Philosophy, and Literature
Peter Pesic
MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 2002
P
eter Pesic explores fundamental and paradoxical questions
about connectedness and separateness, identity and
anonymity, in his new book,
Seeing Double: Shared Identities in Physics, Philosophy, and Literature.
Pesic, tutor and musician-in-residence in
Santa Fe, draws from the disciplines of philosophy and literature in shaping his discussion; however, it is physics that ultimately shapes his intriguing point of view.
Specifically, modern quantum theory is
presented as a tool for formulating and
contemplating nontraditional definitions
of individuality. Although he has expert
knowledge of the subject, the author presents contemporary theoretical physics in a
manner accessible to lay readers.
The usual interpretation of quantum
theory calls for an essential sameness in
the elementary building blocks of matter,
yet the prevailing cultural understanding
of individuality demands that certain
aspects of any object be unique unto
themselves. A central component of being
human, for example, is that each of us
feels we are one of a kind, unduplicated
across the arc of history. Although this
clashing of basic assumptions would seem
to pose an inherent contradiction, Pesic
suggests that by refining our definitions
of individuality and identity, we can make
quantum theory more intelligible and less
conflictive, while maintaining nonscientific claims of singularity.
In the last section of Seeing Double, the
author considers the defining property of
identicality described by quantum physics,
whereby subatomic particles have no individual identity. This notion begs challenging questions about how we are able to
observe the movement of (identical) electrons or to define them (accurately)
as either waves or particles.
Santa Fe Tutor Peter
Pesic tackles physics
in his latest book.
“What would happen
if a human is
cloned into two
identical beings?”
In exploring through classic literature a
revised perspective on the queries he raises, Pesic recounts illustrative elements that
begin with the Greek mythology of
Homer’s Odyssey and continue through
Janet Lewis’s The Wife of Martin Guerre
and Franz Kafka’s The Trial, among others. Philosophical theories also are considered, including those of Gottfried Leibniz,
Socrates, Benedict Spinoza, and Immanuel
Kant. The author gives concise discussions
of their ideas, but also aims to open a conversation with his readers. “We cannot
refer our human questions about identity
to a physicist, the way we refer our legal
problems to a lawyer,” writes Pesic. “This
realization is truly a philosophical matter.”
Pesic moves next into the implications of
the thinking upon which modern science
rests, including Newtonian physics, Einstein’s theory of relativity, and the electromagnetic studies of Michael Faraday. The
author further expands the question of
identity by acknowledging the powerful
influences that personality, nature, and
God may play in our interpretations of scientific theory.
Although Seeing Double does not
address such domains directly, it touches
ultimately on identity-related aspects of
biotechnology and cloning that also are
worthy of analysis. Mr. Pesic wonders, for
instance, what would happen if a human is
cloned into two identical beings: “Which
of these, then, is you? Both? Neither? Only
one (but which)?” A satisfactory answer
remains elusive.
In addition to being a concert pianist,
Pesic has published a number of papers on
science-related topics over the years. His
previous book, Labyrinth: A Search for the
Hidden Meaning of Science, was published
by MIT Press in 2000 and has appeared in
Japanese and German trans-lations as well
as paperback. x
–by Richard Mahler
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 }
�{Bibliofile}
31
Homeric Moments: Clues to
Delight in Reading
THE ODYSSEY and THE ILIAD
Eva Brann
Paul Dry Books
“Reading Homer’s poems is one of the
purest, most inexhaustible pleasures life
has to offer—a secret sometimes too well
kept in our time.” So begins Eva Brann’s
“Homeric Moments,” a work inspired by
50 years of reading Homer and 40 years of
guiding St. John’s students on their own
journeys through the poems. In 48 concise
and beautifully written chapters, Brann
focuses on the crucial scenes—the
moments—that mark the high points of
the narrative. Much of her book is structured on the questions that students have
posed in seminar over the years. (Editor’s
note: The Spring 2003 issue of The College
magazine will include a more thorough
review of Homeric Moments.)
Psychology and
the Critical Revolution
Anton G. Hardy (A51)
James Publications
Anton Hardy presents an odyssey of another kind in this work: the question of how
knowledge of the human being may be
attained. The book criticizes trends in
present-day psychology—psychology that
Hardy says is suffering in the grip of the
philosophy of realism.
How the Friday Night Dance
Came to Glen Echo Park
Owen Kelley (A93)
Self-published (okelley@gmu.edu)
Kelley’s book discusses the history of the
Glen Echo Park dances, which grew from a
small gathering of friends to weekly events
attracting several hundred people. Kelley
has interviewed dozens of dancers, musicians, and callers for his book on this
famous dance hall right outside Washington, D.C. Several essays about the dances
are also included.
Love, War and Circuses
Eric Scigliano (SF75)
Houghton Mifflin
Most children grow up loving elephants—
either from the circus and the zoo or from
favorite books featuring characters such as
Babar, the wise elephant king. Seattlebased writer Eric Scigliano, whose articles
have appeared in publications including
Outside and The New York Times, first
Japanese Cabinetry:
The Art and Craft of Tansu
David Jackson and Dane Owen (SF98)
Gibbs Smith
Originating from Japan’s Edo period (16151867), tansu refers mostly to wooden cabinets, boxes, and chests. This book provides
a broad representation of cabinetry designs
and chronicles the physical characteristics
and details of tansu as well as the historical
eras and societal factors that influenced
the craft.
12 Japanese Masters
Maggie Kinser Saiki (A85)
Graphis
Maggie Kinser Saiki spent 10 years profiling some of the greatest designers in postwar Japan for Graphis magazine. These
profiles are collected here in a book that
outlines the cultural and historical context
in which the designers grew up and
matured.
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 }
became fascinated with elephants as a
child living in Vietnam. The fascination
has lingered into adulthood, prompting
this volume examining man’s millennialong relationship with the pachyderm.
Scigliano explains how elephants have
shaped history, art, religion, and popular
culture, how they have been revered,
exploited for both labor and entertainment, and hunted to the point of becoming
endangered.
Periodically, The College will list or feature
alumni books. Please send notice of books
published or review copies (which will be
donated to the library’s alumni author collection) for consideration to: The College
Magazine, St. John’s College, Box 2800,
Annapolis, MD 21404.
�32
{Alumni Notes}
1944
JOHN DAVIS HILL and Dorothy Murdock Hill celebrated their 56th wedding anniversary on June 15, 2002, in
Omaha, Nebraska, with local friends.
1946
“Sued President Bush on June 12 on
behalf of 31 members of Congress
for terminating the ABOL Treaty
without the approval of two-thirds
of the Senate or a majority of both
houses,” reports PETER WEISS from
the Bronx.
1952
DAVID NAPPER writes that he enjoys
the mild winters of Ponte Vedra,
Fla., but summers are “steamy.”
“I’m active in tennis, and we’ve
found the Jacksonville Symphony
worthwhile.”
1960
The New York Tri-State Speaker’s
Association Inc. honored MARY
CAMPBELL GALLAGHER with its Alan
Cimberg Award for her years of dedicated service to NSA/New York. She
has served on the board of directors
and in various leadership roles.
1962
“Am busily writing a new paper
called ‘Behaving with Shu [care
toward one’s subordinates, usually
translated as reciprocity] and
Zhong’ [care toward one’s superiors, usually translated as loyalty]
for, I hope, presentation next year
in Sweden,” says DAVID SCHILLER.
1965
CAROL BENJAMIN JEFFERS is “happily single after a long marriage. I live
squarely on the line between Maryland and Delaware and work at a job
I love. I plan to retire and move back
to the Pacific Northwest in about
two years.” She would love to hear
from classmates.
ALLENNA DUNGAN LEONARD was
recently elected to a three-year term
as president of the American Society
for Cybernetics.
1967
LOVEJOY DURYEA is chairman of the
New York State Board of Interior
Design Office of the Professions. In
March, she will receive the Gold
Medal at the National Arts Club in
New York.
1968
ALEX HIMWICH (A) and Lynn
Maguire were married on May 26,
2002.
1969
JOSEPH PRESTON BARATTA (A) writes
that his history, The Politics of
World Federation, will be published
next year by Praeger Press. The
book includes a chapter about
A Gift of Books
everal books from the library of the late PETER
RINGLAND (class of 1944) have found their way into
the college library. Peter’s widow, Valentina, brought
an 18th-century volume of Ovid and two language
manuals from his Greek tutorials. The Ovid, she said,
came from a market in Rome where Peter was stationed when he worked for the government in the 1980s. The language manuals were for a class taught by John Kieffer, one of only
two tutors who remained at the college after the New Program
was instituted in 1937. A classics scholar, Kieffer taught Greek
and developed early materials for the freshman tutorials. The
Ovid will be kept with the library’s rare book collection; the manuals will join other source books, papers, and instructional materials from the early days of the New Program. x
S
Stringfellow Barr and Scott
Buchanan after they left St. John’s.
MARK A. MANDEL (A) writes that
his daughter Susannah interned last
summer at a Paris publishing house
midway through MIT’s M.A. program in comparative media studies.
“As I write this (hopefully no longer
the case as you read it!), I am searching for work as a linguist (the language-scientist kind, not the kind all
security agencies want to hire,
alas!)” Mam@theworld.com
ference was held Oct. 30 to Nov. 4.
Last September SARA ABERCROMBIE
(SF02) was a houseguest of IRVING
WILLIAMS (A72) at Happy House on
Cliff Island, Maine. “We compared
senior pranks of the ’70s and ’90s,
and the true identify of the infamous
‘clapper napper,’ who exchanged
the Annapolis Bell Tower clapper for
a dog fish, was revealed,” reports
Williams.
1974
In New York, N.Y., BENJAMIN
TREUHAFT (A) is involved with a
group called Send a Piano to
Havana that does just that. “Just
delivered our 210th piano to Havana
last month.” The group’s web site:
www.sendapiana.com
SAM GOLDBERG (A) has written The
Transference in Psychotherapy with
William Goldstein, to be published
this year by Jason Aronson Inc.
1970
Vancouver-Portland alumni: It’s
time for another event, says DALE
MORTIMER (A). “The last area
alumni event was a reception for
President John Balkcom on May 8,
2001.” For those with a suggestion,
plus the willingness to organize the
proposed event, feel free to contact
Dale: 360-882-9058.
Last summer, STEVE HANCOFF (A)
saw a newspaper article reporting
that musicians, especially American
artists, were turning down concert
dates in Israel, mostly because of a
fear of violence, but in some cases,
because of disagreement with
Israeli policy.
His response was to bring a concert tour to Israel. “The two principles I wanted to demonstrate were:
There are indeed respected American artists who will not be intimidated by terror. And we wish to stand
with the Israeli people.”
Hancoff’s trio planned to tour the
country during the fall—not just the
major cities, he said. At each concert the group expected to be joined
an Israeli artist. They also planned
to offer master classes. Check his
web site for updates: www.stevehancoff.com.
1972
Parental pride: “HANK (A70) and
CHRISTINE (A72) CONSTANTINE’S
extremely personable, intelligent
and handsome son, Alex, is now a
sophomore at Annapolis.”
Last fall, CHRISTEL STEVENS (A)
finally got to Greece. She presented
her paper, “Images of Women in
Indian Dance Sacred and Profane,”
with colleague Lori Clark, at the
annual conference of the International Council for Dance. The con-
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 }
1975
1976
ED KAITZ (A) is a musician currently
performing interactively with children, elders and people with disabilities. Interested parties may contact
him at EdsMusicMachine@aol.com.
1977
WILLIAM MALLOY (SF) has plans.
“Because I was nine years older
than you when we began, I get to
retire in 2006! I plan on doing
some sort of paralegal work for
some left-wing public interest
group (but not one as staid as the
ACLU).”
From PATRICIA MCCULLOUGH
(SFGI) in Lanham, Md.: “I have
just completed my 30th year as a
teacher of English at Alice Deal Jr.
High School in Washington, D.C.,
and I still love it.”
Two years ago, MICHAEL (LEVINE)
ST. JAMES (A) chose to leave law
firm life after two decades to begin
a solo practice. Good timing,
he says: “I specialize in business
bankruptcy!”
�33
{Alumni Profile}
Preserving the Ph.D.
Anthropologist Peter Ellison Leads Harvard Graduate School
by Rosemary Harty
martha stewart
W
hen he became
dean of Harvard’s
Graduate School of
Arts and Sciences
two years ago,
Peter Ellison (A73)
knew he was sacrificing time: precious
time that might otherwise be devoted to
studying lactation and fertility among the
Toba of northern Argentina, or time to
produce another book in his field of human
reproductive ecology.
But in the bargain, Ellison gains a
chance to make a long-lasting contribution
to science in another way. Concerned that
higher education could lose talented students to more lucrative fields, Ellison
became increasingly active at Harvard in
issues concerning graduate education. He
believed that the crisis in secondary education—an inability to attract and retain talented and motivated individuals to the
teaching profession—could be replicated in
higher education.
“As a society, we have so devalued secondary school education as a career that
we have made it one that only saints and
extremely motivated people of talent
would pursue,” says Ellison. “I’m worried
that we could do the same thing to the professoriate. The very best and brightest
young minds are also capable of many
other activities and there are many other
professions that beckon to them.”
Harvard’s call to action was prompted by
alarming statistics. At Harvard in the ’60s
and early ’70s, well over half of the summa
cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa graduates
went on to graduate school and careers in
higher education; now that number is
below 20 percent, says Ellison. Medicine,
law, and business school beckon to many
talented graduates who might otherwise
become college professors.
“Pursuing a Ph.D. and going into academia is a very long course with unpredictable
rewards,” Ellison says. “Either we’re going
to make higher education a career for second-class minds or go to work on that career
so that some of these wonderfully intelligent
people can still pursue that calling.”
Before accepting the dean’s post, Ellison
headed a faculty committee examining
financial aid. The committee’s work even-
Peter Ellison
tually led to Harvard’s adoption of a policy
to provide full funding for nearly all of its
graduate students. That alone is a good
start, but Harvard is also looking at ways to
shorten the path to the Ph.D., improve the
quality of life for graduate students, and
make sure that doctoral candidates learn
teaching skills along the way.
“We’re providing much more self–conscious preparation of our students. In the
past they’ve been trained to be wonderful
researchers, and they figure out how to
teach on their own,” he explains. “Now we
integrate teaching into the curriculum,
rather than making it just a job on the side,
and we’re addressing pedagogy and professional development in general.”
Ellison’s own path to research and teaching came—indirectly—through St. John’s.
He studied Greek and Latin at an East
Coast prep school and believed that
St. John’s would prepare him to pursue a
career in literature, languages, or philosophy. Science he dismissed as “dry and
uninteresting.”
That plan continued unaltered until Ellison read Darwin’s Origin of Species in
sophomore laboratory.
“That stopped me dead in my tracks. I
had never encountered an argument that was
so powerful and undeniably true,” he says.
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 }
That led to his decision to leave St. John’s
after the fall term of his junior year; he
transferred to the University of Vermont,
where he plunged into remedial science
and biology, “loving every minute of this
area of knowledge which I had previously
spurned.”
After earning a degree in anthropology,
Ellison chose to study human biology. He
went to Harvard, where he earned a doctorate in biological anthropology and
joined the faculty in 1983. His research has
centered on the biology of human populations, including issues such as fertility,
stages of development, and reproduction.
Ellison’s research has taken him to some
of the most remote spots on Earth, from
the Congo to villages in Argentina. He has
hopped single-engine mission planes to get
to research sites and suffered a bout of
malaria. He has studied topics including anxiety and ovarian function, reproductive
ecology and reproductive cancers, and agerelated decline in male salivary testosterone.
There are sometimes constraints in his
research, and not just those that hinder a
man investigating female reproductive
issues.
“Even more than being a male studying
reproductive biology, [it is difficult to be] a
human biologist and to study human beings
where your subjects are people who have
lives and identities and struggles of their
own, ethically, personally, and socially.”
He may have less time to spend in the
field, but Ellison’s research is continuing
through his Reproductive Ecology Laboratory at Harvard. Ellison and colleagues
developed techniques for measuring reproductive hormones in saliva instead of
blood, allowing them to take research out
of the clinic and into the field.
Right now, that field is in Argentina,
where Ellison and his co-investigators are
studying issues of lactation, energy, and
reproduction among the Toba women of
Formosa, Argentina.
Although he doesn’t plan to stay in
administration for the long term, Ellison
appreciates the broader perspective his
post has afforded him.
“I have a chance to get out of my own little niche and see a larger landscape.” x
�34
{Alumni Profile}
Striking a Balance
Lawyer Martha Franks Integrates Idealism with Reality
by Marissa Morrison, SFGI02
Santa Fe tutor
Martha Franks
maintains a private practice
in environmental law and is
involved in the
controversy
over water
rights in New
Mexico.
S
omewhere between passion and
pragmatism, real change happens. Martha Franks (SF78)
cites as an example the divergent paths of two historic figures. Abraham Lincoln was
diplomatic and realistic. Abolitionist John
Brown was radical and passionate. In common, they shared the desire to end slavery.
Franks, a lawyer, environmentalist, student of theology, and St. John’s tutor, has
been working in New Mexico water law
since the mid-’80s. Her approach to the
critical issues surrounding water allocation
in the West take her somewhere between
Lincoln and Brown.
“Brown stands as an icon of personal
principle, such principle that he was ineffective in what he wanted to do,” Franks
says. “And then there’s Lincoln, who is far
more equivocal in terms of principled
objections to slavery, but he can get things
to happen. He can see what needs to be
done in order to be effective in the world.
Yet you have to be careful, because you
don’t want to be so seduced by realpolitik
that you lose track of what you do. It is a
very difficult line to walk.”
Franks balances her environmental concerns with practical realities. “The theme
in all my work has been trying to integrate
an intellectual and a practical life,” she
says, “and trying to understand when it’s
appropriate to make deals, and when it’s
important to pursue principle.”
Water law goes beyond public policy and
the law; philosophical and theological
issues are also involved. Traditionally,
water rights have been allocated among
federal, state, city, Indian, and private
interests. But how about allocating water
to the environment?
“There are two sides to the question
about how much water is appropriate to
allocate to the environment,” Franks
explains. “There are people who argue
that the answer is none, that species have
become extinct since the beginning of
time; our species is now ascendant and
we’ll take what we want. Others say that
the preservation of earth is the primary
task of human stewardship and that water
should be available first for the natural
ecology. Only when that’s satisfied can
“The more learning
you do in real life,
the more you can
hear the truth.”
human beings build a sustainable lifestyle
on what remains.
“Both positions can be defended on idealistic grounds, depending on your ideology, but the practical matter is that people
try to work out compromises. Huge ideologies stand there and people sort themselves in relation to the one they’re closest
to, but in the end, people struggle to find
compromises.”
Returning to the St. John’s program as a
tutor last September offered Franks another opportunity to integrate practicality and
intellect. “The more learning you do in
real life, the more you can hear the truth,”
Franks says. “I loved these books as an
undergrad, yet I have to look at them and
say, ‘I never could have heard this then.’ I
would have missed these truths if I hadn’t
been through what I have been through.
And of course that makes it obvious that
there’s tons of stuff in there that I can’t see
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 }
now, and maybe won’t see ever.”
After working for five years for the federal government and about 10 years for the
state of New Mexico, Franks started a new
chapter in her legal career in January 2002
when she opened a private firm. But forging ahead in the practical world has not
kept her from philosophical contemplation. Drawing on her seminary background (she has a master’s degree in theological studies from the Virginia
Theological Seminary), she’s been exploring the connections between Christianity
and environmentalism.
Franks mentions one environmentalist’s
claim that the Judeo-Christian tradition
led to human kind’s dominion over—and
destruction of—the planet. “I would like to
do work addressing the truth or falsity of
that and seeing whether there is a ground
for an environmental ethic within Christianity,” she says.
“It is astonishing that the Hebrew scriptures talk in terms of subduing the earth,”
she says. “Instead of thinking of the earth
as a giant nature god of mystery and power,
it makes more sense in our century, in the
wake of so much environmental destruction, to perceive the earth as weak and
helpless, like a baby that can’t take care of
itself.” x
�35
{Alumni Notes}
1978
Update on the Blumes, from
MICHAEL DAVID BLUME (A): “In the
past year my son has graduated high
school, my wife, BETSY BLUME (A75)
has become a certified fund-raising
executive, certification earned
through the American Society of
Association Executives. As well as
organizing other educational activities, she has now joined the board of
directors of the Washington chapter
of the AFP; and she and I wrote a
‘how to’ book on an aspect of fund
raising, published and promoted by
the American Society of Association
Executives. She continues to work
for the Special Libraries Association, and continues to expand revenues for its projects, working with
such companies as Lexis-Nexis, Factive, Standard & Poors, and many
others.
We have finally moved from
Annapolis to Bethesda, Maryland,
contiguous with Northwest Washington and intermingled with Chevy
Chase. It is a beautiful area.”
SUZAN M. PORTER (SF) will be
teaching sixth-grade science and
seventh-grade pre-algebra at the
NOVA School in Olympia, Wash.
“NOVA is a middle school which
serves academically talented youngsters, and I’m very much looking
forward to the challenges.”
1980
ANDREW KLIPPER (A) became a
grandfather for the second time on
Oct. 24, 2001, when Makayla Marie
Anderson was born. “JUSTIN BURKE
(A87) and I continue to coordinate
an annual fund-raising effort for the
Jimmy Fund and the Dana Farber
Cancer Institute. Anyone wishing to
participate can e-mail me at
Aklip1@aol.com. See you all croquet weekend. I will be running the
Bay Bridge 10K.”
1981
From Nashville, Tenn., ROBERT J.
MONDLOCK (A) writes of his musical
career: “For about the last seven
years I’ve been touring with my wife
and partner, Carol Elliott, who is
also a singer/songwriter (we got
married at the Kerrville Folk Festival in Texas in June of 2000). I’ve
got three CDs of my own out and
I’ve had the good fortune of having
some of my songs recorded by other
artists as well (Nanci Griffith, David
Wilcox, Joan Baez, Janis Ian, Garth
Brooks, Peter Paul and Mary). My
latest project is a trio record with
Art Garfunkel and Maia Sharp
scheduled for release on October 8.
The three of us will be touring to
support the record this fall on into
next spring. I’ve got a website like
just about everybody these days. It’s
BuddyMondlock.com. Please c’mon
by and sign the guestbook and say
hi. I’d love to hear from any of my
old pals at St. John’s.”
1982
STEVE MULHOLLAND (A) is teaching
Latin to middle and high school students at Chatham Public School. He
began building a new house last
September.
“As if going to the 20th reunion
wasn’t enough to make me feel old!”
says LESLIE SMITH-ROSEN (A)
“Eldest child, Marielle, is a college
freshman now; Alyssa’s in high
school and Sam’s in middle school.
I’m still teaching and developing
curriculum at a Baltimore Jewish
day school and religious high
school. My quest for a Ph.D., now
spanning two millennia, is on its
next leg: working on my language
comps, nursing a dissertation topic.
Too much stress, too much debt, too
little time to read—but somehow
very happy.”
According to DAVID WEINSTEIN (A),
“There is nothing like being the
director of research for a national
brokerage firm in these interesting
times.”
1983
DEANA GLICKSTEIN (AGI) recently
relocated to Tarpon Springs, Fla.,
after electing early retirement as an
educational administrator with the
school district of Philadelphia and
as a graduate school professor.
“Though there are many real
Greeks here in Tarpon Springs,
have not found any St. Johnnie
alumni chapters here in Florida.
Interested in creating one? please
e-mail: deanashere@hotmail.com.”
A Year in Congress
TEVE HANF (A70) has been spending the past year
S
working in Congress, thanks to a fellowship from the
American Political Science Association. “I’m serving
the fellowship on the personal staff of Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) My issues are health and the elderly—
totally new subjects for me. (For the past 15 years, I’ve
been working on financial regulatory issues.) The congressional
staff is young, smart, hard-working—exploding the myth that people who work for Congress don’t know what they’re doing. This is
a wonderfully invigorating and educational experience for me.
“On the personal side, my wife (Ruth Sievers) and I celebrated
our 18th anniversary last March. She has become devoted to the
cultivation and arrangement of flowers and wants to retire soon
from her writing job at the Library of Congress so she can spend
full time on those floral pursuits. Our 14-year-old son just graduated from middle school with a straight-A record for the entire
three years. He enters high school next fall.” x
1984
that would outline the cultural and
historical context in which these
designers grew up and matured.”
EDWARD ABSE (A) is completing a
doctorate in anthropology this year
at the University of Virginia, based
on three years of field research with
the Mazatec Indians of the Sierra
Madre Oriental in Oaxaca, Mexico.
ANTHONY N. SIEGEL (SF) married
Linda Naclerrio in October 2001; he
was promoted to vice president of
CitiCorps last February. They live in
Chappaqua, N.Y.
1985
1986
Remarried and with a brand new
book, MAGGIE KINSER [SAIKI]
HOHLE (A) writes: “As I wrote in
The Reporter in 2000, I graduated
in ’85 from Annapolis as Maggie
Kinser. I spent 15 years in Japan. I
returned to the U.S. in 2000. The
new news is that I have a book coming out: The book is 12 Japanese
Masters, and is being published by
Graphis. (You can find it at amazon.com.) 12 Japanese Masters is the
culmination of 10 years of writing
about Japanese design. Because my
parents are both designers, because
I studied at St. John’s, and because I
speak Japanese, I ended up writing
for Graphis magazine while in
Japan. I was fortunate enough to
interview some of the greatest
designers in postwar Japan, and
through their work and the experiences they related to me, to learn
about both Japanese design and the
postwar period in Japan. I published
more than 20 pieces for Graphis,
and then, while home for my
father’s funeral in 1999, pitched the
publisher with the idea of bringing
all these profiles together in a book
MARGARET PARISH (A) received a
Ph.D. in clinical psychology from
Delphi University in 2000. She is a
postdoctoral fellow at the Austen
Riggs Center, an open, psychoanalytic, psychiatric hospital dedicated
to examined living in Stockbridge,
Mass.
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 }
LUCY E. DUNCAN (SF) gave birth to a
daughter this spring.
1987
BETH MORRIS (A) has just returned
from a year in London (spent with
A87 classmate MICHAEL SMITH and
his wife, Kristen). She’s working as a
project manager for a software company. In September she wrote of her
plans to be married—“INS willing!”—in November to Steve Tanner of Basingstoke, U.K.
1988
ERIN M. MILNES (A) has recently
taken up whitewater raft guiding.
“It’s great fun in a beautiful loca-
�36
{Alumni Notes}
tion: the south fork of the American
River. Just last week I was joined on
a rafting trip by JEFF FALERO (A88),
who’s now living in the Bay Area.
We had a fantastic time catching up
and paddling in the sun. Anyone
interested in some California
whitewater can reach me at
erin@milnes.de”
Last fall, GRETCHEN JACOBS (A)
wrote and directed a play called
Brightness Falls: The Tragical
History of Christopher Marlowe,
at the Greenbelt Arts Center in
Greenbelt, Md.
1990
New baby news from CLINTON
PITTMAN (SF): “Samuel Shen
Pittman born 02/22/02—George
Washington’s real birthday and a
numerical palindrome of sorts. Pictures available upon request.”
1991
SAPNA GANDHI (A) writes from
Jersey City: “I am finally certified to
teach yoga to children through a
great program (www.yogakids.com).
If anyone is interested in learning
more, contact me: dreamsapna@
yahoo.com. I don’t know where
I’ll go from here but will look into
teaching at children’s hospitals
and community centers.” She also
plans a trip to India to get reacquainted with family and her
culture.
CYNTHIA GLINES (SFGI) completed
her doctorate in psychology last
spring. “Currently I work at a maximum security prison as a unit psychologist in the lovely state of
Idaho.”
1992
LORIE BENNING (A) has been in Baltimore with her daughter, Sarah,
for four years. “Sarah is 11 and is
going into sixth grade. She’s a jock
(swimming and soccer), but she’s
also artistic and she loves to read. I
work at Johns Hopkins as a statistical analyst for a women’s HIV
study. I’ve published three papers
on the impact of HIV on cervical
disease, quality control of HIV viral
load measurements, and the
increasing importance of non-
AIDS mortality in the era of potent
anti-retroviral therapy.”
NONNIE (SCHMITT) CULLIPHER (A)
lives in the mountains of North
Carolina with her husband, Sid.
They have been blessed over the
past year with the birth of daughter
Greta and the adoption of Brittany,
11. Nonnie and Sid run a nonprofit.
AARON GARZA (SF) is moving to
Ogden, Utah, in August. He had a
great time at the reunion: “Later, I
laughingly discovered that I’d busted my shoes from much spirited
dancing.”
LAURA C. KNIGHT (A) writes from
Corinth, Texas: “I recently graduated from DePaul University with
a master’s in math education, and
I’ve accepted a job with North
Central Texas Community College,
teaching developmental math.
It’s good to be back in Texas. I
would love to hear from fellow
Johnnies. E-mail is: knightla@
mail1.aaahawk.com.”
HANNAH STIRES (A) and JOEL ARD
(A95) married at St. Matthew’s
Cathedral in Washington, D.C., on
April 13, 2002. Johnnies in attendance included the best man,
DAVID TRIMMER (A92), NONNIE
(SCHMITT) CULLIPHER (A92), AMY
ELIZABETH PARTON (A92), SARAH
SCHOEDINGER (A92), KURT HECKEL (A93), LORIE BENNING (A93),
AMY THURSTON (A95), ALEX LOMVARDIAS (A95), and EMILY MURPHY
(A95). Hannah is an attorney at the
Department of Justice, and Joel is
an attorney at Latham & Watkins,
both in Washington, D.C. They
recently bought a home in Eastport
and would be happy to hear from
old friends and acquaintances at
j-ard-10@alumni.uchicago.edu.
ANNE SCHUCHMAN (started with
the Annapolis class of ’91, graduated with class of ’92) and JAMES
BERRETTINI (AGI93) are thrilled to
announce the birth of their daughter, Stella Rose, on October 7.
(Their excuse for missing the class
of 1992 reunion.) “Stella joins big
brother Samuel, now 3. We’re still
living in Manhattan, but searching
for larger quarters. We can be
reached by e-mail at
ams8050@nyu.edu (Anne) and
jpb@alum.mit.edu (Jim).”
1993
AMY FLACK (A) is in her fifth year
of ministry (Presbyterian Church
of the USA) in South Dakota. In
July, she wrote, her area was in the
midst of a terrible drought. “The
cattle don’t have enough grass to
eat and people are forced to sell off
their whole livelihoods. Keep the
small farmer and our Western
states in your prayers.”
THORNTON LOCKWOOD (AGI) and
his wife, Karen, announce the
birth of Nicholas Charles, born
August 15.
JONATHAN PEARL (A) and his wife,
Cheryl welcomed the birth of their
son, Rembrandt, on April 15, 2002,
at 10:46 p.m.
1994
DAVID BROOKS (SF) expects this is
the year he’ll graduate with his
Ph.D. in clinical psychology: “I
have just completed a predoctoral
residency at the University of
Miami/Jackson Memorial Medical
Center and will be building up a private practice as I complete my dissertation on contemporary Kleinian
Psychoanalytic technique.”
ALEX GAMMON (A) and BETH
MARTIN (A) were married in the
Great Hall on July 20.
1995
WILLIAM BOLAN (A) and JANICE
THOMPSON (A) live in South Bend,
Ind., where they recently celebrated their fifth wedding anniversary.
Son Mathew James Thompson
Bolon is now “a very active twoand-a-half-year-old. We are both
nearing completion of our Ph.D.s
in theology and hope that at least
one of us will have a job soon!”
KATE FELD (A) is enrolled in
Columbia University’s Graduate
School of Journalism.
CARTER SNEAD (A) was recently
named General Counsel for President Bush’s Council on Bioethics
(www.bioethics.gov). LEIGH FITZPATRICK SNEAD (A98) is in her last
year of doctoral coursework at the
Catholic University of America
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 }
School of Philosophy. Leigh and
Carter are living in the Dupont
Circle neighborhood of Washington, D.C., and would love to hear
from old friends.
The REV. JANET SUNDERLAND
(SFGI) has a church in Kansas City
and is having a wonderful time.
Her web site is www.churchofantioch.org/coakc.html and e-mail is
suncliff@planetkc.com. She would
love to hear from old friends.
1996
CASEY PATRICK MCFADEN (AGI)
graduated from Georgetown University Law Center last May and
entered private practice in Washington, D.C.
1997
DOMINIC CRAPUCHETTES (A)
moved to the D.C. area with AMANDA DULIN (A) to attend the MBA
program at the University of Maryland in the fall. His plan is to start
a board game company when he
graduates. “I am extremely excited
about the whole prospect of
returning to school and working on
a business plan. Plato must be
turning over in his grave!”
Samuel Davis Trares was born to
´
RACHEL TRARES, nee Davis, (A) and
LUKE TRARES (A) on Wednesday,
October 16, 2002, at 4:09 p.m in Fort
Worth, Texas. He weighed 8 pounds
and 9 ounces at birth and was 20
inches long. Both Rachel and Sammy
are doing fine. Adds Luke: “We are
both very excited to be given the
opportunity to raise such a cute little
person.”
JUAN GONZALO VILLASEÑOR (A) has
moved to New York, where he
works for the American Civil Liberties Union as the William J.
Brennan First Amendment Fellow.
1998
RUTH BUSKO (A) is completing a
master’s degree in acupuncture.
She’s an acupuncture intern at the
faculty-student clinic of the TAI
Sophia Institute for the Healing
Arts in Laurel, Md. “Feel free to
contact me at 410-312-0991 or at
rmbusko@hotmail.com.”
�37
{Alumni Notes}
Lighting up the Lawns
are doing premed or med, or if you
are in New York. Please contact me
at artemisvela@yahoo.com.”
2001
usca croquet news/Holly Currier
BASIL BRYAN CLEVELAND (A) is
happy to talk about the University
Professors graduate program at
Boston University, which he says is
“BU’s version of the Committee on
Social Thought.” Contact him at
basilcleveland@hotmail.com.
TEPHANIE PADUANO (A94) graces the cover of the fall
2002 edition of USCA Croquet News, the publication
of the United States Croquet Association. Paduano is
also featured in “New Faces Light Up the Lawns,” an
article about her introduction to the game and her
first-place singles and third-place doubles victories in
the USCA Mid-Atlantic/New England Regional tournament last
summer. Paduano, who works for U.S. Trust in New York, plays
croquet in Central Park as a member of the New York Croquet
Club. Although her championship qualities emerged after graduation, Paduano credits St. John’s with sparking her initial interest.
“Everyone pretty much knew everyone at St. John’s,” Paduano
says in the article. “One day a friend of mine was playing croquet
and I asked him to show me a few shots. I wasn’t really hooked
then, but I thought it was fun.” x
S
DANE OWEN (SF) has published
Japanese Cabinetry: The Art and
Craft of Tansu.
1999
JESSICA MORGENSTERN (A) is teaching full time for Arthur Murray
Studio in Santa Barbara, Calif.
“Sometimes miss the good conversations, would welcome e-mail!”
Sprout_1999@yahoo.com.
TRACY NECTOUX (AGI) is currently
teaching English at Parkland Community College in Champaign, Illinois. “It’s only now that I miss the
‘calm safety’ of being a student!”
2000
PAUL BRITTON SPRADLEY (A) recently earned his master’s degree from
Ole Miss. “I am still teaching geometry in the Mississippi Delta and I
recently bought a house.”
ADRIEN STOLOFF (A) will be heading
to Japan to participate in the JET
program. Classmates can reach him
at elemence@hotmail.com
ANNE VELA (A) says, “Hi y’all. I have
moved to New York to start studies
in the Columbia University postbaccalaureate premedical program.
Chris is staying in Savannah until
May to finish his master’s degree in
architecture. I would love to get in
touch with other NYC Johnnies who
KAREN COSTA (SF) sends reports for
herself and other Santa Fe classmates: “HEATHER DAVIS is going to
Haiti with the Peace Corps. EBEN
LASKER, JOE BUCKLEY, BRIAN BALLENTINE, JEROME MOROUX, and
KARINA GILL are living in New York
City. Karina and Joe are both teaching. BEN JUDSON and IAN MULLET
are in San Antonio, Texas. I am also
living in New York City doing
research and editing. But maybe this
is all just gossip?”
JUSTIN KRAY (SF) spent this past
year teaching English in Epinal,
France; he toured Eastern Europe
before returning to the United
States in June.
NANCY R. LEWIS (HA) says it was “a
pleasure” to pay her 2002 alumni
dues—and she really means it.
“When I was appointed registrar of
the college in 1979, I never imagined that I would become the recipient of two such wonderful gifts. My
years spent as registrar and now as
an honorary alumna are extraordinary gifts and I am very grateful for
both of them. Thank you for the
opportunity to continue to share in
the life of the college in such a
meaningful way.”
ANNE NEEDHAM (A) has left her job
as a bookseller in Washington,
D.C., to enroll in the Northwest
School of Wooden Boat Building in
Port Townsend, Wash. She hopes
one day to work in a boatyard and
teach others the traditional arts
and crafts of the sea.
“Having discovered that, contrary to Socrates’ august opinion
that ‘souls are not unalloyed,’ I am
getting in touch with my ‘iron soul’
and hope to learn a trade as well,”
she says.
Needham is scheduled to graduate with an associate’s degree in
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 }
occupational studies in traditional
wooden boat building in June 2003.
KEE ZUBLIN (SF) reports from
Eugene: “Have begun performing
on the Winnamucca-Tonopeh
circuit as a prestidigitator/family
counselor.”
2002
“Life is good,” says CLAIRE
DARLING (SF), in Beaverton, Ore.
“I’m growing quite fond of our
three chickens. Would love to hear
from anyone local regarding reading
groups, hiking, litter pick-up, whatever.” Bumpkins@aracnet.com.
JULIA (GRAHAM) MESNIKOFF (SF)
was married June 1 to Nathan Mesnikoff. They were married at the
Unitarian-Universalist Church to
which they belong, on the lawn and
“under a huppah which I batiked
with symbols of Nathan’s and my
several religious traditions and
other things dear to us. BILL AND
NATALIE BLAIS (SF04) and CLAIRE
DARLING (SF03) and her daughter,
Regan, helped hold the huppah,
and KRISTIE KESLER (SF03) read a
Buddhist benediction. I finished
my nurse practitioner training at
Boston College; Nathan continues
work on his Ph.D. in philosophy of
religion at Boston University.” x
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 April;
deadline for the alumni notes
section is Feb. 15.
In Annapolis:
The College Magazine
St. John’s College, Box 2800
Annapolis, MD 21404;
reharty@sjca.edu
In Santa Fe:
The College Magazine
St. John’s College
Public Relations Office
1160 Camino Cruz Blanca
Santa Fe, NM 87501-4599;
tshalizi@mail.sjcsf.edu
Alumni notes on the Web:
Read Alumni Notes and contact
The College on the web at
www.sjca.edu — click on Alumni.
�38
{Alumni Profile}
The Search for a Bearable Sorrow
Jonathan Aurthur (A68) lost his son to suicide. His new book retraces his son’s journey
through the world of mental illness and asks: Was there a better way to help him?
by Sus3an Borden, A87
onathan Aurthur’s son Charley—
an intelligent, well-liked, handsome young man with a philosophical bent and a love for the
piano—was 18 years old when he
experienced his first psychotic
episode and suicide attempt during a camping trip to Yosemite. Five years
later, Charley jumped to his death onto
the Santa Monica Freeway. The Angel and
the Dragon is Aurthur’s account of
Charley’s life and death—with most of the
book dedicated to describing his son’s illness and the attempts made to treat it.
Some of the most interesting—and troubling—parts of the book explore the nature
of mental illness. Is the problem medical?
social? psychological? spiritual? These
passages are interesting because they
show the real-life need to unravel philosophical questions about the relation
between the mind and the body. They are
troubling because they speak to a central
failure in medical treatment for mental
disorders.
J
Medical Model
When his son returned, fearful and agitated, from Yosemite after his first psychotic
break, Aurthur sought help for him from
the medical establishment. “Charley’s
first psychotic breakdown and suicide
attempt appeared to happen so suddenly,
literally from one day to the next, that it
seemed like it had to be something physical. As a result, I eagerly tried to convince
him that he had a simple disease like diabetes, and that just as diabetics need to
take insulin, he had to take his antipsychotic medication or his lithium and then
everything would be okay,” says Aurthur.
“It was very comforting to think that
Charley’s problem was relatively straightforward and understandable. Comforting
to me, at least.”
But as Charley struggled with numerous
hospitalizations, doctors, diagnoses, and
medications, Aurthur saw that mental illness was far more complicated than diabetes. Not only did the inability of medicine to treat his son lead him to see the
shortcomings of the medical model, but
In THE ANGEL AND THE DRAGON, Jonathan
Aurthur tries to explain why conventional treatment couldn’t save his son
Charley’s life.
Aurthur’s son, like many with mental disorders, also had quite a different understanding of his problem.
“There were times when he tried to
believe that he had some simple, treatable
physical illness, because I think part of
him wanted to live a simple, uncomplicated life,” says Aurthur. “But another part
of him knew that he and his life were not
simple and uncomplicated no matter what
anyone told him. His illness, or as he
termed it, his ‘affliction,’ permeated too
many parts of his psyche; it was too psychological and spiritual, too much a part
of who he was and how he saw himself, to
be isolated into some simple physical
pigeon hole.”
A patient’s complex vision of his illness,
coupled with the often serious side effects
of medication, can lead to resisting or
refusing treatment. The standard medical
viewpoint is that this resistance is a symptom of the illness and hinders treatment.
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 }
But Aurthur is able to show readers of The
Angel and the Dragon a patient’s view of
resistance.
When a patient is under medication, his
negative symptoms are relieved to some
degree, but his life is greatly diminished.
No, he won’t kill himself. But to what
degree is he living, facing side effects
ranging from blackout spells and seizures
to headaches, anxiety, and fatigue?
The problem is magnified if the patient
and doctor disagree about a fundamental
issue: Where do symptoms of an illness
end and a patient’s individual humanity
begin? Is he suffering from delusions of
grandeur, or is he particularly gifted? Is
he suffering from paranoia, or is the
world—locking him in a hospital, monitoring his behavior, forcing medication on
him—really out to get him?
As Aurthur pieces together the patient’s
vantage point, the reader sees resistance
for the complicated phenomenon that it is.
Aurthur then introduces a more radical
view (not one he shares, but one he finds
interesting) that attributes resistance not
to illness but to a freedom from illness: If
you’re treated for behavior that those with
more power see as illness, but that you
believe simply reflects your differing
vision of the world, then it is unwise to
comply with treatment, especially when it
is harsh or painful. Extreme examples of
this situation include regimes that place
dissidents in mental wards and societies
that condemn left-handed people as tools
of the devil.
“It makes me think about scapegoating,
in the old days in Eastern Europe,” says
Aurthur. “There was the village idiot, the
village beauty, the village whore, the village drunk. These designated social roles
allowed the society to function in an
organized way.” Although his family tried
to avoid it, they often ended up scapegoating Charley. “Charley became the designated problem and family therapy turned
into ‘how can we help Charley,’ not ‘what
is going on in our family that has contributed to the problem.’ Of course he
became terribly resistant, totally on the
�{Alumni Profile}
defensive. As loving as we tried to be,
we were dumping on him.”
As Aurthur explores the psychological reasons for resistance, he also
investigates the physical reasons.
While an intolerance for the side
effects of antipsychotic drugs is a fairly well known cause of resistance,
Aurthur points to one simple reason a
patient might stop taking medication:
It doesn’t work.
For Aurthur, a key insight into the problem with antipsychotics came when
Charley was in the hospital for a selfinflicted stabbing wound. Although he was
on morphine for the pain, Aurthur was
disturbed that no one was inclined to
return Charley to his antipsychotic medicine. A doctor finally tried to put him at
ease about the situation by explaining that
morphine would work—it was the first
antipsychotic.
“That’s when the lightbulb clicked,”
writes Aurthur. “So that was it. I’d been
dimly aware before that antipsychotics
didn’t ‘cure’ mental illness, they ‘treated’
it. Now for the first time I was finally seeing what that meant. Navane and all the
rest—‘tranquilizers,’ the dictionary says—
were clubs more than straitjackets. Basically they were just heavy, brain-deadening drugs, like morphine. They doped
people up to the point where they were too
zonked out to be crazy—or in the case of
people who were suicidal, too indifferent
to life to have the energy to end it.”
In addition to their bludgeon-like mechanisms, there’s the possibility that the
problems antipsychotics address aren’t the
right problems—that hearing voices and
self-aggrandizing are not what need to be
fixed. All antipsychotics are basically tranquilizers, explains Aurthur. “That may be
good for certain times, to calm the person
down, to make the voices go away. But it
does not address the fundamental problem: What is the person going to do with
his life after the voices go away? What is
going to take the place of being sick?
“There were times when Charley would
be in recovery, he’d be compliant, then
he’d ask, ‘What am I going to do with my
life?’ He was 21 years old, he saw his
schoolmates graduating and going on with
their lives while he was still a sophomore.
The life choices that young people like
Charley have must be addressed. They
can’t be satisfied with coping therapy,
therapy that teaches how to take your
Jonathan
Aurthur
“If only mental illness
were less demonized
and seen more as a
spiritual condition...”
medication better. This involves something much more profound.”
Psychosocial Rehab
Aurthur discovered something more profound in the world of psychosocial rehabilitation, often described as treating the
person, not the disease. “Whereas the psychopharmacological model gives the mentally ill person medications to get rid of
the so-called “primary symptoms” of the
illness—the voices, the visions, the delusions—psychosocial rehab relates first and
foremost to the person as a person, not a
list of symptoms, and tries to deal first and
foremost with the psychological pain or
uncertainty or social isolation the person
is experiencing,” he says. “The rehab
model works from the premise that even
very sick people have healthy parts,
strengths that can be built on and supported. Psychosocial rehab focuses on the
healthy to help deal with the unhealthy.”
In his research for The Angel and the
Dragon, Aurthur found two promising
alternative recovery facilities: The Village
Integrated Service Agency in Long Beach,
California, and Windhorse Associates in
Northampton, Massachusetts.
The Village’s approach is to create a
community within its treatment center
that supports patients as they work to
establish a life in the Village, and then
build that life beyond the center. They call
their approach “a high risk/high support
environment that promotes hope and the
recovery process.” Patients are supported
in social activities in and out of the Vil{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 }
39
lage, through substance abuse and recovery work, through employment and
employment training, with money management systems and guidance, and
through participation in the management
and governance of the Village.
Windhorse, featuring something of a
Buddhist orientation, describes its program as working toward integration and
balance for the patient and the community. The program calls for “basic attendance” to focus awareness on the immediate needs of the moment; “integrative
medicine” to establish habits of good
health through exercise, proper nutrition,
adequate rest, and stress management;
and a “working team” that can include a
team leader, psychotherapist, team counselor, housemate, wellness nurse, and psychiatrist.
As Arthur learned about psychosocial
rehab, he began to develop a picture of
what might have been a better course of
treatment for his son.
“If only we could see mental illness as a
problem with many different aspects—
social, personal, familial, historical. If
only mental illness were less demonized
and seen more as a spiritual condition that
is much more prevalent than we have been
led to believe.”
Had that been the case, Aurthur says,
he would have found someone “with real
insight and understanding to make
Charley feel he could communicate and
unburden himself and discuss what was
wrong. Someone to open up a dialogue
where Charley could feel safe, could feel
that nobody was leaning on him and
telling him what was wrong and what he
had to do.”
Charley’s journal entries reflect that he
was open to compassionate treatment.
“Charley hated the condescension,”
Aurthur says. “He needed somebody who
could spend time with him and try to figure out what had happened at Yosemite.
He needed somebody to just be there for
him, as a sort of buoy in stormy water.”
Aurthur looks back at his own attempts
to guide Charley toward the medical hierarchy with some regret. In some ways, by
accepting the medical model to a large
degree, he was missing out on much of
Charley’s experience of his illness.
“It’s like we both had our hands on the
knob of a radio and were struggling over
the dial,” he says. “I thought I was trying
to help him tune in to the music, but it was
really the static he wanted to listen to.” x
�40
{Obituaries}
Tommy Turner
From a Calvert County Farm to Teaching Generations of Doctors
ne of St. John’s most
loyal alumni, Thomas
Bourne Turner, class of
1921, died at his home in
Baltimore on September
22. Dr. Turner enjoyed an
extraordinary career as a physician,
researcher, and dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. His generous
support and enduring affection for the
college never wavered, even as he saw the
strict regimen and braided uniforms of
the military school he attended give way
to the great books with Buchanan and
Barr’s New Program.
Turner grew up in rural Calvert County, the son of a farmer and engineer who
built steamboat wharves along the Chesapeake Bay. He was only 14 when he came
to St. John’s—secondary education opportunities near his home being limited—as a
scholarship student. He kept as a treasured memento the saber he won as commander of the best-drilled company in
the battalion.
He enjoyed other fond memories of his
days at St. John’s. In 1999, in a letter
accompanying a gift to the college in
honor of the Liberty Tree after its loss,
Turner wrote of his “vivid recollection”
of a graduation ceremony in which
Franklin D. Roosevelt was the speaker:
“Not yet paralyzed, he was an unusually
tall and handsome man who spoke with
fervor. Recently Assistant Secretary of the
Navy, he made us all proud of the U.S.A.
and St. John’s as a small part of it.”
Turner’s service to the Board of Visitors and Governors was unprecedented.
It spanned four decades, from 1951 to
1985, and he twice served as board chairman, in 1956 and 1973. In 1957, he
received the Alumni Association’s Award
of Merit for his contributions to the field
of medicine.
As a young man, Turner leaned toward
a career in the law, but his father—noting
that two of his great-grandfathers had
been physicians—asked him to consider
the good he might do as a country doctor.
Thus, Turner went to the University of
Maryland to study medicine. Although
O
Thomas Bourne Turner
“Affection supports
life’s infrastructure,
compassion underpins the world.”
his medical career took a path divergent
from his father’s vision, he gained the
opportunity to make major contributions
in medicine.
After being trained as an internist,
Turner joined Johns Hopkins in 1927,
first as a postdoctorate fellow, then as an
assistant professor and associate physician. He conducted research in infectious
diseases as a member of the Rockefeller
Foundation.
In 1939, he became professor and head
of the department of microbiology at
Johns Hopkins, where he continued his
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 }
work in devastating diseases such as
polio and syphilis.
During World War II, he served as a
colonel in the Medical Corps in Washington, North Africa, and Europe. He studied Nazi Germany’s biological warfare
capabilities and developed the Army’s
venereal disease control program.
As the dean of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine from 1957 to
1968, Turner guided the school through a
period of tremendous expansion as the
size of its full-time faculty tripled, new
research facilities were built, and new
specialties such as biomedical engineering were developed. After stepping down
as dean, Turner became the medical
school’s first archivist and completed a
detailed history of the institution. In the
early ’80s, he became the first director of
the Alcoholic Beverage Medical Research
Foundation, based at Hopkins.
A 1995 Baltimore Sun article described
Turner as “engagingly unaffected, unpretentious and egalitarian, qualities perhaps nurtured by his deep roots in
Calvert County…He is a courtly man,
�41
{Obituaries}
easily erect in crisply tailored suits, a
genial patrician.”
In 1993, Turner composed a list of some
of the wisdom he had attained, calling it,
“A few things learned during a long life.”
They included culinary tips: “Almost
all soups can be improved by a dash of
sherry” and cautionary advice: “Hold on
to banisters going down stairs.”
Finally, he shared the guidelines that
ruled his own life so well: “Love, affection and compassion are all allied but not
the same. Reciprocated love is rare; cherish and guard it well. Affection supports
life’s infrastructure; compassion underpins the world.”
His favorite toast, a newspaper article
reported: “Let’s live it up.”
St. John’s extends sympathy to his family: daughters Anne Pope and Pattie
Walker, class of 1966; five grandchildren;
and seven great-grandchildren. x
DAVID B. REA
David Rea, class of 1949, died in September, just short of his 76th birthday.
Dave, as he was called by his fellow classmates and friends, came to St. John’s in
January 1946 as a January freshman. At the
end of the 1945-1946 academic year he was
the only student to pass the Greek reading
knowledge examination. In the ensuing
years he exhibited a mind that remembered
everything that he read and understood it
all as well. Dave excelled in all the facets of
the New Program. He never dominated a
seminar. Rather he clarified the text, kept
the discussion from floundering, and kept
the seminar on track whenever appropriate. While a student Dave would read some
of the seminal works in Greek, Latin,
French, or German without a dictionary.
“The Saga of Burnt Njal” would have a
lasting influence on his life. He developed
a love of classical music, especially opera.
At the Commencement exercises in 1949
Dave was awarded the St. John’s College
Board of Visitors and Governors Gold
Medal for the student with the highest
standing. He also received “Honorable
Mention” for his senior thesis.
After graduation Dave went to the Yale
School of Law. He was selected among
others by Stringfellow Barr and Scott
Buchanan to spend the summer of 1950 in
Israel to observe the formation of a new
state and to work on a kibbutz. En route
to and from Israel via Paris, Dave met
Jacqueline, whom he subsequently married. It was love at first sight.
Upon graduation from law school in
1952, Dave joined the firm of Wilkie, Farr
& Gallagher. There he practiced corporate law for almost 40 years until his
retirement in 1991. During that time Dave
was an active alumnus. Many times college
meetings in New York used a Wilkie, Farr
conference room. Dave was an active fundraiser for the college and a good contributor himself. He attended the Alumni Association New York Chapter meetings.The
Reas hosted the New York St. John’s College prospective student reception in their
New York residence many times. In 1974 he
and Jacqueline accompanied Stringfellow
Barr to Annapolis to celebrate Barr’s being
made an honorary alumnus of the class of
1949 on the occasion of the 25th reunion of
Dave’s class.
After many requests Dave agreed to
become a member of the St. John’s College
Board of Visitors and Governors. He
served two consecutive three-year terms.
Dave’s abilities were quickly recognized
and he soon became an influential member
of the Board serving on the Executive
Committee and the Governance Committee. At various times Dave and Wilkie, Farr
did pro bono work for the college.
Dave and Jacqueline grew fond of the
eastern end of Long Island.They spent
summer weekends on Shelter Island
where Dave sailed, fished, and clammed.
Eventually they bought a house in Sag
Harbor. Dave was one of the founders of
the St. John’s College Alumni Summer
Montauk Striped Bass and Bluefish Charter. On the evening of the fishing trip
Jacqueline and Dave would host a dinner
for the participants and provide rooms for
as many as possible. This was done for
many years. To be invited on board was
considered an honor.
In 1991 when Dave’s kidneys failed, he
used the time he was on dialysis to read
and listen to classical music. He never
complained. Over the next 10 years, he suffered a series of health setbacks.
Dave Rea will always be among the best
of whom St. John’s is capable and an example for all of how to live one’s life.
He is survived by his wife Jacqueline
Rea, a son David, a daughter Ann, and his
brother Dr. Thomas Rea, class of 1951.
—submitted by Allan P. Hoffman
class of 1949.
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 }
CHARLES PEACE III
A retired banker and long-time activist in
the Republican Party, Charles F. Peace
III, class of 1936, died October 8 at his
home in Towson, Md. He was 89.
Born in Baltimore and raised in Anne
Arundel County, Peace served in the Army
Air Forces in World War II. He worked in
sales before joining Maryland National
Bank as an assistant vice president. He was
described in a Baltimore Sun article as a
“stalwart” of the Republican Party in
Maryland, having served as a member of
the Republican State Central Committee.
ALSO NOTED ARE:
WARREN K. BROWN, class of 1938, died in
January.
LT. COL. JOHN JOSEPH BYRNES, Annapolis
class of 1980, died in 2002.
HENRY A. CZLUSNIAK, class of 1937, died
in March.
EDWARD S. DIGGES, class of 1939, died in
September.
FRANK. R. GENNER JR., class of 1936, died
in May.
EDWARD W. GORRELL, class of 1955, died in
January.
MICHAEL C. KEANE, class of 1945, died in
July.
ERNEST A. OTTO JR., class of 1941, died in
May.
MARK P. ROGERS, Santa Fe class of 1972,
died in April.
JULIUS B. SHERR, class of 1942, died in
April.
�42
{Alumni Profile}
The Bookbinder’s Apprentice
An Aspiring Painter Finds Art in an Unlikely Place
by Sus3an Borden, A87
christopher huston
B
en Frey (A02) received two
copies of A Degree of Mastery: A Journey Through
Book Arts Apprenticeship for
Christmas his sophomore
year. The book seemed so
perfect for Frey, whose campus job was in
the library bookbindery, that his mother
and his father—unbeknownst to one
another—each sent him a copy. In A
Degree of Mastery, author Annie Tremmel
Wilcox, now an expert bookmaker and
conservator, discusses her apprenticeship
and the book arts in general, describing
the details of working on, making, and
preserving beautiful books.
While the book became a favorite read
for those in the trade, Frey found it discouraging. “I don’t want to do that,” he
remembers thinking. “I don’t want to
work deep down in the basement of some
archive trying to make old books hold
together.”
Fortunately for Frey, other forces were
at work to make his life more interesting.
Claire and Pierre Wagner, French expatriates from the Alsace region and longtime
friends of St. John’s, had hosted him on
their boat during the annual Sail Picnic
the previous fall. Frey noticed the Wagners speaking French and spent the rest of
the outing talking with them.
“I said I was interested in learning
French, and Claire said she knew a number of people in France who might be able
to help me out. We exchanged a few letters, and in the middle of the summer I
got a phone call. She’d found a family in
France I could work for as an au pair.”
Frey spent the next year living just outside of Paris and devoted a fair amount of
time to thinking about what to do with his
life. Having spent many years painting, he
placed art high on his priority list, but also
felt a sense of obligation to finish college.
“My French professor in Paris one day
asked why I wouldn’t just leave school and
do what I wanted to do,” recalls Frey. “I
said that I thought my family would be
concerned: I have two grandparents who
are teachers. He said, ‘yes, but you have to
live your life. They’re not always going to
When is a book more than a book? Ben Frey
learns the art of conceptual bookbinding.
“...If I didn’t try
making it as a
painter, I was
going to regret it.”
be around. You have to make this decision
for yourself.’”
The professor’s advice resonated with
Frey, who was at the time reading Sartre’s
The Age of Reason while continuing to
contemplate life as a painter. “I realized
that I sounded a lot like Matthew, the
main character, except he was 35 and
unhappy. At the end of the book he realizes he has to take his life into his own
hands and drop all the things he doesn’t
want and try to start with what he wants. I
thought about that and realized that if I
didn’t try making it as a painter I was
going to regret it.”
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 }
After returning from France, Frey
moved to New York with a cache of paintings and managed to sell quite a few. Still,
he found himself just shy of his goal of
supporting himself through art. With a
move to high-rent Manhattan planned, he
began to look for a day job. Given the two
years of bookbindery experience on his
resume, bookbinders seemed an obvious
starting point. Among those he wrote to
was Richard Minsky, a bookbinder whose
name had come up numerous times during Frey’s Internet search for employment.
Minsky contacted Frey immediately
after receiving his letter, but saw that Frey
lacked the skills necessary for working
with a master bookbinder. “Minsky’s work
is very exacting. He needs things to be
done to a 32nd or even a 64th of an inch.
In a library bindery, most allowances can
be an 8th of an inch or even larger,”
explains Frey. In addition, Minsky’s work
involves fine carpentry and expert
leatherwork. A beginner with a fine piece
of leather and a sharp knife can easily
make expensive mistakes.
Minsky gave Frey the chance to sharpen
his skills by working with him part time as
a volunteer. To pay his bills, Frey worked
�43
{Alumni Profile}
Helping Enduring Works Endure
I
david trozzo
as a security guard. This past August,
Minsky offered Frey full-time work in his
studio.
Minsky, it turns out, is no ordinary
bookbinder. Frey says that he’s excellent
at restoration, as one would expect, but
he also works in conceptual art. Minsky’s
current conceptual binding project is the
Bill of Rights—a set of 10 books, one on
each amendment.
“He has picked books that deal directly
with the topic of the amendment and
binds them in a way relevant to the subject, showing the struggle between the
rights that are guaranteed and how they
are taken away,” explains Frey.
“For the First Amendment he has taken
a copy of Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses, burnt the cover and the edges of the
pages, and built a reliquary for it. For the
Tenth Amendment, he chose the ruling
on the Bush v. Gore case as the text. He
printed it on nice paper and bound it in a
binding that looks like any binding you’d
find in a legal library, but all of the boards
are a little crooked and the labels on the
spine are slightly off-center. He used fake
leather for the cover. It looks like goat
leather, but it’s actually pigskin.”
Frey is now working on his own conceptual binding project. The book he’s working with is Life: A User’s Manual by
Georges Perec.
“It’s a 400-page work about everything
that’s happening in one apartment building in Paris for the duration of one second.
It revolves around the theme of a puzzle,”
says Frey. “One of the more influential
characters in the book has decided that he
has so much money he needs a project in
life. He learns to paint watercolors, then
turns the paintings into puzzles, puts the
puzzles together, then separates the watercolor paper from the backing and washes
the watercolor off so he has a blank sheet
of paper at the end. In my project, the
book will slide into a case with a box on it
and the puzzle will be in the box. I’m going
to make that puzzle.” x
n a quiet room in the basement of
the Greenfield Library, sophomore
Dillon Wright-FitzGerald takes a
scalpel to Ptolemy’s Almagest. Alice
Kurs (SFGI71), working nearby,
barely looks up; she’s seen this kind
of thing before.
Kurs has watched dozens of students cut
hundreds of books in the 15 years she’s run
the bookbindery on the Annapolis campus.
Wright-FitzGerald has only been on the job
since August, but she feels perfectly at home
among the musty pages, marbled endpapers, and gold-leaf lettering she works with
during her 10-hour a week campus job.
“I’ve always been interested in history,
preservation, and bookmaking. I’ve always
loved books as objects,” says WrightFitzGerald. “My grandparents had a large
library and they would tell me to poke
around, to take any books I wanted. I
remember I had a late 19th-century edition
of Les Miserables. It was the greatest thing.
It looked old, felt old, smelled old.”
Kurs has been binding books for nearly
half a century. She can give you the rundown on old glue and new (the new
polyvinyl acetate is more flexible; the old
hide glue was, with heat and moisture,
reversible). She’ll point out the brittle
pages of books printed during World War I
and II and compare their rapid deterioration with the relatively good condition of
books published one and two hundred years
earlier. She has a hands-on appreciation for
the bindery’s old wooden presses as well as
for the trade’s modern materials, such as
the plastic-impregnated book cloth that is
easily wiped free of errors. And her
approach to the history of bookbinding is
not academic, but personal.
“In my grandfather’s time, you’d buy a
book with no cover and take it to your bookbinder and he’d put a cover on it,” says
Kurs, reminding you that this now-quaint
art was once a corner-store business.
“When I started in bookbinding around
1953, it was still possible to get books from
the publisher without a cover.”
Bookbinding is again changing; today, a
primary goal of restoration is to retain as
much of the original book as possible. “We
view the book in its original form as something having integrity. When you strip
away the binding, you strip away a sense of
history,” explains Lisa Richmond, library
director. “To throw away the original cover
and make a new cover for a book, that’s a
last-ditch treatment. What we prefer to do
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 }
Dillon Wright-Fitzgerald (A05) works
with a volume in the Greenfield Library.
is catch books when the repair is still small
so we can keep the original binding. Dillon
spends as much time doing things like reattaching loose leaves as she does cutting into
books and making new covers.”
In the library’s efforts to keep books in
good condition, Richmond says she relies
on library patrons as much as the bindery
workers. “We’d like it so that books don’t
even have to go to the bookbindery because
they’re being handled more carefully,” she
says.
“We’re not a public library that buys what
people want to read today, knowing that five
years later we’ll throw them out. The importance of the books we buy doesn’t change
from one century to the next. When you use
a library book you want to think, ‘isn’t it
wonderful that students for hundreds of
years have touched this book and benefited
from it and students two hundred years from
now will do the same?’ We buy books for the
St. John’s community today, but we also
have a community that persists through
time.”
Down in the bindery, Kurs also casts her
thoughts toward future readers. “This polyacetate vinyl glue we’re using is not
reversible. It will only come off with brute
force. I don’t know what they’ll do with the
next generation of books that needs to be
repaired, but I’ll let the people who come
after us worry about that,” she says. “If
there are books after us.”
—Sus3an Borden, A87
�44
{Campus Life}
The Dance of the Muses
by Noam Gedalof, A03
resent-day readers of Ancient Greek plays
have surely felt the strangeness of what seem
to be interruptions or interludes in the midst
of the drama, all attributed to a “chorus.” We
have been told—and rightly so—that this chorus sang and danced these words, but that the
music and dance is now lost, even irrecoverable. But what
if we could see what that original and extraordinary form
of the poetry was—alive before our eyes—complete in song
and dance? Or, better yet, what if we could ourselves
breathe life into this poetry, experience it first-hand,
renew it, and perform it? We have tried to do this very
thing at St. John’s, and we believe that we have succeeded.
P
Concentration and choreography :
Mr. David recites from AGAMMEMNON
as students practice for a November
performance.
In November 1999, I introduced my
mother, Miriam Rother, to tutor
Amirthanayagam David (A86). My mother
is a choreographer interested and experienced in dance and theater. And I had
heard a talk Mr. David gave on Ancient
Greek mousike, in which he emphasized
the connection of poetry to dance in
Ancient Greece. In his talk there were
recitations that were musical (at the same
time melodic and intensely rhythmic).
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 }
I learned further that he was an innovator
in the theory of Greek accentuation.
Mr. David had uncovered the single missing component of the pronunciation of
classical Greek. What had been known
thoroughly were the values of all the vowels, diphthongs, and consonants in the language, as well as the meaning of the melodic, or pitch, accentuation markings. All that
remained in the way of an authentic reproduction of the pronunciation was wordlevel stress—which syllables in each word
were stressed and which were not—something found in every spoken language.
In Greek the union of these three elements makes a kind of music, because the
vowel sounds are long and short—the long
vowels being twice the duration of the
short ones—and so produce a meter. The
interplay of the lengths of vowels with the
rising and falling of the voice (melodic
accentuation) produces stresses. These
stresses coupled with the meter form a
rhythm. It was on account of this musicality of speech that rhetoric, the art of public
speaking or stylized speech, was subsumed
under music.
Certain ancient writers describe choreia,
the art and practice of the chorus, as dance
that is dictated by the rhythm and harmony
inherent in the spoken word. From their
statements, certain principles underlying
the art may be inferred: one step for each
syllable, and strict correspondence of
stressed syllables with the setting down of
the foot. This means that the very words
and their musical texture prescribe the
motion of the body. In this way the text
becomes a musical score for the dance, the
meter resolves into feet, and all that
remains to be uncovered is how the dance
looked from the ankles up. Of this, Mr.
David dreamed for 13 years.
At that first meeting, Mr. David and Mrs.
Rother began to consider the possibilities
for the renewal of Ancient Greek theater as
live performance, with its union of the spoken word, dance, and gesture. Over the
next year-and-a-half, Mrs. Rother familiarized herself with Mr. David’s work, its
sources, and the Classical Greek language.
She also studied the array of extant Greek
vases and statuary, because many of the
depictions seemed to be of figures in mid-
�45
{Campus Life}
The dancer
becomes the
very content
of the speech.
motion. As she explains it, the postures
and gestures bespoke dance. They suggested a particular energy and expression of
the desired aesthetic of the time, so that
she could imagine the steps that would
connect the individual figures.
Choreia was ubiquitous in the Ancient
Greek world. In religion, it was central.
Everyone participated in it; it was a citizen’s rather than an expert’s art—and on
this ground we can claim a kind of right to
the dance, and to our renewal of it as nonprofessionals. Through participation in this
medium, through embodiment—what Plato
termed mimesis (imitation)—Greeks
encountered the great men of old and their
stories, as well as the stories of the gods and
of the gods’ interaction with men. This
meant that an army general would be
depicted on a vase in a manner so stylized
and so full of motion that the figure manifests the gesture associated with a general;
that is, it suggests movement itself. It was
in the context of the dance—in the context
of embodied gesture—that a Greek would
have had his first, and surely most pointed,
encounter with a personage such as
Agamemnon. His notion of the personage
would be inseparable from a danced gesture. And so it would have come naturally
to the vase painter or sculptor to depict him
in his characteristic “dance pose,” down to
the precise placement of the hands and
feet, the twist in his back, and the turn of
his head. Mr. David suggests that the nounand-epithet phrases in Homer—phrases
generated by a dance rhythm—are verbal
correlates for these characteristic poses
found throughout ancient visual depictions.
So central was the presence of choreia,
and its influence so profound in the Greek
world, that it may very well have prompted
Plato’s notion (in the Laws) that an entire
city could be choreographed—that is, gov-
sara white wilson
1
3
erned through choreia.
In February 2001, Mrs. Rother visited
St. John’s to coordinate the first of three
workshops based on her choreography and
Mr. David’s theory. About a dozen students
participated in each of the workshops,
which culminated in performances for the
community in a packed Great Hall.
I participated and performed in all of
these workshops. My experience of choreia
has been of the extraordinary union of the
life of the body and the life of the soul.
Meaning, accent, and gesture—already unified in everyday speech—are embodied in
the union of the musical word and dance.
The dancer becomes the very content of the
speech, becomes the personage being imitated, and lives through the story being told.
I now understand what Plato had in mind
when he spoke about imitation, and how
deeply what is imitated resounds in the
soul; or how the embodiment of a person,
emotion, or idea can take hold of a man,
and somehow remove him from himself. In
the dance, one feels the body carried by the
words, as though it were being moved, and
no longer moving itself. This is the power
of choreia—the dance of the Muses. x
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 }
2
4
5
Dancers perform the opening chorus of
Aeschylus’ AGAMMEMNON (excerpt below,
with numbers indicating corresponding
photo). Picture 1 shows the characteristic “dance pose” of an army general.
It is mine to declare the omens of victory
Given to princely men (1) on the journey.
I tell how the princes of the Achaeans,
Twin-throned, single-hearted
Lords of the youth of Greece,
Were sent against the land of Troy
With spear in hand to exact vengeance. (2)
The furious omen-birds sent them,
One black eagle, one white-tail,
The king of birds to the king of the ships. (3)
So a lord greater than the kings,
Zeus god of guest-friends,
Sends the sons of Atreus on Alexander;
In this quarrel over a woman of many men,(4)
He would lay upon Greeks and Trojans alike
Many wrestlings(5) where the limbs
grow heavy
And the knee is pressed into the dust
And the spear is shattered in the first
rites of engagement.
–translation by David Grene
�46
{Alumni Association News}
From the Alumni
Association
President
Dear Johnnies,
Johnnies are a remarkable lot. You probably
know members of your class who are making
a difference in their communities and their
professions. It is an honor to be a member of
a group of such gifted and dedicated individuals. Twice a year, at Homecoming on each
campus, the Alumni Association honors
members of our community for their extraordinary achievements. Two types of awards are
given: Honorary Alumni and Awards of
Merit. On the SJC web site, you can view a list
of persons who have received these honors in
the past, but I would like to briefly describe
this year’s awardees.
Honorary Alumni status is awarded to
members of the St. John’s College community
who have contributed to the lives of students
or alumni or to the well-being of the college
and its program. Honorary Alumni receive all
of the benefits of regular membership in the
association, so they become permanent members of the college community. This year, five
individuals were made honorary alumni. Two
were recognized for their loyal support and
work with the Board of Visitors and Governors. Bud Kelly supported the Santa Fe campus in its early days and helped set the foundation for the college in New Mexico. Greg
Curtis, immediate past chair of the Board of
Visitors and Governors, led the college
through deliberations resulting in a unified
governance structure that will provide a solid
foundation for the college as a whole in the
future. Two revered tutors were welcomed
into the Alumni Association. Mr. John Sarkissian and Mr. Robert Williamson have served
the college well and supported generations of
alumni in their academic and personal pursuits. The fifth honorary alumnus designation
went to Mr. Al Toft. Though most alumni do
not know Mr. Toft personally, we all depended
on the fruits of his labors. For decades, Mr.
Toft has designed and constructed the equipment we use in the St. John’s laboratory program. We are happy to welcome these dear
and generous people into the circle of St.
John’s alumni.
Awards of Merit are bestowed upon alumni
who have made significant contributions to
the college, to their professions, or to the
nation. This year, four Awards of Merit were
given to recognize a wide variety of work.
Peggy Jones (SFGI77) has helped to build and
maintain a bridge between the college and
the community in Santa Fe. She has served
many roles in support of the college, including a term on the Alumni Association Board.
She continues to support the college with
enthusiasm and energy. Stephanie Forrest
(SF77) is a world-renowned researcher and
scholar in applications of computer simulation modeling and nonlinear dynamics. She
attributes her love of science and mathematics and her ability to work at the frontiers of
science to her St. John’s education. Howard
Zeiderman (A67) is a tutor in Annapolis. He
received his Award of Merit for his work with
Touchstones, a project that brings great
books and great conversations to communities outside the college campus. Touchstones
has been implemented internationally among
disadvantaged groups including prison
inmates and inner city youth. Candace
Brightman (A67) was recognized for her creative and ingenious work as lighting director
for The Grateful Dead and other performers.
Soon after she left the college, Ms. Brightman joined the band to develop the visual
extravaganzas that shaped the concert-going
culture for the last three decades. Congratulations to these four remarkable alumni for
their courage and commitment!
Every year, as the Nominating Committee
considers candidates for these awards, I am
struck again by the diversity and excellence
of our community. I am proud and honored
to be among a collection of individuals who
continually redefine what it means to live a
life grounded in the liberal arts.
I am sure that you know Johnnies, either
alumni or beloved members of the non-alumni community, who are doing extraordinary
things for their professions, the college, or
the nation. Would you like to nominate someone for these awards? If so, please send a brief
description and contact information to Bill
Tilles, chair of the Nominating Committee, or
to Tahmina Shalizi or Jo Ann Mattson, the
Alumni Activities directors on the campuses.
For the past, present, and future,
Glenda H. Eoyang (SF76)
President
St. John’s College Alumni Association
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 }
ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE
ALUMNI ASSOCIATION
Whether from Annapolis or Santa Fe, undergraduate or Graduate Institute, Old Program or
New, graduated or not, 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 Alumni Association
news and events of interest.
President – Glenda Eoyang, SF76
Vice President – Jason Walsh, A85
Secretary –Barbara Lauer, SF76
Treasurer – Bill Fant, A79
Getting-the-Word-Out Action Team Chair –
Linda Stabler-Talty (SFGI76)
Web site – www.sjca.edu/aassoc/main.phtml
Mailing address – Alumni Association,
St. John’s College, Box 2800, Annapolis, MD
21404 or 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca, Santa Fe,
NM 87505-4599.
CHAPTER CONTACTS
Call the alumni listed below for information
about chapter, reading group, or other alumni
activities in each area.
ALBUQUERQUE
Bob & Vicki Morgan
505-275-9012
PHILADELPHIA
Bart Kaplan
215-465-0244
ANNAPOLIS
Beth Martin
410-280-0958
PITTSBURGH
Robert Hazo
412-648-2653
AUSTIN
Bev Angel
512-926-7808
PORTLAND
Dale Mortimer
360-882-9058
BALTIMORE
Deborah Cohen
410-472-9158
SACRAMENTO
Helen Hobart
916-452-1082
BOSTON
Ginger Kenney
617-964-4794
SAN DIEGO
Stephanie Rico
619-423-4972
CHICAGO
Lorna Johnson
773-338-8651
SAN FRANCISCO,
NORTHERN
CALIFORNIA
Jon Hodapp
831-393-9496
DENVER
Lee Goldstein
720-283-4659
LOS ANGELES
Elizabeth Eastman
562-426-1934
MINNEAPOLIS/
ST. PAUL
Carol Freeman
612-822-3216
NEW YORK
Joe Boucher
718-222-1957
NORTH CAROLINA
Susan Eversole
919-968-4856
SANTA FE
John Pollak
505-983-2144
SEATTLE
Amina Stickford
206-269-0182
WASHINGTON DC
Jean Dickason
301-699-6207
ISRAEL
Emi Geiger Leslau
15 Aminadav Street
Jerusalem 93549
Israel
972-2-6717608
boazl@cc.huji.ac.il
�{Alumni Association News}
Johnnies Online
Whether you’re missing seminar discussions
or want to find Johnnies living in Chicago,
virtual communities of St. John’s alumni and
friends beckon.
Recent topics on the Johnny Digest have
included “Capitalism vs. Whatever,” “Up
Next: Proponents of Flat-Earth Theory
Demand Equal Time,” and “Martha Stewart’s Continuing Woes.” To join, e-mail
Johnny@charm.net with the message “subscribe johnny-digest” for the digest or “subscribe johnny” if you prefer the list format.
This lively group is for alumni only.
JohnnyXpress is an unmoderated bulletin
board for alumni, friends, faculty and staff:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ johnnyXpress/join or e-mail johnnyXpress-subscribe@egroups.com.
Johnny2 promises that “no topic is offtopic, no word is forbidden,” but requires
members to treat one another with the
“respect suitable for senior seminar.”
E-mail join-johnny2@lists.holocausthistory.org with the command “subscribe
johnny2 your name.”
Alumni interested in homeschooling can
network with like minds: Visit the group’s
web site at http://groups.yahoo.com/
group/JohnnyEducation-Homeschooling.
Note: Neither St. John’s College nor the
Alumni Association is involved with or monitors these web communities. x
Big Apple
Chapter Booming
From swing parties to seminars, alumni in
the greater New York chapter have no shortage of events to choose from, thanks to creative leadership and a core group of Johnnies
ever ready to meet compatriots, sometimes
for intellectual pursuits, sometimes just for a
night out.
When chapter president Joe Boucher (A89)
first moved to New York, he was quickly
drawn into the chapter.
“When I moved here Justin Burke (A87)
was president. Justin helped me get one of my
first jobs, and I was working with him and saw
him all the time. If a seminar was going on
and he was worried no one was going to show
up, I’d get recruited.
“That’s how I ended up being part of the
chapter leadership,” he says.
Boucher served for three years as chapter
secretary and now heads up the chapter, sec-
47
an enthusiastic response
Are these Johnnies in Boston: A) volunteering to pick up the dinner check? or
B) offering to lead seminars, programs, and other chapter events in a revitalized
Alumni Association chapter in the Boston Area? The dinner gathering November 17 at
Elephant Walk in downtown Boston drew close to 50 alumni to an event designed to
gather steam for a more active chapter. Chapter president Ginger Kenney (A67)
helped plan the event, which featured fine Thai food, networking, and brainstorming
for seminars and other events in the coming year.
ond only to Washington, D.C., in size with a
mailing list of about 800 alumni. Some of the
chapter’s most popular events draw up to 250
participants.
“The good thing about our chapter is that
we can have a lot of events that smaller chapters can’t, so we can be more active and take
chances,” Boucher says. “Even if we draw 20
people that’s a good-sized event.”
Like most alumni chapters, the New York
alumni strike a balance between intellectual
offerings and purely social events. A swing
party in August at the Brooklyn home of
Michael Barth (AGI96) drew 60 people.
Attendance was also high at a seminar last fall
on Job, led by Santa Fe tutor Michael Wolfe.
Likely topics for future seminars include
Beaudelaire and Pascal, and Santa Fe President John Balkcom is scheduled for a March
seminar and reception.
The chapter tries to offer a seminar-style
event every month or so, because even in a
city with so many cultural offerings, “there’s
a real hunger” for these opportunities, says
Boucher. In addition to seminars oriented
toward Program authors, reading groups
periodically form around a particular Johnnie’s interest.
Even social events often include some food
for thought, as was the case with a summer
picnic on Long Island at the home of chapter
secretary Edith Updike (A86). Seeking a read-
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 }
ing to celebrate New York, group members
included a discussion of selections from Hart
Crane’s The Bridge.
Building on the success of seminars and
parties, the chapter recently launched a mentoring initiative. Poets are meeting poets,
those in the legal field share news of job
openings, and Johnnies eager to break into
the theater are connecting through the chapter, Boucher notes.
Networking is also a goal of the chapter’s
annual new alumni reception. Fifty Johnnies
attended the November event this year. And
with new alumni moving to New York all the
time, there’s no shortage of new blood.
For Boucher, the opportunity to connect
with alumni from different generations and
hearing about their adventures and interests are the best perks of his chapter
involvement.
“One of the nicest things about these
events is the opportunity to meet people from
other eras at St. John’s,” Boucher notes.
“I might find it difficult to talk to a lot of
80-year-olds, but since we all more or less
studied the same thing, we have that common ground to start with, and then we move
on and find other things to talk about.”
The chapter has a sharp new web site, frequently updated with chapter events and contacts. Visit www.sjcalums.com/nyc. x
�48
T
{St. John’s Forever}
he St. John’s Story has
achieved something of a
cult classic status for
many of the students and
alumni who have seen it.
Its stiffly choreographed
scenes and somber narration prompt
amusement from modern audiences, but
when it was produced in 1954 The St.
John’s Story was a creative answer to a
slump in enrollment: In 1953, enrollment was only 125. Funded by the Old
Dominion Foundation, the 28-minute
film by Fordel Films of the Bronx, N.Y.,
was sent to secondary schools across the
country, depicting seminars, waltz parties, coffee shop banter, and traditions
such as senior orals.
The college administration had high
expectations for the film. In his 1954 President’s Report, Richard Weigle said, “The
entire student procurement program will
be built around its use during the coming
year.” The film was shown in 435 public
schools and 95 prep schools to about
75,000 people; it even had a showing at
the Edinburgh Film Festival in 1955. Combined with other recruitment efforts, the
film was credited with bringing in a freshman class of 90 students in 1955.
In this scene replicating senior orals,
William H. Barrett, class of 1956, played
the role of the defending senior, baking
under the hot klieg lights used in the
production. Barrett served as the star
of the film.
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 }
�{Alumni Events Calendar}
DATEBOOK
April 26, 2003
Croquet Weekend, Annapolis
June 29, 2003—July 4, 2003
Week One, Summer Alumni Program,
Santa Fe
July 4-6, 2003
Homecoming Weekend, Santa Fe
July 6-11, 2003
Week Two, Summer Alumni Program,
Santa Fe
September 12-14, 2003
Homecoming Weekend, Annapolis
For information on events, contact the
Offices of Alumni Activities:
Tahmina Shalizi
Director of Alumni and Parent Activities
Santa Fe: 505-984-6103
tshalizi@mail.sjcsf.edu
Jo Ann Mattson
Director of Alumni Activities
Annapolis: 410-626-2531
alumni@sjca.edu
Santa Fe Art Show
More than 50 pieces were entered in the
Alumni Art Show at the Santa Fe Campus
last July. Artistic alumni are again invited
to enter their work in the Third Annual
St. John’s College Fine Arts Gallery
Alumni Art Show. Timed to coincide with
the Summer Alumni Program and Homecoming, the show will run from Saturday,
July 5, through Sunday, July 27. All types
of media are welcome; artists can also
place their work for sale during the show.
An opening reception will be held concurrent with the Homecoming reception.
For details call Maggie Magalnick at
505-984-6199, or contact her by e-mail:
Maggie@mail.sjcsf.edu
Top: Inya Laskowski (SFGI97) entered
this print, “Equus”; Above right: Betsy
William (SF87) crafts clay pots that
combine Karatsu training from Japan
with New Mexican material and landscape. “Diamond” is shown.
A return to traditional form is seen in Jo
Basiste’s (SFGI91) Greek gods and heroes.
This tempera painting is called “Polyphemus and Galatea.”
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 }
�P ERIODICALS
P OSTAGE PAID
P UBLISHED BY THE
COMMUNICATIONS OFFICE
P.O. BOX 2800
A NNAPOLIS , M ARYLAND 21404
ADDRESS CORRECTION REQUESTED
�
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College
The
SUMMER 2014
•
S T. J O H N ’ S C O L L E G E
•
ANNAPOLIS
•
S A N TA F E
Anna
Karenina
The Truth of Stories
�“How glorious fall the
valiant, sword [mallet] in
hand, in front of battle
for their native land.”
—Tyrtaeus, Spartan poet
The St. John’s croquet
team greets the cheering
crowd in Annapolis.
ii | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014
�from the editor
The College
is published by St. John’s
College, Annapolis, MD,
and Santa Fe, NM
thecollegemagazine@sjc.edu
Known office of publication:
Communications Office
St. John’s College
60 College Avenue
Annapolis, MD 21401
Why Stories?
“He stepped down, trying not to
look long at her, as if she were
the sun, yet he saw her, like the
sun, even without looking.”
Periodicals postage paid
at Annapolis, MD
Leo Tolstoy, ANNA KARENINA
Postmaster: Send address
changes to The College
Magazine, Communications
Office, St. John’s College,
60 College Avenue,
Annapolis, MD 21401.
“Emotions are what pull us in—the character’s
vulnerabilities, desires, and fears,” says screenwriter Jeremy Leven (A64); he is one of several
alumni profiled in this issue of The College who
tell stories. Leven reveals “moments of truth”
with nuanced, often sparse dialogue and subtext.
Although certainly not sparing with words,
Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (1828-1910)
revealed human emotions with great insight,
with what tutor Jonathan Tuck calls “the raw
power of storytelling” in his essay for this issue.
Tolstoy was born at the family estate, about 130
miles south of Moscow. Educated at home by
tutors, Tolstoy enrolled in the University of Kazan
in 1844 to study Oriental languages; he transferred to the less demanding law faculty but left
without a degree. In 1851 he joined the army and
fought in the Crimean War (1853–56). Tolstoy’s
two masterpieces are War and Peace (1869) and
Anna Karenina (1877). He deftly paints intimate
details of his characters’ lives, set against the
sweeping canvas of history. Notes Santa Fe Dean
J. Walter Sterling (A93) in this issue, “Tolstoy
brings to life (or to the work of art) Napoleon as
man and myth, the great movements of modern
Russian politics, the general tumult of enlightenment rationalism (and nationalism), and the
many other forces by which Europe was convulsed in the 19th century....”
Tolstoy’s fictions reveal truth. It is no surprise
that they continue to be embraced by popular
modern culture—for instance, both Greta Garbo
(1935) and Keira Knightly (2012) starred in film
adaptations of Anna Karenina. We care about
what happens to his memorable characters—
Pierre, Prince Andrei, Anna, and Kitty Levin,
to name a few. “We come to know these people
inside and out, better perhaps than we know our
own families or close friends. It is very hard to
remember that they are not real,” notes Tuck.
Film director Domenic D’Andrea (A15) tells us it
Editor
Patricia Dempsey
patricia.dempsey@sjc.edu
Contributing Editor
Gabe Gomez
Associate Editor
Gregory Shook
Design
Skelton Design
Contributors
Thomas Alleman
Anna Perleberg Anderson (SF02)
Chelsea Batten (A07)
Nutchapol Boonparlit (A14)
Sus3an Borden (A87)
Domenic D’Andrea (A15)
John Emerson
Erin Fitzpatrick (A14)
Anyi Guo (A14)
Eunji Kim (A15)
Jennifer Levin
Adam Maraschky (A13)
Paula Novash
Jonathan Tuck
Copyeditor
Cathi Dunn MacRae
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
is not just the suspense, but the connection made
through storytelling that matters: “Storytelling
ought to be done by people who want to make
other people feel a little bit less alone.”
In this issue we meet Johnnies who are storytellers in modern and ancient forms, filmmakers,
poets, even a fabric artist. N. Scott Momaday,
Pulitzer Prize winner and artist-in-residence on
the Santa Fe campus, says, “Poetry is the highest expression of language.” Along with student
poets, he shares insights on this elegant form
and how it touches our spirits and hearts.
The Johnnies in film featured in this issue
each transform an individual vision for a story
with their craft—screenwriting, directing, film
editing, and digital animation, to name a few—
and close collaboration with others; the end result is there for all to see on the big screen.
James Schamus (A81) describes what it took
to be CEO of Focus Features, where he stewarded films that speak to the historical context
of our times, and, as great stories do, captivated
a generation of filmgoers. For Hanna Jayanti
(SF07) film editing “is a form of writing in the
visual world.” She collaborated on a documentary shown at the New Yorker Festival. Mavericks such as Mike Lacy (A12) direct music videos
in which lyrics are like characters, and Geoff
Marslett (SF96) jumps from writing a software
program for his animated feature to directing
actors without scripted dialogue. Richard Saja
(SF93) transforms the art of toile.
These Johnnies have in common a deep
appreciation of universal stories that connect
us all. Screenwriter Lee Zlotoff (A74) shares his
method for tapping these stories from the subconscious: “We are a narrative species; each
night we dream and each of our dreams is a story.
We need these stories,” he says.
We need oral stories as well. In this issue, tutor
Claudia Hauer describes her oral history project
about the founding of the Santa Fe campus 50
years ago, and the spirited pioneers who envisioned it. Chelsea Batten’s (A07) search for connection reminds us that a good conversation just
might be better than anything—even a great film.
Thank you to our contributors, and especially
to our readers for sharing stories! I look forward
to hearing from you. —P.D.
The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 |
1
�su m me r 2 01 4
volume 39, issue 1
ART RESOURCE
ILLUSTRATION BY JULES FEIFFER, THE PHANTOM TOLLBOOTH
...We want desperately to find out what will happen next....It’s this
very curiosity that keeps us reading; though the book [War and Peace]
is long, we fly through it after a while, hoping that our favorites will
find the happiness they have been seeking for years. —Jonathan Tuck, tutor
F E AT U R E S
page
18
p a ge
24
page
38
Why Stories?
Modern Takes
Vision Realized
Faculty members consider
Tolstoy, and how reading
the works of the greatest
minds can illuminate
historical context.
Seven alumni touch our
deepest emotions and reveal
a truth of the moment through
the power of narrative stories
in feature films, animated
shorts, documentaries,
television characters, even
embellished toile.
Oral histories on the founding
of the Santa Fe campus, from
faculty innovations to horse
rides to seminar, reveal the
passion of the early pioneers.
on the cover:
Anna Karenina illustration
by Gayle Kabaker
2 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014
�THOMAS ALLEMAN
D E PA R T M E N T S
From Our Readers
Bibliofile
Alumni
4
42
45
Alumni Notes
55
In Memoriam
58
Philanthropy: Anjali Pai (SFGI08),
Tolstoy Stories
From the Bell Towers
6
Spirit of Poetry: N. Scott Momaday
Alexandra Wick (A15)
Alexandra Welm (A14)
Joshua Sturgill (SF17)
9
Lunch with Anna Karenina
10
First Person: Domenic D’Andrea (A15)
11
Summer Film Institute in Santa Fe
12
Ariel Intern: Elizabeth Fedden (SF15)
13
Reading Tolstoy: Tutor emeritus
Sam Kutler (Class of 1954)
Johanna Omelia (SFGI03) and
Michael Waldock (SFGI03) celebrate
Come Fly with Us! A Global History
of the Airline Hostess.
Wright (A84) create fantasy and sci-fi
in Moth and Spark and Judge of Ages.
44 Hilary Fields (SF97) follows her bliss
in the City Different.
Nora Gallagher’s (SF70) memoir,
Moonlight Sonata at the Mayo Clinic,
chronicles her medical system struggles.
Tutor Gregory Recco and University
of Kentucky professor Eric Sanday’s
essays explore Plato’s Laws.
14
Hodson Intern: Rachel Howell (A16)
15
Larry Clendenin (SF77) Retires
Profiles
16
Santa Fe Celebrates 50 Years
50 Jamaal Barnes (A10) advocates
17
On Liberal Education: Chris Nelson
(SF70), Annapolis president
Larry Saporta (A91), LCDR Erik
Kristensen (AGI00), Curtis Wilson,
Annapolis tutor and dean
43 Anne Leonard (A89) and John C.
60
Almuni News: Homecoming 2014
Johnnie Traditions
62
Croquet: A Toga War
64
St. John’s Forever
Eidos
65
Adam Maraschky (A13)
above: Screenwriter and director Lee Zlotoff
(A74) at work in his Malibu home
public service.
53 Elizabeth Powers (A89) sheds light
on workplace bias.
54 Chelsea Batten’s (A07) search
for conversation
The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 |
3
�from our readers
Readers Share
Tolstoy Farm
My main memory of Tolstoy is of
Leo Pickens’s (A78) brilliant oral
exam on his senior essay on War
and Peace in the reading room
of the old library. Separately, I
learned that Gandhi was inspired
by Tolstoy and lived in an ashram
called Tolstoy Farm during his formative years in South Africa. There
he led nonviolent protests against
the “Black Law,” which deprived
Asians of their civil rights, until it
was repealed in 1914, seven years
after its promulgation.
struggle of the Transvaal Indians,
and asked him to air his views on
the subject of morality....”
—Chris Olson (A78)
Channeling Prince Andrei
I will never forgive Tolstoy for
what he did to Natasha and Anna
K. That said, I was ferociously
devouring War and Peace, for the
second time, this past autumn (a
book that improves with age—my
age!). On the very night I was
in the thick of the Borodino
aftermath, I got a deep cut from
“Gandhi attributes the success of the final
phase of the satyagraha campaign in
South Africa between 1908 and 1914 to
the ‘spiritual purification and penance’
afforded by the Tolstoy Farm.”
—Chris Olson (A78)
Gandhi attributes the success
of the final phase of the satyagraha
campaign in South Africa between
1908 and 1914 to the “spiritual
purification and penance” afforded
by the Tolstoy Farm. The Tolstoy
Farm was the second of its kind of
experiments established by Gandhi.
The following is an excerpt from
www.tolstoyfarm.com:
“It was Tolstoy’s writings that
impressed [Gandhi] the most. The
Russian’s ideas about renouncing
force as a means of opposition were
akin to Gandhi’s own thoughts,
although he did not share Tolstoy’s
intense dislike for organized
government. The Indian had read
Tolstoy’s The Kingdom of God
Is Within You in 1894. This had
stimulated his search for truth and
nonviolence in his own religion . . . .
Prompted by his deeper appreciation of the Tolstoyan philosophy,
Gandhi wrote in October 1909
the first of his four letters to the
Russian. He described in it the
a piece of glass straight into my
upper thigh in an around-thehouse accident. Rather than take
my one-inch gaping wound to the
ER in Baltimore at midnight on
a Saturday, I channeled my inner
Prince Andrei. I washed out the
wound, poured half a bottle of peroxide over it. I tore a big strip off
a clean tee shirt and wrapped my
thigh. The next day—not awakening in a pool of my own blood—I
walked to the ER, got my stitches,
and walked to Fell’s Point in time
for noon tea with fellow alum João
Santa Rita (A09).
—Samantha Buker (A05)
Free Speech
I remember reading Tolstoy’s War
and Peace at St. John’s with great
interest. I was asked to talk about
it in my senior oral exam and, for
once, did not feel tongue-tied, as I
often did in seminar.
—Julia du Prey (née Busser)
(Class of 1966)
4 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014
A view from inside the Tolstoy Literary Museum in Moscow.
Literary Sites
My wife and I were in Moscow last
year and visited the Tolstoy Literary Museum there. We intended to
get to Tolstoy’s house in Moscow,
where he lived for a time with his
wife and 13 children after writing
his masterpieces, but we never
got there.
—Mike Woolsey (Class of 1965)
Train Trips
I wrote my senior essay on Tolstoy’s
War and Peace in 1975, and it
won the senior essay prize, tied
with my esteemed classmate Cary
Stickney’s (A75) essay on Hegel.
My paper was typed by Jane H., my
helper-typist and I on three different typewriters at the last minute,
up in my room on the third floor
of the dorm with the bookstore in
the basement. Probably Tolstoy
typed on a typewriter, too? Don’t
bother looking up a copy of the
paper; it was not well written! I
realize this now, but I loved the
experience of spending a couple of
months pondering one great book
and author. I retain images such as
that of Nicolai lying face up on the
earth, wounded, looking up at the
clouds, pausing in the midst of life.
All my life, I’ve been a religious
seeker, and I’m in a very different
place from where I was in ’75. I live
back in central Maine, whence I
began my journeys from home with
train trips to St. John’s College in
Annapolis and back. Here is peace
and many distant wars. Didn’t
Tolstoy’s life end with a train trip?
—Laura Bridgman (A75)
A Battlefield Revelation
Think of New Mexico. Now think
of Russia. There’s probably not a
lot of overlap in your mental Venn
diagram. But that wasn’t the case
for me when I was working towards
my MA at St. John’s four years ago.
Tolstoy wrote that “Russia and hot
weather don’t go together,” and it
was a harsh winter in Santa Fe the
first time I read War and Peace.
I slogged through the snow and
slush two nights a week to attend
my preceptorial on the novel. And,
of course, keeping up with the
assigned readings meant taking
Tolstoy along with me wherever
I went that frigid winter. During
a post-lunch lull at the pizzeria
where I worked, Prince Andrei and
I had a battlefield revelation involving an infinite and lofty sky. While
my clothes were drying at the
Solana Laundromat, I was hunting
wolves with a nobleman and his
loyal team of serfs and borzois. I
swaddled myself in every blanket
I owned when my heater was on
the fritz and felt decidedly well-off
compared to Napoleon’s retreating
troops. Russia and hot weather
don’t go together, but, for me, Russia and New Mexico somehow do.
—Wint Huskey (SFGI10)
Disruptive Conclusion
I remember that [Tolstoy] seminar
very well because of our discussion
of the characters of Andrei and his
pal Pierre, and because of War and
Peace’s addendum—that disruptive conclusion—which we jointly
concluded in seminar did not go
�from our readers
with the rest of War and Peace.
Tolstoy’s historical P.S. was a declaration of faith, which he wanted
to make happen because he
declared it so. It was the beginning
of a new book. It almost spoiled
the whole novel—like the extra
chapter added on to T. H. White’s
The Once and Future King (which
White’s editor wisely cut). Years
later, I’ve re-read both War and
Peace and Tolstoy’s addendum,
but never together. In my humble
opinion, War and Peace works infinitely better on its own, without
that false handle of religious faith
which Tolstoy glued to its end.
—John Dean (A70)
The Third Epilogue
Time travel to the Graduate
Institute, Santa Fe, 1971: My preceptorial was War and Peace. My
dilemma: A week before the work
was due, what to write? A strong
thought passed through my mind,
“Why don’t I write the Third Epilogue?” That was followed immediately by, “But you’ve never written
fiction in your life.” What then
ensued were six intense days, during which time I wrote a more than
90-page extension to Tolstoy’s epic
work. The words just flowed to the
point that there were entire pages
without one typo—and this was in
the days before correcting typewriters. There were times that I had no
idea what would happen next in the
story. As the words flowed, I cried;
I laughed. I truly felt as if Tolstoy
were directing what was appearing
on the page. Back to 2013: A friend
said, “Why don’t you put the Third
Epilogue on Kindle?” After going
through the learning curve of designing a cover, figuring out how to
publish something on Kindle, and
re-typing the document, War and
Peace: The Third Epilogue is now
on Kindle under the pseudonym of
Samantha Jean Wiley.
—Margaret Sansom (SFGI74)
A Well-Worn Copy
Here is a picture of my copy of
War and Peace from my senior
essay. Obviously, that system
was color-coded!
—Erin Martell (A98)
“Tolstoy wrote that ‘Russia and hot
weather don’t go together,’ and it was a
harsh winter in Santa Fe the first time I
read War and Peace. I slogged through
the snow and slush two nights a week to
attend my preceptorial on the novel.”
—Wint Huskey (SFGI10)
Contributors
Behind the Lens:
Anyi Guo (A14)
“I like revealing things to people
that they don’t know,” says Anyi
Guo (A14). “Sometimes they don’t
know how beautiful they are.”
Guo prefers dramatic portraits to
poses and finds that she captures
the moment best when the subject
is relaxed, allowing their personality to shine. “It helps when you
genuinely like the person because
I believe that a picture reflects
how you—the photographer—really think of them,” she says. Her
lively images of student life appear
throughout The College magazine,
in a 2011 yearbook she created,
and in other print and digital
publications.
Guo favors film photography
over digital. “The process is very
slow, so you can’t see what you just
took,” she says. “It’s almost like a
Christmas gift when you look at the
film and think, ‘I don’t remember
taking that.’” Yet she doesn’t eschew digital photography entirely.
“I love that [digital photography]
captures every moment, and by just
pressing the button, one of [the
photos] will eventually come out
right,” says Guo. “That’s the trick
to digital photography—a bit of
patience and a bit of luck.”
Not much of a gear head, Guo
keeps it simple. She uses a Pentax
K-5 digital single-lens reflex, an
entry-to-middle-level DSLR that’s
“not really professional, but it’s
good enough for the work that
I do.” She uses only two lenses:
one for portraits and another for
everything else. “Good lenses are
expensive,” she says. “They cost
around $3,000, while my camera
only cost $300. But what can I
say? Photography is more about
the eyes than the equipment.”
—Nutchapol Boonparlit (A14)
The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 |
5
�Although N. Scott Momaday is best known as a
novelist—his first novel, House Made of Dawn, won
the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1969—poetry is his
most abiding love. He is also a visual artist and was
appointed artist-in-residence on the Santa Fe campus
in April. Of Kiowa-Cherokee heritage, Momaday
was raised first on the Kiowa Indian Reservation
in Oklahoma and then in Arizona, where he was
exposed to the Navajo, Apache, and Pueblo Indian
cultures of the Southwest. After graduating from the
University of New Mexico, he won a poetry fellowship
to Stanford University’s Creative Writing program
and earned a doctorate in English literature in 1963.
Momaday has received numerous awards, including
the National Medal of Arts.
When did you start writing poetry?
I started thinking of myself as a poet when
I was just a child. My mother was a writer;
I followed in her footsteps. I watched her
work and she read to me. There were always
books in the house that were inspiring to
me that led me to become a writer.
What compels you to write a poem now?
How do you go about writing a poem?
Poetry is the highest expression in language. It’s my goal to be as responsible
in language as I can be and that leads me
directly to poetry, the crown of literature.
I try to find an idea that I want to explore
in poetry and then I work it out mostly in
terms of traditional English forms. I do a lot
of traditional work in iambic pentameter,
but I also write free verse (a contradiction
in terms). I like prose poems, short, lyrical
pieces that are not written in free verse but
in a kind of free style. My most recent poem
is “The Sake of Appearance.” I was interested in the idea that nothing—nothingness—is an important concept. I composed
a poem of about nine lines; it’s written in
iambic pentameter with a definite rhyme
scheme. That’s how a poem comes about:
TERI THOMSON RANDALL
The Spirit of Poetry
you have an idea and put the idea into the
highest possible expression.
Can you describe the work you’re doing
as artist-in-residence?
I meet with students every two weeks or
so. I assign a poem to read or a painting
to study and we have a discussion. It’s a
wonderful exercise in the seminar form
and I’m delighted with the students I’ve
encountered here. I look forward to continuing in this post for a good, long while.
Some of the works we have discussed are
“The Snow Man” by Wallace Stevens,
“Poem in October” by Dylan Thomas, Peter Brueghel’s “Hunter in the Snow,” and
Munch’s “Cry” and “The Red Vine.”
Is talking about a painting similar
to talking about a poem?
They are different expressions of the spirit.
A poem is composed in language as we
understand the term. A painting is vivid and
uses visual expression, so they’re worlds
apart in many ways. But you can talk about
them in the same terms: What is on the
poet’s or painter’s mind? How does he realize his vision? What are the techniques he
uses to convey his expression? How does he
communicate his spirit?
6 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014
“It’s my goal to be as
responsible in language
as I can be and that leads
me directly to poetry, the
crown of literature.”
N. Scott Momaday
How did you develop an interest
in painting?
My father was a noted Native American
painter, so I watched him work when I was
growing up. I didn’t want to be a painter at
that time; it was not until I was well into my
adulthood that I began painting and drawing and making prints.
What is your goal in working with
St. John’s students?
I’m trying to give the students the benefit
of my experience as an artist and to share
with them something of the oral tradition.
St. John’s students can benefit from it
because oral tradition is very powerful. The
best expression we have of it is theater: You
go to a production of Hamlet and you see
oral tradition in the raw, people speaking
�PHENOMENAL POEM
to each other on the stage and giving
meaning and expression through voice
and body language in the way you don’t
find in the pages in a book. It’s a welcome
addition to reading.
Does your new position mark a change
in your relationship with St. John’s?
I have been associated with St. John’s College for some time in different ways. I’ve
given the Commencement address, delivered public lectures, and [Mike Peters], the
president in Santa Fe, is a good friend. I’m
pleased to have a relationship with the college; I think the world of it and want to keep
my ties to it alive. This is [my] first chance to
meet with students in a discussion situation. I’ve had a whole career of teaching in
large institutions. I taught at Stanford [and]
other colleges, and I find that St. John’s
students probably have a greater freedom
of thought than students have elsewhere.
Being exposed to great books is wonderful
and I want to know more about that process,
how it works having such close association
with the greatest thinkers of the human
experience. That’s not something you can
say about most places.
— Interview by Sus3an Borden (A87)
“Earth and I Gave You Turquoise” is the
first poem Momaday kept, written when
he was an undergraduate.
Earth and I Gave You Turquoise
Earth and I gave you turquoise
when you walked singing
We lived laughing in my house
and told old stories
You grew ill when the owl cried
We will meet on Black Mountain
I will bring corn for planting
and we will make fire
Children will come to your breast
You will heal my heart
I speak your name many times
The wild cane remembers you
Poems were popping up everywhere on the
Annapolis campus on April 24—National Poem
in Your Pocket Day. Since 1996, April has been
National Poetry Month, started by the Academy
of American Poets to celebrate poetry. In 2008,
the Academy made New York City’s Poem in
Your Pocket Day a national event; several students read about it in the Gadfly. There were
poems taped on walls and placed on tables
in the Mellon fishbowl. Chinese poems had
accompanying English translations. A Chilean
poem was posted on a student’s Facebook
wall. Students pulled iPhones from their pockets to read poems aloud.
When it was Wick’s turn, she read “Revolution
Within an Electric Embrace,” her original twopage poem. “I’ve been thinking about all these
things throughout the year, and I put them into
rhyming couplet form.” In the machine, she sees
the force that she learned about from Newton:
In a Mellon science lab, a poem moved several
students to tears—and joy. Tutor Patricia Locke
had previously agreed that the student who
came up with a name that everyone agreed
to adopt for the “Faraday Machine” would be
exempt from the end-of-the-year paper. Alexandra Wick (A15) thought of a name, “Revolution
Within an Electric Embrace,” that was also
a poem: “I didn’t have any confidence that I
could win it with a name alone, so I decided to
write a poem and appeal to the end-of-the-year
nostalgia,” says Wick. When she learned that it
was also Poem in Your Pocket Day, she found it
a perfect convergence of forces.
“This embrace, though stable,
can never be at rest—
The wire cannot linger and put its head on
electric’s chest.
Here the wire reminds me of Phèdre herself,
longing to clutch.
Her passion hovers about Hippolyte but never
allowed to touch.”
It was not the first time Wick had read a
poem in lab class. “I really like the junior year
because of the holistic experience of math,
lab, and seminar. Ms. Locke has prepped us
to see lab this way; she has brought in poems
about the experience of bursting into tears
and what kind of phenomenon it is, or a video
of birds flying in what looks like magnetic lines
of force. So we’ve been primed by her to see
science as poetry, and poetry as science; I like
that transitive property of phenomena.”
My young brother’s house is filled
I go there to sing
We have not spoken of you
but our songs are sad
When Moon Woman goes to you
I will follow her white way
Tonight they dance near Chinle
by the seven elms
There your loom whispered beauty
They will eat mutton
and drink coffee till morning
You and I will not be there
I saw a crow by Red Rock
standing on one leg
It was the black of your hair
The years are heavy
I will ride the swiftest horse
You will hear the drumming hooves
“If attractive force spins the planets above,
Why not be simple and just call it love?
Then force is love and love is God,
And the world’s a stage on which we’ve all
starred.”
And the motion of the machine reminds her of
Phèdre’s struggle:
By the end of the reading, everyone agreed
they had a winner. Locke modified the assignment and gave students the option of writing a
poem instead of the paper. Whether handwritten on paper or read from an iPhone, Locke
says, “the whole idea is to encourage people
to start reading poems and realize that they
do have poems in their pockets at all times,
and have it be more part of their daily life. I
like poetry because it seems to be the most
intensified language we have. It has meaning
on multiple levels that act with each other and
it really is an entity itself. It’s not just pointing
to something else; it is its own being.”
— Eunji Kim (A15)
briefly quoted
“The uniqueness and glory
of St. John’s is not about the
outside world or our next steps,
it is about a life absorbed and
obsessed with books, ideas, and
the importance of those who
thought and wrote before us.
But the question remains, even if
unspoken,‘What are we going to
do, and from your perspective as
a graduate, why?’”
John L. Gray (EC12),
director, National Museum of American
History, Smithsonian Institution,
2014 Commencement speaker, Santa Fe
The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 |
7
�from the bell towers
Alumnus and Tutor
Co-direct NEH
Summer Institute
POEMS FROM THE HEART
JENNIFER LEVIN
Alexandra Welm’s (A14) first publication, My
Eden Home (Alondra Press, 2013), is a collection of poems accompanied by her illustrations,
completed when she was 19 years old. Putting
the book together, she says, “was as close as
I could possibly feel to having a baby.” Having
worked with magazines in high school, she
downloaded a layout program and positioned
the poems and art. “It was so entirely my own;
I’ve never had anything like this that’s mine.
When I realized it was actually going somewhere, I could hardly believe it.”
Joshua Sturgill (SF17)
BOOKSTORE POET
Welm loves fiction, but poetry has always
been a more accessible medium for her. “I
loved dabbling in other people’s stories; I loved
writing extensions to them and exploring what
my favorite characters did, but I don’t have an
expansive enough imagination to make my
own stories. Poetry was something I felt I could
always tap into.”
Joshua Sturgill (SF17) doesn’t call himself a poet.
The oldest freshman on the Santa Fe campus,
Sturgill, 37, worked in a bookstore in Kansas for
10 years while keeping a journal and writing essays and reviews about literature and philosophy.
Many of his journal entries were fragments and
impressions—poetic and otherwise—recorded for
future reference; some he turned into poems.
My Eden Home is not only the title of the book, it
is also the title of a poem that Welm cherishes.
“I wrote it after my father passed away and it
felt powerful to me,” she says. “It seemed to say
everything I wanted to say about an event which
otherwise I simply couldn’t put into words.”
When Muse Times Two, a poetry series in Santa
Fe sponsored by the nonprofit organization Lore of
the Land, announced its first annual competition
for local college students, Sturgill decided to work
with the notes he took during Holy Week in 2013.
The result: a three-part poem called “The Narrow
Year” was selected as the winner for St. John’s.
Welm believes in the storytelling power of
poetry. “It allows both the reader and the
writer to experience powerful emotions in a
condensed space,” she says. “What would take
many chapters in a book, you feel instantly with
a poem. You feel great loss, great pain, great
love. And it washes over you immediately in
just a couple of lines.”
On Sunday, April 13, Sturgill read his poem at
Collected Works Bookstore and Coffeehouse, in
a lineup that included the winners from the other
colleges in town—Santa Fe University of Art and
Design, the Institute for American Indian Arts,
and Santa Fe Community College. Each school
was asked to submit poems by three students;
the Muse Times Two jury selected one winner
from each institution.
— Eunji Kim (A15)
“I’m an Orthodox Christian and Holy Week is a
really intense time—lots of services but also a
meditative period,” says Sturgill. “I wrote about
events from last year and it’s interesting that one
year later, I read my poem on Palm Sunday.”
To read these poems in full visit: www.sjc.edu/
news-and-media
Joshua Parens (A84) and Joseph
Macfarland (A87) are co-directing the
National Endowment for the Humanities
(NEH) Summer Institute on Medieval
Political Philosophy, from June 16 to
July 11, 2014, at Gonzaga University in
Spokane, Washington. Parens is dean of
the Braniff Graduate School of Liberal
Arts and a professor of philosophy at the
University of Dallas; Macfarland is a tutor
in Annapolis. They are co-directing the
Institute with Douglas Kries, professor of
Christian philosophy at Gonzaga.
The Summer Institute is intended to
address the relative neglect of medieval
political philosophy in undergraduate
education (compared to ancient and
modern thought), and more specifically,
the relative neglect of Islamic and Jewish
medieval thought.
Examining writings by Alfarabi,
Maimonides, Thomas Aquinas, and many
others, participating faculty and graduate
students will be able to rediscover and
contemplate the confrontation between
reason and revelation free from many
modern presuppositions.
It is hoped that the 25 participants from
colleges and universities across the country
will subsequently incorporate medieval
political philosophy into their courses.
Learn more about the Institute: http://
medievalpoliticalphilosophy.gonzaga.edu
Sturgill’s winning three-part poem traces a challenging yearlong journey that culminates in this
verse, a resurrection of hope:
3.
I drank an ode
this morning: sunlight
ANYI GUO (A14)
standing in a cup of tea. I saw the leaves
Alexandra Welm (A14)
unfold a solemn reflection
of life, lending the water
green memory. Imperceptibly (except
by intuition) the cup pulses, rings, to my pulse
and I hold myself uncoiling
from a point of concentrated hope—there!
that hint of rainbow! rising
in an angle of the steam
— Jennifer Levin
8 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014
briefly quoted
“We are stories, each of us
an imagination, each of us
tracing an arc of beginning,
middle, and end, on the
course of which each of us
must struggle…”
National Book Award finalist
Andrew Krivak (A86),
2014 Commencement speaker,
Annapolis
�from the bell towers
“Reading Anna Karenina might well take
time, but it is time very joyously spent,”
says Annapolis tutor Brendan Boyle, who
was part of a yearlong study group on the
Tolstoy novel. Although Tolstoy’s War
and Peace has been read by Johnnies since
the inception of the New Program, Anna
Karenina is usually relegated to preceptorials and post-graduation reading. It is
clearly worth the community’s attention.
Dostoevsky called it “flawless as a work
of art” and Faulkner said it was the best
novel ever written.
The study group, made up of faculty,
staff, students, and other community
members, met at lunchtime for 15 Mondays throughout the year, reading roughly
50 pages for each session. Participants
looked forward with “delight” to each
reading, Boyle reports, as they followed
married aristocrat Anna’s struggle with
questions of marriage, passion, society
and her affair with Count Vronsky.
Annapolis President Chris Nelson
(SF70) launched the study group nine
years ago out of a desire to stay in touch
with what he calls “the real work of the college.” In the early years of his presidency,
he often led undergraduate seminars.
When his job became more demanding,
tutor Debbie Axelrod became the group’s
co-leader. They began with short fiction
but have recently been reading long works
including War and Peace and Ulysses.
Axelrod says that Anna Karenina shows
Tolstoy’s great sense for human emotion
and interaction: “Tolstoy gets it,” she
says. “When he describes what a person is
feeling or how a relationship is unfolding,
so many times he writes exactly what they
would say, exactly what they would feel.”
Nelson agrees. “Tolstoy seems to create
a character who behaves in a certain way,
but these characters are complex,” he
says. “Just when I think: ‘Well, they fit that
mold,’ it turns out they don’t. And that’s
true of every character in this book.”
Sophomore William Brown (A16)
believes that this surprise is part of a
ANYI GUO (A14)
Lunch with Anna Karenina
“Tolstoy seems to create a
character who behaves in
a certain way, but these
characters are complex.
Just when I think: ‘Well,
they fit that mold,’ it turns
out they don’t. And that’s
true of every one of the
characters in this book.”
Chris Nelson (SF70), Annapolis president
narrative ambiguity that is characteristic
of Tolstoy. “In Anna Karenina, Tolstoy
often writes in a style that suggests he
shares opinions with the characters when
he is writing about them, but then it
changes when he’s talking about different
characters.” Brown sees an interesting
technique throughout the book: “There’s a
way that the characters infect the narrative
and the narration becomes much less certain as a result,” he says. “That’s one of the
things I find myself most interested in.”
Linda Tuck, wife of retired tutor Jon
Tuck, joined the group this year after
retiring from a career as an elementary
school librarian in Anne Arundel County.
She notes that one of the strengths of the
group is the variety of people participating: staff, undergraduates, GIs, retired
tutors, current tutors, and other members
of the community. Often, she says, the
chemistry of the group is working so well
that she holds back from participating.
“Lots of times the discussion is so lively
that I’ll have things I want to say and I
don’t say them because the conversation
is going and it’s wonderful to listen to,”
says Tuck.
Boyle agrees that the participants work
extraordinarily well together. “The group
itself is, I think, a model of humanistic
investigation,” he says. “If one takes a
class on Tolstoy or, say, Dostoevsky, it will
invariably be occupied with questions
about political, economic, and cultural
developments in late 19th-century Russia.
The works themselves have a tendency to
get lost. Our seminar, by contrast, allows
the book to question us about love, marriage, children, happiness, God. ‘Why
might Anna love him?’ ‘What would a free
life look like for Anna, for Vronsky, for
Levin, for us?’ In our seminar, that’s what
we’re trying to figure out. As, I think,
Tolstoy himself was.”
—Eunji Kim (A15)
The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 |
9
�from the bell towers
THE MIRACLE OF FILM
I applied to St. John’s not because I
wanted to be a filmmaker but because
I wanted the films that I made to be for
something great. This is what I told those
who said, “Aren’t you a film major?” “But
there’s no film department?” “But wait—
philosophy?” In truth, the real reason I
applied is that I was insecure at parties,
decidedly unable to hold my own (read: to
sound “smart”) when stuck at the punch
bowl with a friendly stranger.
I came to St. John’s because I wanted to
learn how to hold a conversation. I knew
that depended on my ability to think well
and deeply, and to collaborate—a concept
with which I was familiar, but practiced
little. None of my adolescent friends were
terribly interested in making movies, so the
films that I made were almost always solo
projects. To make a truly good film is to
find some collaborative center of gravity, some harmonization of all its parts.
If a film, miraculously, turns out to be
good—and a good film, regardless of the
individual talent involved, must always be
a miracle—then it is both everyone’s and no
one’s fault.
Toward the end of my freshman year,
some friends and I made a short halfnarrative, half-documentary film, And for
My Next Trick. It was about an eccentric freshman who was with us for a few
months before he abruptly disappeared,
leaving behind most of his possessions
and a cryptic message scribbled in darkpurple sharpie on his dorm-room wall.
The movie premiered during “Dead
Week,” and a surprising number of students—about 50—showed up.
We tried to make it funny. A lot of
people laughed, and reportedly, some
cried. I say this not to congratulate myself
(although I will occasionally re-watch
the film’s frankly awesome and climactic
swing-dance-turned-fight-scene), but
rather to note that the movie united my
class in a way that was meaningful and
unexpected. Without realizing it, we had
told a story about the caricatured versions
PHOTOS: ANYI GUO (A14)
by Domenic D’Andrea (A15)
SOMEWHERE ALONG THE WAY,
WE TOLD OURSELVES THAT
STORYTELLING MATTERS, THAT IT
MEANS SOMETHING AND OUGHT
TO BE DONE BY PEOPLE WHO
WANT TO MAKE OTHER PEOPLE
FEEL A LITTLE BIT LESS ALONE.
of ourselves to which we cling when thrust
into a new community. We’d made a movie
about how it felt to be a freshman. As I
sat in the projection booth and the crowd
below me laughed, I knew that with this
clumsily shot and hastily edited movie,
I had struck that fine chord between the
Bitter and the Sweet of something true.
A few days after the screening, one
Very Cool Upperclassman told me, “Film
is the culmination of the liberal arts, a
marriage of visual art and narrative and
music and dialectic and philosophy—all
unfolding in time.” This is true, but what
I like about film is that it is an expression
of the visible. There must be something
real before the lens of a camera. And that
something begs to be seen both for what
it is—the light through a tree or the subtle
crack of a smile—and for how it fits into
a greater narrative: that tree the place
where a painful longing first was felt, that
smile a hint of mirth during an argument
between two old but not close friends. Is
this any different from poetry or theater
or music? We experience and repurpose
things to tell stories. We know this. We do
it all the time, but film reaches the places
that words struggle to touch.
This is why a coherent film—not necessarily a good or great film—is a miracle.
This statement is a slightly pretentious
10 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014
way of saying that
a good story—be it
visual or musical
or spatial or all of
the aforementioned
at once—requires a
whole lot of work
and collaboration. I
don’t just mean collaboration between
myself and the audience or myself and the crew, but between
myself and the film’s subject matter. For
this reason, film is not just a liberal arts
thing or a conversational thing. It’s a tender thing. More accurately, it’s a trusting
thing. That is why I like film so much.
At the Annapolis Film Festival last year,
I heard this sentiment articulated by Albert
Maysles during a screening of his acclaimed
documentary, Gimme Shelter. “If when
you’re making a film you’re not trying to
make friends,” he said, “then I don’t really know why you’re making that film.”
I’m happiest when I’m chasing a
moment with a steadicam, with a few
friends and a small window of time to get
a shot “in the can” before the sun sets,
or before that ominous storm cloud eats
it whole. Make no mistake: this description is romantic because it has to be. In
truth, setting up a scene is arduous. The
amount of time it takes to shoot something is typically quadruple the duration
of the final result. I’ve talked here mostly
about the “making” because it is the
“telling” of storytelling that interests
me. In the telling—that is, in the making, in the long nights of editing hours of
footage with some faithful friends and a
big bag of candy, a filmmaker anticipates
how the story will be seen and understood. Somewhere along the way, we told
ourselves that storytelling matters, that
it means something and ought to be done
by people who want to make other people
feel a little bit less alone. And if we get
good at making things together, odds are
we’re doing something right.
View Domenic D’Andrea’s (A15) films at
www.vimeo.com/domdandrea.
�from the bell towers
o f f t h e wa l l
GIMME FIVE
The virtual world was buzzing with
comments from students, alumni, and
parents in response to Annapolis President Chris Nelson’s SignPosts blog, “Five
Reasons to Attend St. John’s College”:
www.sjc-christopherbnelson.com
“I am a parent of a sophomore, and whenever
I have to describe the kind of college my
daughter attends, my short pitch default
answer is always this: ‘Every single kid
going to this school is incredibly employable
when they come out. Because every day, in
every class, they have to fully participate in
their own learning, thinking, and defending
their understanding of something. Most
important, they have to do it with respect
for every other person in the room.’”
—Lisa, St. John’s parent
“As a fellow parent, I am simply amazed at
the level of maturity and thoughtfulness
that my 19-year-old son has demonstrated
since being here a little over one semester!
It is hard to believe how much growth he
has realized in such a short time. Not to
mention him literally telling me—for the first
time in his life—that ‘I’ve fallen in love with
a man who has been dead for 2,089 years—
Euclid! I really love math.’”
—Anonymous parent
“Is no degree better than a liberal arts
degree?” is a new study published
on Forbes.com in May that considers
millennials (born between the early ’80s
and the early 2000s).
“The only ones who could find this study, its
premises and findings, to be valid are those
who have not been trained in critical thinking.”
—Caroline Killian (SF05)
“If your sole aim is to get well paying jobs,
and you have no interest in meaning,
thoughtful reflection, or understanding of
different worldviews, then focusing solely on
money makes sense. To those who desire a
thoughtful life, a life better prepared for all of
the interesting twists and turns, our college
motto makes the case.”
—Anonymous alum
A still from Nosferatu, F.W. Murnau’s 1922 film.
READING GREAT FILMS
Moved by the power and beauty of early
cinema, Scott Buchanan once envisioned the
New Program with a fifth year devoted to the
study of great cinematic works. More than
75 years later, this summer marks the arrival
of the St. John’s College Film Institute (June
15 to August 8) at the Santa Fe campus.
Several alumni, including Hannah Jayanti
(SF07) and Bob Tzudiker (A75) are leading
workshops. An idea spawned by Santa Fe
Graduate Institute Director David Carl and
other film-minded tutors at the Santa Fe
campus, the Film Institute emphasizes
reading films as well as viewing them; it
includes seminars, tutorials, and workshops
with film professionals. “A great film has
to work on multiple levels, with many possible interpretations,” says Carl. “It has to
exceed the artist’s intentions and provide
a forum in which [audiences] can engage
serious questions.”
Summer
Academy 2014
at St. John’s College
AN INTELLECTUAL
ADVENTURE
for High School Students
Students from around
the world immersed
themselves in Summer
Academy 2014 in Santa
Fe and Annapolis.
Learn more: www.sjc.edu
Local theater groups are showing films on
large screens at venues throughout the city.
Films include: F. W. Murnau’s Nosferatu
(1922), Yasujiro Ozu’s Tokyo Story (1953),
John Ford’s Stagecoach (1939), Ingmar Bergman’s Wild Strawberries (1957), and Andrei
Tarkovsky’s Mirror (1975), among others.
Each week focuses on films by a different
director as well as books that either they or
critics have written about their work. “Like
poetry, a director or cinematographer is very
deliberate about what we see,” says Carl.
“Images are inseparable from the story.”
The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 |
11
�from the bell towers
Ariel Intern Finds
Order and Purpose
ANYI GUO (A14)
In July 2014,the Laboratory of Anthropology (LOA) Research Library at the
Museum of Indian Arts and Culture on
the piñon-studded Museum Hill in Santa
Fe will migrate its catalog to the Koha
Integrated Library System, a move that
will make the library records searchable on
the Internet for the first time.
Helping to facilitate the migration is
Elizabeth Fedden (SF15), who was awarded
a second Ariel Internship to work for LOA
Library Director Allison Colborne. Fedden started working at the library in fall
2012 when she helped with a book sale to
PROGRAM
PAGE TURNERS
Is there a work of fiction or storytelling
on the Program that you find to be
especially compelling?
JENNIFER LEVIN
“My favorite narrative on the program
is The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
because the language of the story transcends the story itself. Its cadence and
rhythm become the central characters.”
— Josh Kelly (SF15)
Elizabeth Fedden (SF15)
raise funds. She continued to work with
Colborne on other projects; when Fedden
learned about the database migration project, she applied for the Ariel Internship to
fund the work. “I’m not very tech-savvy,
and it was a good opportunity to work
more with computers,” says Fedden.
Fedden, 29, a native of Normal, Illinois,
came to St. John’s after serving as a U.S.
Army nurse at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. She then
spent five years working in cafés, becoming
a competitive barista, and volunteering at
the World Barista Championship in Bogotá, Colombia.She eventually came to realize
that in order to move beyond the espresso
machine, she needed a college degree.
At first, the LOA Library database
cleanup was overwhelming—detailed and
often tedious—moving authors’ names and
book titles into the correct fields, deleting
“Herodotus’s Histories. I find the best
way to learn about people is through actual actions. I think it is easier to learn
about people, philosophy, virtue, and
anything through actual human actions.”
— Sally Jankovic (A17)
“One of my favorite narratives so far
has been Don Quixote. I can identify
with someone who sees all around him
what he needs in order for the outer
world to match his inner world.”
“As You Like It, because the hero is
a woman, and it is hilarious to watch
[the characters] run around the forest
and pretend they know what’s going on
when no one really understands.”
— Caroline Snizek (A15)
“I love the Iliad. It was the first book we
read here during freshman year and I
remember being enthralled by it. It is so
exciting—tales of glory and the gods. I
have two copies in my room, a Lattimore and a Fitzgerald translation. I plan
on rereading them both this summer.”
— William Kinum (A17)
“The thing that really moved me was
both of the Euripides plays. But I would
choose the Bacchae because it is so
sensual and violent at the same time.
It’s a very disturbing combination and
unlike anything else on the Program [so
far]. It certainly leads to a very interesting discussion. I’m still not sure what it’s
about, but it was definitely compelling.”
— Collin Ziegler (A17)
— Joseph Leakakos (SF15)
or merging duplicate records, running into
the stacks to confirm the location of an
obscure holding, and making sure records
are precise. “If periods aren’t in the right
places, the record won’t come up,” says
Fedden, who is exploring a master’s program at the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign; she is particularly interested
12 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014
in library conservation, digitizing fragile
materials, and making them searchable.
Colborne calls Fedden a librarian in the
making. “I’ve had other interns, and you
can just tell,” says Colborne. “I never have
to explain things to her. She understands
the order and the purpose.”
—Jennifer Levin
�from the bell towers
Spurred by Henry Robert (Class of
1941), this spring the Annapolis alumni
chapter, headed by Beth Martin (A94),
formed a study group to read the Pevear
and Volokhonsky translation of War
and Peace. Erin Fitzpatrick (A14) met
with participant Sam Kutler (Class of
1954), retired tutor and dean emeritus, to
discuss Tolstoy’s great work.
How many times have you read
War and Peace?
I’ve read it more than four times. As many
senior seminars as I’ve done, I’ve read it
at least that many times. The small things
get changed because you’ve forgotten
exactly where they are, but you know
where the large movements are; you know
what’s coming.
Is there a particular scene or line
that has stayed with you?
When Pierre speaks to Andrei and says,
“You gave such a beautiful talk about
forgiveness. This is the time to forgive
Natasha.” And Andrei says, “I never said I
could do it.” He’s too proud. That’s a very
important part of the novel. Tolstoy says
“this is not a novel,” but he’s wrong.
People have often described
Tolstoy’s novels as “character driven.”
Do you agree?
Tolstoy wants War and Peace to be history
driven, but the book is character driven.
Many years after reading War and Peace,
fine memories of Natasha, Pierre, and all
the other characters linger. I cherish most
Pierre’s statement to Andrei about forgiving Natasha. Pierre was always in love
with Natasha, even when she was a child,
and he would have given anything to be in
Andrei’s shoes so he could have forgiven
her. That would have been the greatest act
of his life. I’ve always thought about that
business about forgiveness.
Do you have a favorite character
in the novel?
I’ll tell you a story instead of answering
that question. I think the Program was
made solid by Jacob Klein. I went to Mr.
Klein’s seminar before I joined the faculty in ’61. He went around the room and
asked every single person, “What is War
and Peace about?” When he’d finished,
he said, “You’re all wrong. It’s about
Natasha.” Tolstoy doesn’t mind repeating the same phrase. He wants to drive
it home the way Beethoven does. He’s a
very musical writer. The main problem
for me is thinking of what a strange
couple Prince Andrei and Natasha would
be. He’s so stern and unusual and half of
him is his father. A little bit like Hamlet
in that respect. I don’t know if that had
any effect on Tolstoy.
to read. I wince a bit with Tacitus. I enjoy
the freshman and sophomore readings
more than those of the junior and senior
year. They seem more plausible and richer.
But the last time I did the junior year, I
thought they were strange books and very
well chosen. Every time I reread a book, it
was a new adventure, and every time I did
it in seminar, it was never the same. People
were always interested in talking about
different things.
Why should we read War and Peace?
We should read it because of its extreme
richness. I love its repetitions, I love that
everything’s there on the surface, but
Tolstoy doesn’t mind
repeating the same
phrase. He wants
to drive it home the
way Beethoven does.
He’s a very musical
writer.
How would you compare Anna
Karenina to War and Peace?
I recognize it as a masterpiece.
I can’t find time to read it often,
nor can I compare the two
novels, for they are so different.
War and Peace is dear to my
heart because of the well-drawn
characters and because Tolstoy
is anxious to disabuse us of our
false notions about war.
How can we find joy in reading
an assigned book?
JEN BEHRENS
Return to the Novel
The list of books on the Program is so
good that I always delight in reading any of
them, even if not especially Adam Smith.
I would have found it hard, year after year,
to do Justinian—we used to read Justinian
on how the Romans freed their slaves. It
was a bit tedious. We got rid of books like
that when we started the preceptorial list.
There’s hardly anything that isn’t a delight
the surface is so huge. The hard part is to
integrate it all in your imagination. Seminars are very helpful because somebody
will speak who has an entirely different
way of looking at it. Every single time I’ve
read it, it got better. That’s one test of a
great book: its “rereadability.”
—Interview by Erin Fitzpatrick (A14)
The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 |
13
�from the bell towers
Working at Talmar Gardens in Baltimore,
Maryland, last summer was the perfect
first internship for Rachel Howell (A16).
Talmar Gardens is a nonprofit organization that provides horticultural therapy,
which uses plants and horticultural
activities to assist in improving one’s
body, mind, and spirit. Howell turned
to horticultural therapy in hopes of
merging two of her interests: psychology
and nature. “The brain is an amazing
thing,” she says. Growing up on a small
farm surrounded by gardens and animals
nurtured her love of nature and working
with plants. At Talmar Gardens, Howell
interned in a vocational program in
which students with mental disabilities
learn a horticultural trade. “It involved
working out in the field, transplanting
plants in the greenhouse, and showing
the students how to use the tools and how
to work with others.”
Howell’s Hodson internship helped
her refine her interest in horticultural
therapy and exposed her to expectations
of the work world. “Class will go on without [me], but if I’m not there [at my job],
they’re going to have a problem getting
the group going,” she says. She sought
to develop leadership and communication skills through the internship, taking
charge of her assigned group of students
and learning to communicate clearly. “I
had to be direct, lay everything out, and
be specific when I was talking to the students.” This experience complemented
the communication skills that she has
been developing at St. John’s College. “I
also learned patience,” she says, “from
dealing with things like rush-hour traffic
to working with students with mental
disabilities.”
Howell did not receive much instruction on how to work with the students,
so she learned on the job “by watching
what other people did. We would have
meetings once a week about the students.
We talked about their progress and I
would ask questions: ‘This happened,
this is how I dealt with it. Is there a better
way to deal with it?’” The most fulfilling
moment was at the end, when her group
graduated from the vocational training
program. “I was so proud of them and
happy to see them be proud of themselves
for what they had accomplished. I was
really glad to have had a part in it.”
— Eunji Kim (A15)
CHILDREN’S LITERACY
ADVOCATE
Joanna Purpich (A14) takes the idea of “find
a need and fill it” to heart. While volunteering
as a math and reading coach for elementary
and middle school students this past year at
the Bloomsbury Square Community Center in
Annapolis, Purpich discovered that the organization’s supply of children’s books needed
a serious boost. An avid reader and advocate
for children’s literacy, she sprung to action. On
April 9, she launched a children’s book drive
on the Paca quad, inviting the college community to donate new and gently used books,
primarily for ages 7 to 14. She collected more
than 200 books, including classics such as
Roald Dahl’s Matilda, Rudyard Kipling’s The
Jungle Book, and Anne McCaffrey’s The Coelura. “The drive was a success,” says Purpich.
“Being a community of book lovers, St. John’s
is a great place to do a book drive.”
The following day, Purpich delivered the books
to the community center. “The kids were
excited to see the boxes. We sat in a circle
and read Shel Silverstein poems.” Purpich is
looking forward to organizing another children’s
book drive. “I want to make sure teachers have
tools to effectively reach students.” Purpich
hopes to forge a career in publishing; this
summer she is attending the University of
Denver Summer Publishing Institute.
ANYI GUO (A14)
ANYI GUO (A14)
Plants and Psychology:
Hodson Intern Finds the Link
Purpich was raised on classics by Roald Dahl
and Tolkien. “My favorite was The Hobbit.”
Growing up in Houston, Texas, her parents
encouraged reading. “For a bedtime story, my
mom read Don Quixote to me. I felt comfortable with epics and books with cool plotlines.”
One book, in particular, she holds dear to this
day. “I keep a copy of Harry Potter, to comfort
me when I’m sick or not feeling well,” says
Purpich. “My original copy is missing its spine
and completely worn out from use—and from
being dropped in the bathtub.”
— Gregory Shook
14 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014
�from the bell towers
Hitting the Global Airwaves
LARRY CLENDENIN (SF77)
RETIRES
Pictured (left to right): Linda Lin, co-op producer, U.S. Department of State; Maria Acosta,
Teleamazonas reporter; Francisca Soto Bravo (A17); Edison Choco, Teleamazonas cameraman
After nearly three decades as admissions
director on the Santa Fe campus, Larry
Clendenin (SF77) officially retired in July.
“Every student who has signed the college
register at Convocation over these years, and
therefore every student who has received a
diploma at Commencement for most of those
years, owes something to Larry’s work,” says J.
Walter Sterling, Santa Fe dean. “I am deeply
grateful for his service to the college.”
During the last 30 years, Clendenin has
witnessed tremendous changes in higher
education, particularly in the ways that colleges and universities reach out to prospective
students. “What is really different is the communication—the connectivity and mediums
that are available to us,” says Clendenin. “That
really pushes on our lives and on our private
time, and opens up more public avenues. But
young people keep up with it.” Clendenin has
also seen the cost of higher education rise,
St. John’s College garnered international attention when television documentary film crews
visited the Annapolis campus last fall. They traveled to the U.S. on separate assignments,
but with a similar interest: discussion-based higher education. A noted television journalist,
producer, and camera crew from the Korean Educational Broadcasting System (EBS), one of
the leading networks in Korea, visited in October. In a partnership with the U.S. Department
of State, a similar team from Teleamazonas, a major television network in Ecuador, arrived
in November. Both news teams immersed themselves in campus life: they met with students,
faculty, and staff, and attended seminars, labs, and concerts. They were especially interested
in the college’s emphasis on original sources and classroom discussion. Each news team
noted the heightened interest among youth in their respective countries in studying classic
works and perfecting conversational English. Among the students who participated in the
documentaries were JuChan Park (A16) from Korea, and Francisca Soto Bravo (A17) from
Chile; they shared their experiences as international students at the college.
talk of the tow ers
Santa Fe Admissions staff and Larry Clendenin
In Annapolis, four new tutors have joined
the faculty. Robert Abbott (A04) is from the
University of Chicago, where he is working on
completing his joint PhD from the Committee on Social Thought and the Department of
Germanic Studies. Karin Ekholm (A00) joined
the college from the University of Cambridge,
where she was a teaching and research fellow
in the Department of History and Philosophy
of Science. She received her PhD in history
and philosophy of science from Indiana University. Rebecca Goldner (AGI02) comes to
the college from Villanova University, where
she earned her PhD in philosophy. Matthew
Holtzman (A00) earned his PhD in philosophy
from Johns Hopkins University.
In Santa Fe, Mary Anne Burke is the new
Facilities and Athletics manager, and Aaron
Young is the new director of Human Resources.
Chris Gruber is the new Webmaster, and Lisa
Neal is assistant director of Communications.
In Annapolis, several new directors have
joined the college: Bill Hocking, director for
the President’s Initiative for a Liberal Education; Tim Leahy, director of Information
Technology; and Susan Jenkins, director of
Web Initiatives and Social Media. Annapolis
Treasurer Bronte Jones left the college in
September; Bud Billups, interim treasurer,
retires (again) this summer.
which he says can be “overwhelming for a lot
of families. St. John’s is doing a good job of
addressing that. One thing I tell parents is that
our graduates go on to write great literature,
make movies, and become businesspeople,
doctors, lawyers, and teachers.”
Clendenin emphasizes that St. John’s is
about finding the right fit. “We’re talking about
a particular student and whether or not it’s
going to be practical,” says Clendenin. “It’s
not a question of whether it’s practical for all
students. But for those of us for whom this is
perfect, it brings out the best in us. It brings out
great things that take us where we want to go.”
— Jennifer Levin
The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 |
15
�from the bell towers
Santa Fe Campus
Turns 50
This summer, St. John’s College kicks
off the 50th anniversary of the founding
of the Santa Fe campus. The yearlong
celebration includes activities and events
that will recognize and honor the people
and the community that make St. John’s in
Santa Fe so distinctive. “This year marks
a significant milestone in the history of
the college and the Santa Fe campus,
conclusively demonstrating for more than
50 years that the St. John’s Program is an
education for all and has no geographical
or cultural bounds,” says Santa Fe
President Mike Peters.
THE ST. JOHN’S EDUCATION IS
FOREVER YOUNG. THE PIONEERS,
THE WESTERN COLONY, THE
ODYSSEAN WANDERING, WERE—
AND ARE—IMPLICIT IN THE GENETIC
MAKEUP OF THE PROGRAM.
Richard Weigle, founder and president
of the Santa Fe campus
It was a bold and visionary move to establish a campus in Santa Fe, offering the
college’s unique, and in many ways radical,
academic program to more students. “The
founding of the Santa Fe campus in 1964
was a reminder that the educational program installed in Annapolis in 1937—one
that could be mistaken for something traditional, if not hidebound—is in fact radical,
volatile, and nomadic,” says J. Walter
Sterling, Santa Fe dean. “As was said of the
Greeks, the St. John’s education is forever
young. The pioneers, the Western colony,
the Odyssean wandering, were—and
are—implicit in the genetic makeup of the
Program, waiting to be expressed.”
The commemoration of 50 years in
Santa Fe “gives us a perfect opportunity
to highlight the significant place that the
college has in higher education, reaffirm
together our core values as a community,
and heighten the visibility of St. John’s
locally and nationally,” says Victoria
Mora, Santa Fe vice president. “It also
is important for Santa Fe to step up and
leverage gifts to the campus in honor of the
anniversary, making us a stronger partner
in our one college, two campus structure.”
The college also will salute innovations
first established in Santa Fe—such as the
Graduate Institute, the Eastern Classics
program, and Summer Classics.
On June 20, a public media event
launched the celebration with proclamations and remembrances. The campus is
taking every opportunity to mark the anniversary throughout the summer, beginning
with Music on the Hill, Summer Classics,
and the first-ever Summer Film Institute
(www.sjc.edu/events-and-programs/santafe/summer-film-institute). The celebration
will continue throughout the academic
year and will include a national academic
conference, “What is Liberal Education
For?” on October 16 through 18 (www.sjc.
edu/events-and-programs/santa-fe/50thanniversary-conference). The conference
is envisioned as a broad platform to speak
about the challenges and opportunities for
liberal education today, and to engage in
exemplary studies in the liberal arts.
Sterling reflects on the value of the
conference and its place in the campus’s
50th anniversary celebration: “Our
insight into the true ends and appropriate
means of an education for the human
being as such suggests an alternative to
what has sadly become mainstream and
conventional. Such an education should be
made available to, and pursued by, many
more people—ever more people. This was
audacious in Annapolis in 1937 and in
Santa Fe in 1964, and seems more so now.
But it happens to be true.”
— Jennifer Levin
16 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014
2013-2014 NEW
BOARD MEMBERS
Elizabeth (“Betsy”)
Ann Bassan (A75) is
founder, president,
and CEO of Panagora
Group, a womanowned small business
providing integrated
and novel solutions in
health and development. Previously she
held executive and leadership positions with
Chemonics International, Save the Children,
and the Society for International Development
(SID)-Washington. She is a senior planner and
management specialist with more than 30
years of experience designing, implementing,
and evaluating international development
projects, strengthening institutions, and building public-private partnerships. Her sector
expertise includes global health and private
sector development. Her regional experience includes Africa, Asia, Europe, Eurasia,
and the Middle East. She lived and worked
overseas for seven years in Kenya and Sudan.
She speaks French and holds an M.A. from
Columbia University, where she participated
in a joint degree program on Planning in
Developing Nations.
Robert Mass is head
of Goldman Sachs’s
International Compliance, which comprises
Europe, Middle East,
and Africa (EMEA) and
Asia Pacific Compliance. He is also global
head of Securities
Division Compliance.
He joined Goldman Sachs in 1992 as the first
head of Compliance for the J. Aron Currency
and Commodities Division. He managed FICC
Compliance for eight years until 2004. He
was named managing director in 2001 and
partner in 2010. Prior to joining the firm, he
was an assistant district attorney in New York
County, where he served as deputy chief of
the Investigation Division and chief of the Labor Racketeering Unit. Before that, he worked
at Kramer, Levin, Nessen and Kamin, a New
York corporate law firm, and at the American
Civil Liberties Union. He is a graduate of the
University of California, Santa Cruz, and Harvard Law School. Mass has participated in the
New York Executive Seminars for many years, as
well as in Summer Classics in Santa Fe.
�from the bell towers
TONY J. PHOTOGRAPHY
Committed to Liberal Education
Chris Nelson (SF70), Annapolis president
Last October, more than a dozen college
and university presidents dined at the
Penn Club in midtown Manhattan while
fielding questions from a select group of
editors, producers, and journalists—from
CBS News, the New York Times, Inside
Higher Ed, Bloomberg News, the Christian
Science Monitor, Money magazine, NPR,
and Forbes, to name a few. What was on
their minds? Questions such as “How can
you show the success and value of a college degree?” and “How is the increasing
student-debt burden impacting college
and career choices?” Annapolis President
Chris Nelson (SF70) was one of the few
liberal arts college representatives in the
mix. The media’s take on higher education
heavily influences public opinion, so it is
important for St. John’s College and liberal
education to be well represented.
This higher-education media dinner is
one of many events Nelson attended this
year as part of his outreach campaign to
increase the visibility of St. John’s College
and liberal education. Nelson’s message
is reaching alumni, students, and friends
who are familiar with and support liberal
education as well as audiences who—after
listening to Nelson—want to learn more:
prospective applicants, parents, donors,
teachers and guidance counselors, policymakers, and, of course, the media.
Nelson, a respected national spokesperson for liberal education, is regularly
publishing and making appearances.
His blog for Huffington Post (www.
huffingtonpost.com/christopher-nelson)
touches on topics such as “Lincoln and
Liberal Education,” “The Miracle of
Imagination,” and “The World’s Longest
Running Seminar of Free Government.”
His “SignPosts” blog (www.blogs.sjc.edu/
christopher-nelson) celebrates everything
at St. John’s from Senior Orals to the joys
of original thought and Euclid. His blogs
are linked to a growing number of other
sites—further increasing the reach of the
message about St. John’s.
Nelson is recognized as a leader in
national, state, and local higher education
circles. As an advocate for liberal education, he is a regular contributor to higher
education-specific and mainstream media.
Nelson is invited to comment and join
forums for noted publications such as Time
and The Hechinger Report. His letter to
the editor, “The Fervor for Great Books
and Big Ideas Isn’t Dead,” appeared in the
New York Times in May. He was invited by
the Washington Post to review an important new book, Beyond the University:
Why Liberal Education Matters by Michael
Roth, president of Wesleyan University.
Nelson is also writing his own book.
In fact, the cornerstone of his outreach
campaign is a book intended for a wide
audience; he plans to meld his congenial
“deskside” conversations with stories that
speak to the values of St. John’s College
and liberal education.
Nelson reflects, for instance, on his
son’s encounter with liberal learning and
“repairing an old junker, a 1960s vintage
Volkswagen bug.” As his son tried to fix
the broken washers for the windshield
wipers, Nelson says “he was led to find
for himself the answer to the problem just
by a series of questions. His experience
was liberating and a reminder that we all
practice the liberal arts constantly. The
“All members of the
St. John’s community
are potential ambassadors
for liberal education and
for St. John’s College.”
only question is whether we practice them
well or poorly. If we open ourselves to the
possibility of learning something new,
without relying on manuals or seasoned
experts, we can all make new discoveries
for ourselves.”
Nelson is working closely with a team of
staff and faculty and a media consultant,
as well as alumni and friends, as he moves
forward with his campaign. “But of course,
all members of the St. John’s community are potential ambassadors for liberal
education and for St. John’s College,”
says Nelson. “My role is to spur on that
continuing conversation about the value of
what we do at the college, so that it can be
better understood and appreciated.”
—PD
Learn more about Nelson’s activities:
www.sjc.edu/about/leadership/presidents/
annapolis-president
Subscribe to the SignPosts blog:
www.blogs.sjc.edu/christopher-nelson
briefly quoted
“In the end, liberal education
must take its bearings from
the most fundamental
question of all: What does it
mean to be human?”
Annapolis President
Christopher Nelson (sf70), in his
book review for The Washington Post
of Beyond the University:
Why Liberal Education Matters,
by Michael Roth, president,
Wesleyan University
The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 |
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�18 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014
�tutor views
Why
by Jonathan Tuck
For rising seniors at St. John’s College, summer provides
an important rite of passage. In preparation for the first two
seminars of the fall, each of them must read Tolstoy’s War and
Peace. It’s prudent not to begin too late: the vast historical novel
of the Napoleonic wars occupies 1,215 pages in the excellent
Pevear/Volokhonsky translation, apart from notes and index.
The Use of Stories:
Faculty members
consider Tolstoy and
compelling works of
fiction on the Program.
OPPOSITE: A scene from
War and Peace
ART RESOURCE, NY
At the rate of 90 pages per week, it’s enough to fill the whole summer
with seminar readings for each Monday and Thursday. The action ranges across most of Europe and involves armies of hundreds of thousands
of men. It is truly a “great book” in size and scope as well as in power and
beauty; yet most of the reader’s concern is narrowly focused on the fates
of six or seven characters, members of three noble Russian families.
We come to know these people inside and out, better perhaps than we
know our own families or close friends. It is very hard to remember that
they are not real. As Isaac Babel said, “If the world could write by itself,
it would write like Tolstoy.” When the narrative proper concludes with
Part One of the Epilogue, we feel betrayed. It cannot be that there is no
more! Another generation is growing up: what will become of young
Nikolenka? And what about Pierre? Will his political activities get him
into trouble? How happy are these marriages? We want desperately to
find out what will happen next. It’s this very curiosity that keeps us reading; though the book is long, we fly through it after a while, hoping that
our favorites will find the happiness they have been seeking for years.
The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 |
19
�Q&A
tutor views
Why is Tolstoy on the
Program?
An old saw I have heard is that
St. John’s students graduate
unaware of the Protestant
Reformation and the French
Revolution. It is one of many
variants on the theme that
we somehow neglect “history.”
The particular variant and the
general charge have some
force to them, though the true
force is not what is most often
intended. What is most often
intended is the idea that we
do our students a disservice
by leading them to neglect the
“historical context” in which
the authors wrote (and which
shaped their ideas). The typical
argument is upside down: In
fact, we come to understand
the historical context by reading the works of the greatest
minds that illuminate such
context. It is in this light that
some of the power of reading Tolstoy’s War and Peace
emerges for us. Tolstoy brings
to life (or to the work of art)
Napoleon as man and myth,
the great movements of modern Russian politics, the general tumult of enlightenment
rationalism (and nationalism)
and the many other forces by
which “Europe” was convulsed
in the 19th century, the
twilight of the ancient regime,
and the lived experience of
the consequences of Hegel’s
interpretation of the “worldhistorical.” Without reading the
great literature that comments
on, or animates, the times, we
do indeed have a “historical”
lacuna. Reading the enlightenment philosophy of the late
18th and early 19th centuries,
without reading War and
Peace, is something like reading Plato and Aristotle without
reading Homer, Aeschylus, and
Sophocles.
—J. Walter Sterling (A93),
Santa Fe dean
This longing is inspired by the raw power
of pure storytelling. Most of us have stayed
up all night to finish a compelling tale. We
have to find out; it seems like a matter of
life and death, as it was for the Sultan and
Scheherazade. Sometimes the story will
lack the grandeur and dignity of Tolstoy or
Homer; we call them “guilty pleasures”—police procedurals, country-house whodunits, Gothic romances, beach reading, pageturners. But why should this pleasure make
us feel guilty? As Aristotle reminds us, our
desire to know, to “have seen,” is natural to us
as human beings. Unlike gossip, for example,
even the most trivial fictional narratives don’t
seem to harm anyone else. Perhaps certain
kinds of coarseness in a story can harm us, but
often the shame we feel at having squandered
a few hours on the wrong sort of book springs
20 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014
from a tacit comparison: we could have spent
that time reading something more useful,
something good for us. What use can we make
of stories?
At St. John’s, novels usually appear in the
seminar list right after a lengthy vacation. War
and Peace, Don Quixote, Middlemarch, The
Brothers Karamazov—each long book gets
only two evenings of discussion. The usual result, of course, is that we try to see the work
as a synchronic whole, rather than focusing on
the diachronic experience of reading. We look
back and try to pick out themes and ideas. At
the end of his book, Tolstoy does the same
thing. In Part Two of the Epilogue to War and
Peace, he discards his characters and suddenly
turns philosopher, telling us what we should
infer from the events of the story about causation in history and human freedom. Many of
�the truth of stories
Q&A
his claims have appeared before, embedded in
the text. (For example, see the beginnings of
Volume III, Parts 1, 2, and 3; Volume IV, Parts
2 and 3; and Epilogue, Part 1.) Like many other readers, I have always thought that Tolstoy
marred his great novel slightly by giving in to
the temptation to preach a moral at the very
end. He should have trusted his tale more. But
in our seminars, in our necessarily retrospective treatment of his story and other stories,
we often do something very similar. We distance ourselves from the events narrated in
searching for their meaning.
Should we first approach a seminar work
from the outside, as a whole, or work through
it from the inside? If we are reading a work
that is not a story—say, a philosophical work
with an argument—we often try first to restate
the argument with precision. But when we
read a story, we seldom feel the need to retell the plot. Instead, we reach into the story
from without, looking for what it is “about.”
We are used to arguments; it is tempting to
try to find a doctrine, a truth-claim, in everything we read. Our desire to make our stories
philosophical may assure us of our own seriousness, but do we then misrepresent the
concreteness of our experience of reading? I
have sometimes flippantly tried to deflect students who try to turn a novel into a treatise by
saying, “The moral of every great novel is that
There is and should be wisdom in the best stories,
even if it is hard to specify it in the form of a
proposition. Although Tolstoy’s story seems to tell
itself, as Babel said, there is always a teller behind
the tale, and a reason for telling it. Stories that
provoke reflection and repay rereading are never just
about themselves. Pace Socrates, the war between
philosophy and poetry need not last forever.
It’s no doubt foolhardy to try
to write a short paragraph
about a writer with such epic
proclivities. But Tolstoy himself
suggests that small drops may
reflect entire globes. At a key
moment in War and Peace,
Pierre has a brief vision of
a vibrating globe composed
of water drops. In an urge to
reflect the divine being at the
center of this globe, each drop
strives to expand, spreading
until it eventually merges with
the whole and loses its identity. The peasant Platon Karataev embodies this essential
tendency: his every feature and
gesture is “round,” he doesn’t
distinguish one person from the
next, and his speech consists
mostly of common folk-sayings.
Even the dog that has attached
itself to Karataev is characterized only by an absence of particularity—by “its not belonging
to anyone, and the absence of
a name and even of a breed,
even of a definite color.” The
impulse to dissolve the bounds
of individuality extends even to
the central characters: Pierre
and Natasha finally appear
as a typical married couple,
talking contentedly “as only
a husband and wife can talk.”
This drive toward the archetypal
isn’t peculiarly human: the old
oak that initially attracts Prince
Andrei’s attention by its apparent refusal to put out leaves in
expansive springtime gestures
has, a month later, become
indistinguishable from the other
trees in the forest. Only after
some effort does Andrei discern it “spreading out a canopy
of juicy, dark greenery.” As the
old oak comes to life it looks
more and more like every other
tree in springtime. Perhaps we
read Tolstoy, then, for the very
reasons we read every other
great writer: to catch sight,
if we can, of how particulars
reach out toward the universal.
—Margaret Kirby, tutor
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21
�Q&A
tutor views
When we tried to take him off
once on the Santa Fe campus,
the rising seniors wouldn’t let
us. We could not persuade
them that there could really be
a substitute.
I think Dostoyevsky is right
to say that Tolstoy writes the
way a dreamer dreams: with
every detail in place, fully
realized down to the last cuff
link and collar button. Or so
at least it seems to the rapt
audience. The deployment of
such Old Master portraiture
on the biggest story of the
19th century—the story of
Napoleon’s conquest of Russia
and subsequent ignominious
retreat—makes a book unlike any other I know. Tolstoy
means to step into the same
arena as Homer: War and
Peace is his Iliad and Odyssey
in one. And he is worthy of his
model without ever seeming a
mere imitator.
Robert Bart once proposed
that we read great works of
literature partly in order to approach the various Medusas of
human life as Perseus did the
Gorgon: not looking directly
into their petrifying faces but
in the reflection of a shield.
Tolstoy offers a shield for
anyone who hopes not to wind
up paralyzed by Love or War,
Ambition, Ideology, Politics,
or History. One comes to live
inside his book and through
his characters for the weeks
one reads it, and perhaps (especially after a good seminar
or two) never entirely leaves it
behind again. The characters
are unforgettable. Sixteen-yearold Natasha is able to look into
a mirror before her first ball
and say, in all sincerity, “Who
is that charming girl?” Pierre
is saved from a firing squad
because of how he looks into
an officer’s eyes. For Prince
Andrei, living becomes an
insoluble problem. How does
one know that the pictures a
book shows of human hearts
life is complicated.” Similarly, Mark Twain
begins Huckleberry Finn with the disclaimer:
“Persons attempting to find a motive in this
narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished;
persons attempting to find a plot in it will be
shot.” Apart from a desire to be funny, Twain
may have other motives here, but he knows,
and we know, that his story has a moral content that can be questioned and discussed.
That’s why Huck Finn is a great book. There
is and should be wisdom in the best stories,
even if it is hard to specify it in the form of a
proposition. Although Tolstoy’s story seems
to tell itself, as Babel said, there is always a
teller behind the tale, and a reason for telling
it. Stories that provoke reflection and repay
rereading are never just about themselves.
Pace Socrates, the war between philosophy
and poetry need not last forever.
The heroes and heroines of War and Peace
all suffer greatly in their search for happiness and meaning. Some of them, especially
Pierre Bezukhov, continually ask about the
meaning of their experience, even while it
is happening; but all of them engage in such
questioning at the novel’s end. Though most
readers love Pierre, it is hard not to consider
22 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014
him somewhat comical, at least some of the
time; part of the reason is that he sometimes
seems to think that the meaning of life should
be easily expressible in the form of doctrine
or a proposition. If learning comes through
suffering, perhaps these characters learn not
to expect such easy answers. Because they
seem so real, we suffer along with them, and
we learn, too. If the story can make us wiser,
it must be a complex kind of patient, experiential wisdom. It’s fitting, then, that we survey the events of the story in retrospect, as
the characters do themselves.
If Tolstoy erred in Part Two of the Epilogue,
it was only in his tone of impatience and overt
didacticism. In the greatest stories—and
War and Peace is one of them—the ideas, the
themes, the world view are fully incarnated in
the action and the characters. Often it’s necessary to abstract them in order to speak of
them, but it should feel like an act of violence,
like a translation or a prose paraphrase of a
poem. The way to regain the perfect interpenetration of Aristotle’s big three—plot, character, and thought—is to read the novel again.
Jonathan Tuck is a tutor in Annapolis.
�the truth of stories
Illustrations: below and page 18:
Illustrations for War and Peace
found in the collection of the
State Borodino War and History
Museum, Moscow. Paintings
by Andrei Nikolayev.
page 20: The reading of the
novella, The Kreutzer Sonata,
at the Leo Tolstoy House (1889),
painting by Grigori Myasoedov.
opposite page: Tolstoy in his
study. Engraving in “The Artistic
Illustration” (1892).
Our desire to make our stories philosophical may assure
us of our own seriousness, but do we then misrepresent
the concreteness of our experience of reading? I have
sometimes flippantly tried to deflect students who try
to turn a novel into a treatise by saying, “The moral of
every great novel is that life is complicated.”
are true pictures? Maybe the
great books are the ones that
help you start to know. Tolstoy
writes that kind of book.
—Cary Stickney (A75), tutor
into the past, scarcely holding in
check the frailties and tensions
in their lives and those of their
several guests. And yet the
revealing, unsettling power of
the past is made beautifully and
clearly present through song
and memory, in Joyce’s words.
—Pamela Kraus,
Annapolis dean
I like to think of the four years
as starting with adventure
stories. In my romantic way of
looking at things, the freshman
year would be better served by
the Odyssey, but you can’t read
the Odyssey before the Iliad.
The sophomore year used to
start with the Aeneid. The junior
year begins with Don Quixote.
War and Peace fits right in there
with that—a large adventure
story for every year. One
might say that War and Peace
shouldn’t be on the Program
because it doesn’t fit in so well
with the other books. We don’t
have a good way of studying
Napoleon, and War and Peace
is not a good way of studying
Napoleon because you just get
a caricature of him.
—Sam Kutler, (Class of 1954),
tutor emeritus
Is there a work of fiction or
storytelling on the Program
that you find to be especially
compelling?
James Joyce’s “The Dead” is
a story I return to again and
again. It is, to my mind, one of
the great short stories in the
English language. A pensive,
gentle, but uncompromising
spirit pervades the annual
dance and dinner at the Misses
Morkan’s. Their small evening is
a civilizing force that is slipping
ILLUSTRATIONS: HIP, ART RESOURCE, NY
“Thucydides’ Peloponnesian War
was the first thing I had ever
read that showed me there was
movement toward order in the
world (as well as chaos).”
—Jim Beall, tutor
What story is more compelling
than the story of Odysseus’s
homecoming? And who can
tell a better tale than Odysseus
himself? Disguised as a beggar, he responds to Penelope’s
insistent questions about his
identity by claiming to be a man
from Crete who entertained
Odysseus on his way to Troy.
Penelope melts in tears at the
story, but tests him by asking
what Odysseus wore and “what
sort of man he was.” The beggar
describes a purple mantle and a
tunic made of exceptionally fine
fabric, but pins his reply on the
description of a golden brooch
that fastened the mantle. So
artfully did it depict a hound
attacking a fawn that the viewer
forgot he was looking at an
image and simply saw the fawn
struggling convulsively in the
hound’s grasp. The beggar’s tale
takes Penelope back, vividly and
concretely, to that day, some
twenty years earlier, when she
saw Odysseus off, and “attached
the shining pin, to be his adornment.” At the same time, the
brooch, on which the story fastens, begins to bind Penelope to
her husband in a new way. The
object itself is long lost; what
remains and makes itself present is their common memory
of it. Whoever the stranger now
before her is, Penelope must be
bound to him by the memory
of that marvelous brooch, as
she was bound to her departing husband by its tangible
presence and the physical act
of pinning it on his cloak. By
focusing on a work of visual art,
Odysseus also binds them in the
knowledge that this story never
fully reaches its conclusion—the
fawn is forever struggling in
the hound’s grasp; the hound is
forever unable to relax his grip.
—Margaret Kirby, tutor
The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 |
23
�CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT:
Mike Lacy (A12); Lee
Zlotoff (A74); detail of
textile art by Richard
Saja (SF00); sketch by
Jules Feiffer of himself
with Norton Juster in
Hannah Jayanti’s (SF07)
film; detail of animated
film, Mars, by Geoff
Marslett (SF96)
24 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014
�Modern Takes
Storytellers
What makes a story memorable and compelling? When these alumni connect
with our deepest emotions, we recognize ourselves in their stories. They use
everything from modern digital filmmaking and editing techniques to traditional,
time-honored methods—visualizing a great story, observing character, directing
a scene, writing a screenplay, scribbling notes and plot outlines on napkins and
whiteboards, dreaming, even embroidering fabric—to reach us.
Great Expectations
A Film by Hannah Jayanti (sf07)
Premiers at the New Yorker Festival
Norton Juster’s children’s book The Phantom Tollbooth, with illustrations by cartoonist
Jules Feiffer, has inspired love bordering on worship for generations. It’s the story of a boy
named Milo “who didn’t know what to do with himself—not just sometimes, but always.”
He comes home one day to find a mysterious package containing
materials for a small purple tollbooth. After putting it together for
lack of anything better to do, he idly drives a toy car past it—and
finds himself in the Lands Beyond. There, he explores a world both
fantastic and overly literal, and sets forth on a quest to free the
princesses Rhyme and Reason, “without whom wisdom withered.”
A few years ago, Hannah Jayanti (SF07) felt as aimless as Milo.
She left St. John’s not intending to follow in the footsteps of her
father, a documentary filmmaker. Instead, she was torn between
“building incredibly hippie eco-houses” and academia. At first,
the latter won out. Then she moved to New York City to study
photo and video at the School of Visual Arts (SVA). She found
herself struggling with the visual side of the MFA. Then she
made an experimental film for a video class that took the opening narration of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway and rearranged
ELLI CHUNG
by Anna Perleberg Andersen (sf02)
the dialogue into stream-of-consciousness. This “strange little
piece” required extensive editing, and Jayanti “lost herself” in
the process, discovering that “this is the way my mind works.
Editing is a form of writing in the visual world.”
After that, she left SVA to explore forms of film that relied
heavily on the editing process. Among other freelance projects,
she made book trailers for Random House—a strange new genre,
“half commercial and half artistic.” While they often resemble
movie trailers, book trailers are not excerpts of a previous visual
work; a book trailer must film scenes that reference an entirely
different medium. Jayanti also made documentary-style author
videos, which she enjoyed: “Editing is half of directing [a documentary],” she says. “You have no idea what the story will be
until you get into the editing room—it’s where the story really
comes together.”
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�storytellers
Her chance to make a feature-length
documentary came in 2011. Janice Kaplan,
a communications consultant she had met
in Washington, D.C., sought Jayanti out
in connection with the 50th anniversary
of The Phantom Tollbooth. They intended
to make a short video commemorating the
anniversary, but after spending a weekend
with Juster at his home in Amherst, Massachusetts, they knew there was enough
material to sustain a longer film. “After
that, people came out of the woodwork,”
says Jayanti. That project became The
Phantom Tollbooth: Beyond Expectations, which premiered at the New Yorker
Festival in October 2013. It continues to
appear at venues throughout the country:
“art institutions, libraries, universities,
museums, non-profits.”
Jayanti herself was a big fan of the book
as a child. She loves “how many levels [the
book] works on, how much you can get out
of it at any age. The combination of really
sharp wit and real, real warmth—that’s a
really tricky combination to get for a writer.” She finds herself thinking often of the
Terrible Trivium, a blank-faced monster
who delays Milo’s quest by asking him and
Tock to do menial tasks such as moving
a pile of sand grain by grain—a metaphor
that rings painfully true for anyone who
has had a day job.
When she started filming, Jayanti was
still managing a photography studio in
Chelsea. “For the first eight months, I
just paid for things, worked nights and
weekends,” she says. Gradually she went
part-time as she realized how much work
The documentary showcases
interview footage with Juster,
Feiffer, Jason Epstein, New
Yorker staff writer Adam
Gopnik, children’s illustrator
Eric Carle, and kids sharing
their enthusiasm for the story.
the movie would entail, and she is now
fully freelance. To raise money for the film,
she turned twice to Kickstarter, the crowdfunding website. Both times, she raised
twice what she was asking for. She liked
that “with Kickstarter, people feel they’re
part of the process, like a mini shareholder
in the film.” It’s a way for artists to connect directly with their audience and vice
versa—readers for whom The Phantom Tollbooth has “tremendous emotional value”
were able to contribute meaningfully to
what they loved.
Still, Jayanti didn’t want to make just a
fan movie. So she explores general themes:
the importance of books in shaping our
worldview, and the decades-long friendship
between Juster and Feiffer, who trade quips
and memories on screen together. Through
them, she hopes viewers who haven’t read
the book will be able to connect to the film.
“You can love these men, and then fall in
love with the book.”
The documentary showcases interview
footage with Juster, Feiffer, Jason Epstein
(the editor at Random House who
published the book), New Yorker staff
26 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014
Hannah Jayanti (SF07) in the field directing.
An illustration by Jules Feiffer from The
Phantom Tollbooth used in Jayanti’s film.
writer Adam Gopnik, children’s illustrator Eric Carle, and kids sharing their
enthusiasm for the story. To break up the
film’s inevitable talking-head nature,
Jayanti commissioned two sequences from
Eleanor Stewart, a Scottish stop-motion
animator. During the opening credits, the
first sequence is accompanied in voiceover
by actor David Hyde Pierce, describing the
book’s creation: Juster and Feiffer lived
up and downstairs in a Brooklyn Heights
brownstone, and would climb the stairs to
share pictures and chapters.
The second sequence brings to life some
of Juster’s philosophy, “which is, essentially, that facts aren’t important in and of
themselves;” it’s “the connections between
them.” Jayanti points out that “everyone in
the Lands Beyond is a specialist.” Words are
a separate kingdom from math, the borders
jealously guarded. Milo’s rescue of Rhyme
and Reason unites the kingdoms and brings
harmony to the Lands Beyond, which can
be read as Juster’s argument for a liberal
arts education. “That’s really what life and
learning is about,” according to him, “making connections with things, not how much
you know or what specifics you know,” says
Jayanti. “Which is quite St. John’s.”
The Phantom Tollbooth: Beyond Expectations
is available on DVD or live streaming at
phantomtollboothdoc.com. More information:
www.facebook.com/TollboothDocumentary
and hannahjayanti.com.
�storytellers
Accidental CEO
When did you realize that you
have a gift for storytelling?
Writer, producer, scholar, film executive–
James Schamus (a81) takes up cycling
Interview by Patricia Dempsey
“
T
here have been a couple of film scholars who wrote scripts, but he’s the only
person in the business I’ve ever seen who said, ‘I can’t go to Cannes because
I’ve got to work on my doctorate,’” notes Variety editor Tim Grey in a New
York Times story ( “The Professor of Micropopularity”). It’s a wonderful
quote about James Schamus (A81), an Oscar-winning collaborator. Brokeback
Mountain, which Schamus produced and Ang Lee directed, won, among other
honors, three Academy Awards, four Golden Globe Awards, and four BAFTA Awards. This
year he stewarded Dallas Buyers Club, which was nominated for six Oscars and won three.
Schamus is a delightfully eclectic, passionate professor in Columbia University’s School
of the Arts, where he teaches film history and theory, an academic whose career as a film
executive is legendary. Many of the films he wrote, produced, and distributed around the
world during his 12-year stint as CEO of Focus Features not only won awards, they broke
barriers. Films such as Lost in Translation and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon have a
captivated a generation of filmgoers. “Think of all the great films you’ve seen in the past 15
years—chances are James Schamus was behind them,” notes The Guardian.
On leave for a year from Columbia, the visionary film executive has traded in funding
frenzies and boardroom politics—everything, it seems, except his bow ties and love of film.
Schamus lives on the Upper West Side with his wife, novelist Nancy Kricorian. He shares a
Manhattan moment with us, taking a break from cycling and the writing life.
Probably when I got away with a
number of bald-faced lies when I
was quite young.
Tell us about working with
award-winning film director
Ang Lee. You wrote and
produced many of his films.
Is he a mentor?
Ang and I are kind of co-mentors. We have come of age, and
have indeed aged, together.
We both have a combination of
ambition on the one hand, and
a kind of childlike interest in
new things we’re ignorant about
and humbled by, on the other
hand. Hence, I suppose, the wide
variety of films [for example,
Brokeback Mountain; Crouching
Tiger, Hidden Dragon; Sense and
Sensibility; The Ice Storm] we’ve
done together.
Is there a favorite film, one that
“sets the standard” for you?
The thing about movies is that
your favorites can be less than
classics and your most-admired
works can be less-than-loved.
And often truly imperfect movies have moments of profound
sublimity and emotion that more
perfectly crafted films can’t
compete with.
PETER BOWEN
You are known for your interest
in films about “outsiders,”
such as films about the West,
the story of America, and
immigrants. Is this still true
today? Examples include films
that you stewarded at Focus
Features, such as Dallas Buyers Club, Brokeback Mountain,
The Pianist, and Milk.
Outsider narratives will always
draw me in at first blush, but
sometimes you find them by going “inside,” too; The Ice Storm
concerns wealthy, privileged
suburbanites, but emotionally I find them all compellingly
outsider-y.
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�storytellers
Give us a glimpse into a “day
in the life.” How do you spend
most of your time?
I’m on leave from Columbia
this year, so my commute is the
1-train to my office in Chelsea,
supplemented by my current addiction to New York’s bike-share
program, an addiction that has
resulted in the saving of hundreds
of dollars in taxi fares and the
burning of thousands of calories.
Since October and my departure
from my former job running
Focus Features, I’ve written two
screenplays (and I am working on
a third), have set up as a producer
of a few movies, and have been
doing my usual compulsive movie
going and reading. (Current
obsession, one embarrassingly
shared with much of New York’s
hipsterdom, is Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle).
How did you come to be CEO
of Focus Features? What skills
did it take to do this job well?
I was an accidental CEO, but
found the work very gratifying,
though the past few years I found
it increasingly difficult to balance
my creative work with the business side of things. What makes a
good CEO? Like teaching, there
are no hard and fast rules—great
teachers tend to mold their methods around their own strengths
and weaknesses. I’d say my own
strengths centered around an
attention to creating an environment of trust and support at the
company, making sure everyone,
from assistants to presidents, felt
secure raising their voices and
safe knowing they had permission
to fail. I made it a point to applaud everyone’s failures, my own
included, as well as our successes.
If you don’t fail, that means you
haven’t risked anything.
At Focus, how did you know
which films—many were “indies”—would be popular at the
box office?
“Outsider narratives will always draw
me in at first blush, but sometimes
you find them by going ‘inside,’ too;
The Ice Storm concerns wealthy,
privileged suburbanites.”
You have successfully financed,
produced, distributed, and
written many major, awardwinning films. Did you ever
consider directing?
No—when you have a choice
between yourself and Ang Lee
to direct your screenplay, whom
would you choose?
In a Guardian (January 2014)
interview, you say that being
a “boy wonder screenwriter”
would not have been a good
thing for you. If not writing,
what aspect of filmmaking is
your passion?
Producing—making things possible for creative people to do
their best work.
Is there a film you saw in
your youth that moved you,
inspired you to write and
produce movies?
No. I loved all films and all kinds
of films—from the trashiest to
the most artsy. As a kid, I was
odd enough to enjoy watching
the Friday night classics line-ups
on my local public television
station. Hard to imagine PBS
actually running D. W. Griffith’s
Intolerance for its full duration!
If you could take one book and
one film with you, marooned on
a deserted island, what would
they be?
A handbook and video on boat
making.
It has been said that films
rather than books are the
dominant storytelling medium
of our century. Do you agree?
Do you enjoy going to the
movies alone? Or is it always
a social occasion? Favorite
theater?
Neither is the dominant form.
The dominant forms of storytelling of our time are the result of
the algorithms which track and
construct our digital identities
and experiences. Every day,
some 300 pieces of data you
generate through your phone,
computer, car, etc., are sold or
bartered, and that data is constantly reconfigured and repackaged to shape what you see, hear,
and interact with. The story of
your life has become a function
of this constant feedback loop
between the data you produce
and the data field constructed
for you as the space you have to
signify and produce more data.
I make it a point to head to the
multiplex at least once a week,
usually by myself, to check out
the latest on offer from the
studios, as well as the trailers
and pre-roll. New York has still,
thankfully, a great range of arthouse screens; I’ll bike to any of
them for the right film.
I didn’t.
28 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014
At the Cannes Film Festival,
did you take to the red carpet?
No. I’m not much of a tuxedo fan.
What, if anything, has changed
in the film business since
you got into filmmaking and
producing?
The complexity of the business
and the corporatization of the
culture.
Any essential differences in
the film industry in Hollywood
as compared to New York?
Yes, there really isn’t a New York
film industry—though there are
very good crews, producers, and
filmmakers who live in New York.
How do you “teach” film? Are
you a film critic as well as a
teacher?
I actually don’t teach film—I teach
film history and theory, and often
teach philosophy and aesthetics.
My undergrad lectures are not
Johnnie-style, but my graduate
seminars—in which we often read
folks such as Plato and Kant—are
run “revolving-chair” style, so
the last person to speak chooses
the next, a habit difficult for nonJohnnies to form. But they get
there after a few weeks.
Any changes with this generation of students—are they
more sophisticated readers
or filmgoers than previous
generations? Are they better
storytellers?
Students today are much more
at home thinking of audiovisual
media as forms of communication rather than as forms of
mystifying entertainment. For
them it’s another language they
can learn.
Any up and coming filmmakers
whose work excites you?
Happily, way too many to list
here. There is an ocean of great
work being done in so many different genres today. It’s dizzying.
Do you wear signature bow
ties in the classroom? Or was
that more as a film executive,
and for black-tie affairs?
Somehow, the whole bow-tie thing
became a schtick, but yes, I do
wear them often when I teach, too.
Tell us something about
yourself that readers may be
surprised to know.
I’m a VERY slow reader.
�storytellers
Love Story
Jeremy Leven (a64):
Writing the Subtext of Our Lives
by Paula Novash
I
n the romantic comedy Don Juan
DeMarco, written and directed
by Jeremy Leven (A64), the title
character declares, “There are
only four questions of value in
life. What is sacred? Of what is
the spirit made? What is worth living for,
and what is worth dying for? The answer
to each is the same: only love.”
It’s a compelling line typical of its author.
Leven is a successful Hollywood screenwriter, director, producer, and bestselling
novelist who infuses his storytelling with
thought-provoking, soulful subtexts.
“Everything I do has a spiritual and
philosophical underpinning,” he says. “I
think that’s true for almost anybody in the
creative arts. We experience some energy
within us that reconstitutes into inspiration and vision, and where does that come
from?” Leven explores this mystery in
modern fables, where the stakes—love,
fortune, and destiny—loom large.
“You try to create dialogue
that reveals the truth of
the moment, so that what
the characters say and do
sounds real.”
Leven’s career spans five decades. His
films, which have taken him to locations
across the U.S. and Europe, include The
Notebook, Don Juan DeMarco, Alex and
Emma, The Legend of Bagger Vance, and
My Sister’s Keeper. He is also the author of
the novels Creator and Satan: His Psychotherapy and Cure by the Unfortunate Dr.
Kassler, J.S.P.S., both of which he adapted
for the screen.
Leven’s early credits include directing
the musical, “The Perils of St. John’s,”
for the Johnnie’s Modern Theater Group—
which he founded and directed—during his
college years. “I always thought I’d begin
Jeremy Leven (A64) discusses a scene on the set
of Don Juan DeMarco with Johnny Depp.
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�storytellers
an Oscar speech with ‘I owe my whole professional life to St. John’s College, where I
learned how to think, write, and read,’” he
says with a smile.
Leven began that professional life as
a Harvard-and-Yale-affiliated clinical
psychologist and neuroscientist. After
the breakout success of Creator, he took a
leave from Yale University Medical School.
Leven realized he was at a crossroads.
He consulted a Yale mentor who told
him, “You will never not write; you are a
writer.” Leven began adapting his novels
for the screen.
“Writing and psychology are both about
problem solving, which is what I like to
do,” Leven says. Both professions also
involve examining the complex behaviors,
emotions, motivations, fears, and desires
that connect us. On film, Leven says, the
magical process of creating a believable
character is collaborative. “You try to create dialogue that reveals the truth of the
moment, so that what the characters say
and do sounds real. It’s like a blueprint,
and hopefully you’re giving the actor
something interesting to work with.”
Another powerful layer is the subtle art
of subtext, infusing what is felt, but not
explicitly stated, into a scene. “In the best
acting, the viewer is seeing two emotions
from the character. For example, say we’ve
set up a story of abuse that reaches back
through generations. A man and his elderly
father are driving by a playground and they
see a child being spanked. The father tears
up and the son, who is driving, reaches out
and places his hand on his shoulder. This
gets that double emotion, as we sense that
the father is saddened by what he did to
his son but is also feeling vulnerable as he
remembers how he was beaten by his own
father. And the son is both comforting his
father for what the father went through
himself, and in doing so, forgiving him.”
When writing a screenplay or adapting
one from a book, how does Leven show the
studio, director, and actors that his script
will make a good film? He says it’s by tapping into the emotions underlying his characters’ actions. “Emotions are what pull us
in—the characters’ vulnerabilities, desires,
and fears. We can relate to them even if the
“Everything I do has a spiritual and philosophical
underpinning. I think that’s true for almost anybody in
the creative arts. We experience some energy within
us that reconstitutes into inspiration and vision, and
where does that come from?”
details of our lives are different from what
the characters are experiencing.”
Leven was reminded of this when he
wrote the screenplay for The Notebook,
adapting the love story from the book
by Nicholas Sparks. “Lots of what’s in
my screenplay isn’t in the book. I added
events and made the characters much
more complex,” he says. “But Nicholas
told me the movie was the closest adaptation he’s seen of any of his books.”
“Emotions can be conveyed powerfully
in film, because you can get in so close and
really focus on tiny facial movements and
gestures,” Leven continues. “It’s completely different on stage, for instance,
where gestures have to be larger than life
to be appreciated by the audience.”
As a Hollywood veteran, Leven has
worked with many A-List actors, from
whom he has learned subtleties of subtext
and dialogue. He tells a story about
Marlon Brando, whom he directed in Don
Juan DeMarco. “I jokingly said something
in an Irish accent and he said, ‘Well, you
know, there’s not just one Irish accent.’”
Leven says Brando proceeded to perform
at least a dozen different roles: “a barkeep,
a farmer, a barrister, a judge, an aristocrat.
And with every one not just the accent, but
his body, muscles, and face changed as he
tapped into the emotion, the essence of
the character. It was riveting, and every
character was someone who will keep me
watching a screen for two hours.”
As a novelist, work is solitary bliss. As
a screenwriter, Leven compromises and
collaborates with directors, actors, and
other writers, changing characters and
plot lines. Even the music, says Leven, is a
character in the film. “For a movie script,
there are specific rules to follow,” he
continues. “One page equals one minute
of screen time, and you have to capture the
30 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014
audience by the 12-minute mark. There’s
a set, three-act structure: You can have
a great idea and a great ending, but you
have to make sure you have enough story
to fill that 60 minutes in the middle.”
And, Leven explains, “You’re writing
with others in mind. A screenplay needs to
show studio executives that the story will
appeal to a wide audience. It needs to give
the director enough information to see
how to make it, and also create characters
that actors will want to play. The fun part
of this is it becomes a scientific process,
a challenge.”
Leven jokes that in Hollywood, studios
look for a “high concept” film—which
refers to a concept so low it can be
expressed in one sentence. “It used to
be that films like One Flew Over the
Cuckoo’s Nest or The Lion in Winter had
more substance dramatically,” he says.
“This doesn’t happen anymore. Executives look to invest $100-200 million and
make billions of dollars.”
Leven’s most recent film, 2013’s Girl
on a Bicycle, (which the New York Times
called a “sweet, often witty romantic
comedy”), is set in Paris. The plot revolves
around a recently engaged tour-bus driver
who dreams about a beautiful woman he
encounters on his route.
One of the movie’s themes is “the imagined life, the life you might lead,” says
Leven. “What is life without dreams? Our
dreams keep us going.” His new novel,
The Savior and the Singing Machine, is
about a young woman who may be a messiah. He’s also working on a stage musical
for his love story, Don Juan DeMarco.
“Love is the greatest emotion, and arguably the one people identify with most,”
he says. “It is probably the most spiritual
thing we can experience.”
�PHOTOS: THOMAS ALLEMAN
storytellers
“There is no limit to what is possible,” says Lee Zlotoff (A74). “We need to get out of the way so our creative process can succeed.”
Whiteboarding
in Malibu
Lee Zlotoff (a74) Taps
the Narrative Power
of the Subconscious
W
by Patricia Dempsey
hat a view.
Some 2,500 feet above the
legendary surf of Malibu, Lee Zlotoff
(A74) is in his living room, scribbling on
a whiteboard. It’s an infinite horizon for
ideas, a place to dream big. He works in
his mountaintop home amid simple inspiration: the folk
art he collects, a studio for building models, and the view—
when the foggy “June-gloom” lifts—of the blue Pacific.
The noted writer, producer, and director often sketches with
colored markers to visualize plot outlines and character and
screenplay ideas. “I do most of my creating on the whiteboard—
not the keyboard. By the time I sit down to write on the computer, the heavy-duty lifting is done. I turn to the computer to flesh
out, say, dialog that I’ve already imagined for the piece.”
Zlotoff, known for his hit television series MacGyver
(launched in 1985), has a new gig: he is writing a book to share
his creative process. It will help everyone—from writers and military officers to entrepreneurs and teachers—to be more effective.
The book, The MacGyver Method, provides a step-by-step process for tapping into the power of the subconscious to solve problems, discover new ideas, and clear the cobwebs of “conscious
interference,” says Zlotoff. “It’s about having an active dialog
with your subconscious; that’s the key, so you can, whenever you
choose, tap into the most effective part of your mind.”
Zlotoff calls the subconscious “the storehouse of our stories.
We are a narrative species; each night we dream, and each of our
dreams is a story. We need these stories. This is why film is so compelling—it connects directly with your subconscious in a way that
books do not. Between the visual images, the music, and the dialog
of a film, your mind is being subtly stimulated on many levels.”
Certain stories endure, he says, because they resonate or connect with deep, internal narratives shared by a large population.
“Ironically—or should I say paradoxically—the more unique and
specific the details of a given story, the more universally it tends
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�storytellers
to be embraced and accepted—as
opposed to the frequent homogenizing that is a hallmark of many
Hollywood films. Some examples
are The Graduate, Star Wars, or
The Godfather series, which are
very specific visions that tap into
the universal narratives of the
search for identity, purpose and
family.” In fact, the great turns in
stories, says Zlotoff, are based on
paradox. “What you don’t expect
happens, but it still makes perfect
sense, like John Nash’s journey in
A Beautiful Mind. You follow the
story, accepting all that you see,
only to realize midway that you’ve
been sharing the delusions of the
main character.”
How does one tap into this power
of stories and the subconscious—
whether making a film, writing
a screenplay, or trying to solve
a business problem? The steps
are simple. To name a few: Write
down the problem. Task the subconscious. Incubation. “We need
to get out of the way so our creative
process can succeed,” says Zlotoff.
To let his ideas incubate, Zlotoff
builds models, a skill acquired
during his high school years at
Brooklyn Tech, working with molten metals and other materials. He is currently
building a World War I trainer plane.
“I like to work with my hands. I started
by making paper models of world monuments: the Empire State Building, the Taj
Mahal, the Vatican, whatever I could find
a kit for,” he explains. “I then progressed
to wood models of ships and planes, as
model building proved the best ‘incubation
activity’ for my creative process.” Zlotoff
describes how it helped him develop a
character’s narrative story in The Spitfire
Grill feature film script. “Whenever I
would return from model building, I kept
seeing this man hiding behind a tree,
watching the main character, who was
a young woman. I made a note of it but,
having no clue who this man was, I put
it aside. He continued to reappear when
I worked on the story, so I realized I had
to figure out who this guy was, and why
he was there. Eventually he became an
who now directs a preschool in
Los Angeles. (They are divorced,
with four children and four grandchildren).
Zlotoff got his start as a screenwriter in the mid-1970s in New
York City as a secretary on a soap
opera, The Doctors. He told the
producer that he could write a better show, and gave him Disasters
in the Sun, a sample script. “You
have to be gutsy to survive—it’s
a rough business,” says Zlotoff.
“He liked the script and I became
a soap opera writer.” Zlotoff’s
speed as a writer was invaluable.
“I could create an okay script in
10 days. My speed, in part, fueled
my meteoric rise from freelance
writer to story editor to being approved to write pilots.”
Later came MacGyver.
Although CBS/Paramount still
retains the rights to the original
series, all the “so-called separated
rights reverted back to me,” says
Zlotoff. But those 139 episodes
of the original show continue to
run all over the world. In some
places, MacGyver is a household
word. “In Korea,” Zlotoff notes,
“a pocket knife—any kind of knife
that one carries—is called a ‘MacGyver.’”
Zlotoff sees MacGyver as “Johnnie perfection. He takes a Johnnie approach of thinking across disciplines to solve problems.”
The character merges an “ability to think
outside the box, as we’re encouraged to do
at St. John’s,” with “my technical exposure
from Brooklyn Tech.” Zlotoff also attributes a good part of Mac’s character to his
father—“certainly the Swiss Army Knife.”
Currently Zlotoff is in discussions with
several publishers for his book, The MacGyver Method. MacGyver walks its pages,
sharing Zlotoff’s step-by-step method for
creating—and living. Zlotoff is also developing a feature film about MacGyver. “I don’t
usually quote Yoda,” says Zlotoff, “but
Yoda did say, ‘There is do or do not. There
is no try.’ You must believe you can do it,
that there is no limit to what is possible.”
“Whenever I would return from model
building, I kept seeing this man hiding
behind a tree, watching the main
character, who was a young woman.”
integral part of the final story. Clearly,
something in my subconscious was telling
me I needed this figure.”
To give voice to his creative method,
Zlotoff draws not only on his ability to visualize on a whiteboard; he uses his well-known
character, MacGyver, a pragmatic, can-do
Boy Scout of a cop who sports a Swiss Army
knife and a blonde mullet. Through “Mac,”
Zlotoff has found a voice. The fictional MacGyver is rooted in Zlotoff’s own experiences.
“He is non-violent, resourceful. MacGyver’s
world,” says Zlotoff, “is ‘you take what
you got, turn it into what you think you
need, not what you want.’ He has a sense
of honor, humor, and humility. MacGyver
uses a Swiss Army knife for everything.”
Zlotoff , whose name means “gold” in
Russian, is as enterprising as MacGyver.
His flair for business emerged as an undergraduate, living on Maryland Avenue, and
running a contracting company with David
Huston (A74). He married Rebecca Ann
Soloff (A74), his high school sweetheart,
32 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014
More information: www.macgyvermethod.
com and www.macgyverglobal.com.
�storytellers
Toile Tales
Richard Saja’s (sf93) Whimsical Threads
A
by Paula Novash
JOHN EMERSON PHOTOGRAPHY
t first glance, the textile art in a wooden frame appears to portray
a scene from classical mythology. A cupid sits atop a rearing
steed, and a young maiden in a long gown makes an offering to
a reclining figure wearing a crown. The group is surrounded
by colorful bunches of grapes, lush foliage, and stylized birds,
embroidered on a background of pale linen.
When you look closer, another layer of complexity appears: the figures are
stitched in metallic and glow-in-the-dark threads. The crown is actually a blackand-blue Mohawk, the witnesses include a rabbit, and the fluffy-haired maiden is
holding not wine or sacred fruit, but a box that looks a little like a birthday cake,
emanating spiky rays. Its title? “Behold: ELECTRICITY!”
Richard Saja (SF93) savors irreverent twists in a modern retelling of traditional stories.
This creation is typical of textile artist
Richard Saja (SF93), who gives centuriesold fabric patterns a modern sensibility by
infusing them with fanciful style, a touch of
mystery, and most of all, a sense of humor.
Saja embellishes traditional toile fabrics
(think Colonial Williamsburg) with whimsical embroidery, creating delightfully
offbeat stories that celebrate the quirkiness
of everyday living while exploring themes
such as tolerance and acceptance.
“Toile is similar to a coloring book in
that it’s begging to be enhanced,” Saja
explains. “What I do is draw out a story
with my embroidery, embellishing so you
can see yet another narrative.” It’s reminiscent of what a fool or joker in medieval
times might do, revealing a greater truth
within a cheeky, irreverent presentation.
The word “toile” means cloth, and the
fabric most often replicates traditional
French designs that depict pastoral scenes
in a repeating pattern, using a single color
on a light background. What Saja does
with his needle, he says, is create a sort
of “playful subversion to toile’s traditional role, where everything blends and
has equal weight. By giving attention to
some element and making it special and
individual, I’m taking something old and
making it relevant again.”
Saja grew up in the Jersey Shore town
of Point Pleasant, where he felt out of
step with many of his peers. Navigating
“summer crowds and deserted boardwalk in winter,” he was “kind of a weird
and imaginative kid,” Saja says. “I was
constantly making things, like dioramas of
haunted houses and superhero costumes.”
He was also an avid reader, whose
favorite books featured kids who had “to
fend for themselves, like My Side of the
Mountain or From The Mixed Up Files of
Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler.”
The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 |
33
�storytellers
COURTESY RICHARD SAJA
“It’s not my intention to tell someone what to think about
it. People see my art all at once, like a painting, but then
it can unfold more like a book or film, depending on
the viewer. My work appeals to many types of people
because it can be interpreted on many different levels.”
At that time, there was little “awareness
about tolerance and acceptance, or the
impact of bullying,” he continues. “So I
came to identify with the marginalized,
misunderstood monster types from old
movies and comic books.” In Saja’s works,
unusual characters often interact seamlessly with conventional ones; in “Scenes
from a Marriage,” for example, an alluring masked woman in a ball gown holds
the hand of a gentle green, fur-covered
creature as they dance the minuet.
“A monstrosity is added to something
bucolic, and it can co-exist and be accepted within that framework,” Saja explains.
“It celebrates difference; the freaks are
recognized, accepted, and affirmed.”
Saja moved to New Mexico after high
school and created ceramic art before
enrolling at St. John’s Santa Fe campus.
After completing his degree, he worked
as an art director in a Madison Avenue
advertising agency. Then, laid off during
the dot-com bust, he started a decorative
arts business with fellow Johnnie Martha
Alexander. While working on a design
project for cushions, Saja recalls, he woke
from a dream picturing Maori facial tattoos embroidered onto figures in toile. A
self-taught artist, he soon realized that
embroidery was “a natural outlet for my
overall fastidiousness, and I fortunately
have some innate talent for it.”
Saja says an endless number of
tales exist within every toile; his
interpretation is only one among many.
“I usually have some general idea in mind
when I begin a piece. For example, I liked
the idea of using candy colors, which
then became “Dionysos in Candyland.”
34 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014
(See it at http://historically-inaccurate.
blogspot.com.)
“But then it evolves organically,” he
continues, “It’s not my intention to tell
someone what to think about it. People
see my art all at once, like a painting, but
then it can unfold more like a book or film,
depending on the viewer. My work appeals
to many types of people because it can be
interpreted on many different levels.”
In a hard-edged, high-tech world,
people seem to appreciate the time and
energy that goes into his creations. “There
are no shortcuts; these are labor-intensive
projects that need care and love to bring
them to life,” Saja says. “I will probably
never have copycats because it takes too
long to do this kind of work well.”
Creating his art is contemplative, even
meditative, says Saja. He often embroiders
to documentaries, which serve as a sort of
“white noise” to his creative process. “I’ll
turn on something about apes or Egypt—
it’s learning while doing.”
Saja’s art constantly surprises him.
“There’s a magic that comes through
in some pieces that I couldn’t possibly
plan for, where the stitching is imbued
with emotion,” he explains. “When I was
young, I was different. That was oppressive. Now being different has become a
positive for me, with external affirmation
coming from many quarters. My design vocabulary is conveying a message of acceptance and hope, and I love that emotion
can be conveyed through my embroidery
and shared and felt by the viewer.”
Saja’s art has been featured in outlets
such as the New York Times and Vogue. It
is displayed in museum and private collections around the world. He has partnered
with designers that include Mother of
Pearl, Opening Ceremony, Keds, and
Christian Lacroix. Examples of his art are
currently on display at the SnydermanWorks Gallery in Philadelphia.
SEEKING WOMEN IN FILM
If you are a Johnnie, a female,
and working in the film industry,
please share your stories with
The College.
�storytellers
Swerve: Walk on the Wild Side
From Sci-fi Animation to Live-action Drama and a
Rocker Documentary, Geoff Marslett (sf96) Hops
By Anna Perleberg Andersen (SF02)
I
LAUREN MODERY, SWERVE PICTURES
“
like delving into things, at least for a little while, and storing them for later on,”
says indie filmmaker Geoff Marslett (SF96). This intellectual restlessness drives
his art: he has written, produced, and directed short films both animated and liveaction, including the first video for cartoonist/musician James Kochalka’s epic
ditty, “Monkey vs. Robot” (sadly, no longer available to watch online). His production company, Swerve Pictures (yes, it’s a Lucretius reference), has made two very
different feature films, Mars (2010) and Loves Her Gun (2013). Lately, he has directed trailers and even acted in a few films—he enjoys providing just a little of other people’s stories.
Off-camera, he teaches at the University of Texas at Austin, having earned an MFA in film
production there in December 2000.
Mars is an animated sci-fi
romantic comedy that Marslett
wrote and directed. He also had
a hand in editing and producing, as well as leading the arduous process of animation. For
the film’s unique look, Marslett
wrote a computer program that
reduced images of actors in
front of a green screen to between 16 and 64 colors, then
into vectors—scalable graphics
defined not by the position of
pixels but by the mathematical
curves that make up the image.
Marslett’s math background
came in handy; while at St.
John’s, he studied theoretical
physics and differential equations on the side, and pursued
an associate’s degree in math
during a few summers.
Processed through this
program, Marslett explains,
footage acquires “weird,
drifty color palettes” similar
to traditional rotoscoping,
where an animator draws over
film footage. Marslett and his
team used this technique for
features like eyes and mouths
that they wanted to look more
polished. All the backgrounds
were CGI-generated. Creating these composite images
took years to accomplish,
with five animators working
nearly nonstop in a kind of
artistic delirium. In 2007 and
2008, the terabytes of space
required to store the images
were “expensive and ridiculous,” says Marslett. Now a
four-terabyte drive is $150 on
Amazon. Techne moves ever
more rapidly.
The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 |
35
�storytellers
LAUREN MODERY, SWERVE PICTURES
Independent Film Festival,
along with many others. Loves
Her Gun has won accolades
from the Los Angeles Review of
Books and Indiewire. Marslett
thinks Mars will have more longevity, despite the film world’s
snobbery about animated films.
Marslett estimates that making
an animated film takes roughly
ten times as much work as
a live-action movie, yet the
festival circuit often takes an
“aw, it’s almost like you made
a real film” attitude toward
them. As a filmmaker outside
the New York-Los Angeles axis,
he’s happy with modest success, with “doing something
because I like doing it,” even if
it doesn’t pay well—yet.
Marslett’s new feature project is, as one
would expect, entirely different from
those that preceded it: a documentary on
“costume rockers,” bands with a shtick to
their outfits or songs that occupy a “strange
place between music and theater.”
The final result of all this labor
is stunning. Part dream, part
comic book, part solid reality,
it’s a perfect visual complement to a story of space
exploration and romance,
two human endeavors that
Marslett feels have much in
common. “As soon as you
talk to [a person who catches
your eye], you change her, she
changes you—neither of you
is really the same as what you
saw across the room. That’s
always completely unattainable.” Exploring a new country
is the same, he says: “The
minute you get there, you’re
slightly different, the country’s
slightly different. Going to
Mars is the same way.”
Marslett is always looking for
different ways to tell stories.
“I’m gonna call it a strength,”
he asserts. “Some people
call it a problem.” So where
Mars was “very much about
construct, very controlled,”
Loves Her Gun takes a nearly
opposite approach. A liveaction drama shot on location in Greenpoint, Brooklyn,
and Austin, it’s the story of
a woman who flees the city
after being mugged and finds
herself caught up in Texas
gun culture, struggling to find
an emotional middle ground
between safety and paranoia.
Marslett and his co-writers,
Laura Modery and Geoff Lerer,
36 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014
above left: Geoff Marslett (SF96)
talks barbeque and film at an
Austin eatery. above: Frames from
Marslett’s animated film, Mars.
scripted the action of every
scene tightly, but wrote no
dialogue. The actors improvised every word, which was
“probably terrifying,” says
Marslett, but results in a naturalistic rhythm not often found
in film. Hesitations, misspoken
words, and filler syllables are
all intact. This approach to
storytelling—obviously far from
the constraint of the multi-step
animation in Mars—adds to
the tale’s gritty, bleak nature.
Even in the trailer, it’s eerie
and effective.
Both movies have had some
success at film festivals like
Austin’s own SXSW. Loves Her
Gun won the Louis Black Lone
Star award in 2013, an unexpected achievement. (Marslett
almost skipped the award ceremony.) In addition, Mars has
shown at BAMCinemaFest in
Brooklyn, the BFI London Film
Festival, and the San Francisco
Marslett’s new feature project
is, as one would expect, entirely different from those that
preceded it: a documentary
on “costume rockers,” bands
with a shtick to their outfits or
songs that occupy a “strange
place between music and
theater.” He knows that place
well, since he plays accordion
in a band that performs songs
inspired by The Karate Kid,
while wearing prosthetic arms
and legs frozen in permanent
crane-kick position. (One of
the bands on his radar is The
Pizza Underground, a Velvet
Underground cover band that
sings songs like “I’m Beginning to Eat the Slice” and
“Papa John Says”; it consists
of four of his friends and Macaulay Culkin. Really.) There is
no firm date for the documentary’s completion, but it’s sure
to be quirky and thoughtful,
like Marslett himself.
Learn more about Geoff
Marslett’s (SF96) filmmaking:
www.swervepictures.com
�storytellers
Pursuing a Dream
Nashville’s Music Row Sets
the Stage for Mike Lacy (a12)
B
by Gregory Shook
It’s such a moment that motivates Lacy to
pursue his longtime dream of a career in
film. After graduating from St. John’s in
2012, he moved to Nashville to be part of
what he calls the city’s “developing industry with a thriving freelance community.”
A year later, he launched his own freelance
company, Prometheoid Films, creating
music videos, short films, and multi-media
projects. At age 24, he can practically do
it all—act, direct, produce, and edit. Lacy’s
industrious nature is the main ingredient
for his success. “I spent a lot of last week
uploading 160 hours of footage for a Jimi
Hendrix documentary,” he says. “On the
weekend, I was second camera on a music
video shoot. We shot overnight in this
motorcycle shop from 8 p.m. to 5 a.m. It’s
nerve-wracking to think about making a
creative life for myself, but it’s something
I’ve been passionate about since I was
about 12 years old.”
Lacy’s first music video with his company is for the 2013 single “Not So Much
Anymore” by David Berg, an acclaimed
songwriter who has worked with country
music luminaries Kenny Chesney, Carrie
Underwood, and Keith Urban, and has
penned chart-topping hit songs for Reba
McEntire and others. The video centers on
a young woman in anguish over a troubled
romantic relationship, who finds comfort
in her circle of friends. “I had a vision for
the video, but I wasn’t making a good elevator pitch,” says Lacy, who says that the
project almost didn’t happen. “I finally
“A hard thing for me,
as someone who likes
storytelling, is that music
videos are not about
telling a story as such.”
said [to Berg], ‘Look, I don’t know how to
explain my [idea], but this [video] is something that is really important to me.’”
Music has always been close to Lacy’s
heart. In high school, he played guitar and
keyboards with his band, The Shel Silversteins, and absorbed a steady diet of MTV
and VH1. Today, he admits that making
a music video is among his greatest challenges. “A hard thing for me, as someone
who likes storytelling, is that music videos
are not about telling a story as such,” says
Lacy. “There may be a beginning, middle,
and end, but it’s not always clear whether
there’s a protagonist and a clearly stated
conflict.” Being a Johnnie, Lacy views
ambiguity as an opportunity to explore,
learn, and be creative. In a music video, he
wants to elevate the song, using images to
elicit emotion and bring out fresh, sometimes unexpected elements of the music.
“A good video conveys something that
cannot, or maybe should not, be put into
words,” says Lacy, who typically avoids
literal visual interpretations of a song.
“If the lyrics are about the Los Angeles
skyline, you don’t want to show images of
JOSH ANDERSON
arely a decade after making his first film, Mike Lacy’s (A12) work
appeared on the silver screen—and took him by surprise. Alone at the
movies, Lacy watched in amazement as the 2011 PSA for the Tennessee Department of Mental Health, in which he had acted and helped
to produce, rolled with the commercials. He announced to everyone
in the theater, “I made that. That was me playing the drug dealer.”
the L.A. skyline.”
During his sophomore year at St.
John’s, Lacy experienced an existential
dilemma that ultimately led to a fateful discovery. “I was conflicted because
here I was learning ancient Greek and
astronomy,” says Lacy. “I thought, ‘What
am I doing with my life? Is this really my
passion?’” He found his answer in books
by renowned film editor Walter Murch,
whose résumé includes The Godfather,
The English Patient, Cold Mountain,
and The Unbearable Lightness of Being.
Lacy discovered that classical literature is
woven into Murch’s work; he once edited a
film scene inspired by a canto from Dante
and used Kepler’s harmonic theory to figure out how to interplay music with edits.
The summer before his junior year,
Lacy sought out the film editor at his San
Francisco home. “I looked him up on the
Internet and wrote him an e-mail,” says
Lacy. A few weeks later, he was in Murch’s
kitchen, where the like-minded souls
talked for hours about the role of music in
the lives of human beings and the ways that
classical thought can be applied in modern
films. “We sometimes draw a line between
classical learning and modern day, making
them seem at odds,” says Lacy. “But there
are people like Murch, who are in love with
creating things for modern audiences and
don’t think it’s such a harsh dichotomy. I
find that inspiring.”
Learn more about Mike Lacy (A12):
prometheoidspeaks.wordpress.com
The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 |
37
�A Vision Becomes a View
by Sus3an Borden (A87)
38 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014
�For 50 years, students and tutors in
Santa Fe have been inspired by the view
of neighboring mountain Atalaya and
the tantalizing snow on the Santa Fe Ski
Basin as they read, write, meet, study,
and socialize in the campus coffee shop.
This vista, it turns out, is not a lucky
accident, according to Charles “Chuck”
Nelson (Class of 1945), a former member
of the Board of Visitors and Governors.
It is part of the earliest vision of the
campus. Nelson recalls a day in 1962
when John Gaw Meem drove him and
other board members to the site of what
would be the Santa Fe campus:
The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 |
39
�“He showed us where he thought the main
buildings would be put and I remember him
describing to us where the dining hall would be
[and saying that] there would be large windows
with panoramic views of the mountains while
you’re sitting there having your lunch.... That, of
course, all came out as he indicated it would.”
This experience of a vision realized is a theme
often repeated when people talk about the
founding and history of the Santa Fe campus.
It’s a theme that tutor Claudia Hauer is capturing and preserving as she works on an oral history project in celebration of the 50th anniversary
of the founding of the Santa Fe campus.
Hauer had just returned from a leave of absence in October 2012 when Santa Fe Vice President Victoria Mora mentioned that she was planWilliam Darkey (Class of 1942)
ning to start an oral history project interviewing
Santa Fe’s founders. Hauer,
who has a long-standing
“He [Weigle] was passionate about
interest in creative nonfiction, told Mora to sign her
liberal education in the St. John’s
up for the project.
way and he just thought it should
Hauer began the project
that December with interbe offered to more people. When
views of the people who
we couldn’t accommodate as many
were present at the founding, including Nelson and
students as wanted to come in
[Annapolis], that’s when he wanted to former board member Bud
Kelly (H02). She then spoke
come out and start this new college.”
with all of the living former deans and presidents,
— Tom Slakey, tutor emeritus and
former dean, Annapolis
along with tutors who
were either present at the
campus’s opening in 1964
or came to the campus in the following three
years. She expanded the project to include
board members, campus benefactors, the current dean and president, and a few alumni.
“What we’ve got is a treasure trove of memories and reflections,” says Hauer. “The goal for
the 50th anniversary is to disseminate these
recordings as much as we can. But the database
will stay with the college after the celebration as
an archive we can use to remember our history.”
The treasures she has collected include tutor
Clementine Peterson (H88)
Roger Peterson (H94) and former buildings and
grounds journeyman Johnny Zamora reflecting
on the campus’s early culture of pranks, tutor Ray
Davis discussing the summer senior program,
40 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014
and tutor and former assistant dean Don Cook
(H97) talking about riding his horse to and from
the campus: “I can remember times I would ride
home after seminar. It was a nine-mile ride each
way, and I would go out and saddle my horse and
go home in the complete dark down the arroyo
behind school. That was before any houses were
back there. I remember the sense of solitude, and
it made me think about the west and how people
were alone for long periods of time. I remember
the ice cracking under the horse’s hooves, just
that one sound going down the arroyo. I remember feeling the isolation and how welcoming it
was to come up over the hill about three or four
miles down and see lights and [thinking about]
what that must have meant to people who were
out here in places like Arizona and New Mexico,
to be weeks by themselves and then to come
upon a campfire or some other sign of human
life. I got quite a bit out of those rides back and
forth to school.”
Richard Weigle’s vision is another common
theme in the oral histories. It reveals itself in
the campus’s history through the visionary endeavors of those who sought not to recreate the
Annapolis campus out west, but to create a St.
John’s College of their own.
Hauer describes the work of the founders and
early tutors: “That core group brought incredible passion to building this campus. They felt
that the more they put into it, the more they
could get out of it. The founding faculty in Santa
Fe drew their inspiration from Dick Weigle’s vision of multiple campuses of St. John’s.”
Tom Slakey (H94), tutor emeritus and former
dean of the Annapolis campus, recalls Weigle’s
commitment to the Program: “He was passionate about liberal education in the St. John’s way,
and he just thought it should be offered to more
people. When we couldn’t accommodate as
many students as wanted to come in [Annapolis], that’s when he wanted to come out and
start this new college.”
�Hauer’s interviews capture this passion and include stories of how Santa Fe tutors reworked junior math, developed the biology and chemistry
sequences in lab, and had the Evans Science Laboratory built with private lab spaces for students
to pursue independent research. Stories from later years show how the Santa Fe faculty continued
to innovate, creating the Graduate Institute and
later its Eastern Classics program, Summer Classics for the community, and the art program that
was on the curriculum from 1990 to 2003.
In his interview, Warren Winiarski (Class
of 1952) and founder of Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars, draws Hauer’s attention to the carvings in
the beams in the new Winiarski Center, which
“I can remember times I would ride home after
seminar. It was a nine-mile ride each way and I
would go out and saddle my horse and go home
in the complete dark down the arroyo behind
school….I remember the ice cracking under the
horse’s hooves....the sense of solitude...and how
welcoming it was to come up over the hill about
three or four miles down and see the lights….”
— Don Cook (H97), tutor and former assistant dean
CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT:
Richard Weigle, president
and founder of the Santa
Fe campus, realizes his
vision (photo circa 1961).
The finial, detailed
with books, placed atop
Weigle Hall (opened
in 1971 and named
for Weigle in 1973). In
the early years of the
campus, some students
rode horses to seminar.
depict animals that undergo a metamorphosis:
frogs from tadpoles, butterflies from moths,
dragonflies from larvae. While the carvings reflect the transformative effects of a St. John’s
education, Hauer notes that the view from the
Center, like the view from the dining hall, also
matches the transformative spirit of the Santa
Fe founders. “The view is meant to show the
skyline and the hills behind, which is an aspirational vision that you see with that background
of hills reaching up and pointing toward heaven,” Warren explains. “It’s a kind of American
Indian vision, which I believe is meant to suggest reaching upward beyond yourself to what is
above and beyond.”
Alumni are invited to participate in the oral history
project; please contact: SantaFe.alumni@sjc.edu).
The College magazine will celebrate Santa Fe’s
50th in the next issue; if you are from one of the
early classes (1960s-70s) and wish to share a story
please email: TheCollegeMagazine@sjc.edu.
The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 |
41
�bibliofile
Johanna Omelia (SFGI03)
Michael Waldock (SFGI03):
Come Fly With Us!
Celebrating a decade
since its original
date of publication,
Come Fly With Us! A
Global History of the
Airline Hostess: Tenth
Anniversary Edition
(Ailemo Books, 2013)
provides a colorful
history of the airline
hostess in “an industry
started by a woman for
women,” according to its
authors Johanna Omelia
(SFGI03) and Michael
Waldock (SFGI03). Beautifully illustrated
with more than 200 images of commercial
airline advertisements and archival photos, this
expanded edition documents the industry’s
83-year history, during which flight attendants
have been the face of the airline companies.
The book explores the social, economic, and
political trends that have affected the role of
the airline hostess as well as the public’s ever
changing perception of sky travel. In addition,
the book features flight attendants’ stories
about the early days of aviation.
Come Fly With Us! traces the profession’s
origin to 1930, when a young Iowan named
Ellen Church convinced an airline executive to
hire her, thus becoming the world’s first airline
hostess. In the 1930s, Church and seven other
stewardesses—known as the Original Eight—
represented United Airlines and established the
foundation of passenger care and safety standards. They were registered nurses whose duties
included repairing loose seats, loading baggage,
soothing nervous passengers, and even touching up paint on planes.
For the next two decades, flight attendants
were cabin safety professionals, thoroughly
trained in safety procedures. In the 1950s,
they were viewed as the “perfect wife,”
celebrated in the media for being “as adept at
warming a baby’s bottle as mixing a martini.”
The Swinging Sixties and Groovy Seventies
saw flight attendants as sex symbols, marketed
to lure passengers aloft. Come Fly With
42 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014
Us! shows how uniforms played an integral
part in this image, incorporating stylish
and innovative elements that reflected high
fashion as well as evolving social mores. This
expanded edition highlights “even more
coverage of the 1960s, when, astoundingly,
women wore hot pants and short (flammable)
paper dresses,” says Omelia. Waldock’s
interest in flight attendants began in this
decade, when he first came to California from
England. “When he changed planes, the
stewardess kissed him,” says Omelia. “I was
never kissed by a flight attendant, but I think
the history of working women around the
Boeing’s 747 elevated the
status of air travel; passengers
could book tables for dinner,
view in-flight movies, and
gather around a piano for a
song or two—in Coach!
world over the decades is fascinating.”
As the book points out, the advent of the
first “jumbo jet,” Boeing’s 747, elevated the
status of air travel; passengers could book
tables for dinner, view in-flight movies, and
gather around a piano for a song or two—in
Coach! However, in 1978 the airline industry
was deregulated, resulting in an influx of new
carriers, furious competition, the collapse of
some established companies, and, ultimately,
decreased legroom and in-flight amenities
that remains the standard today.
In January 2014, Omelia and Waldock
launched the online publication, Come Fly
With Us Magazine. The premier issue features
articles on 1970s Hawaiian Airlines fashion,
travel in Iceland, and more. Read the magazine
at www.comeflywithusmagazine.com.
—Gregory Shook
�bibliofile
Anne Leonard (A89) and John C. Wright (A84):
Storytelling and Sensawunda
When it comes to storytelling that involves
princes, dragons, and sorcery, “avoiding
stereotypes is a challenge,” says Anne Leonard
(A89), a lawyer-turned-writer who lives in
Northern California. To keep it fresh, Leonard
infuses her debut novel Moth and Spark
(Viking Books, 2014), with colorful details
from her life. “The book has an entire chapter
that takes place at a ball, which is influenced
by St. John’s waltz parties in Annapolis,” says
Leonard. Fantasy devotees and readers beyond
her intended demographic can appreciate the
novel’s nuanced characters and panoramic
prose. “[Moth and Spark] was written as a
love story for a niche audience: teenage girls
and young women,” says Leonard. “But I’ve
been thrilled and amazed by the response from
middle-aged guys!”
In her book, a young prince, Corin, and
Tam, a doctor’s daughter, are torn between
Corin’s quest to free dragons from an evil
“I get my ideas from the subconscious
mind, the persistence, the work—and
the muse Sensawunda.”
Science fiction author John C. Wright’s
(A84) highly-anticipated Judge of Ages (Tor
Books, 2014) is a space opera for the ages. In
this third volume in his Count to the Eschaton
Sequence, Wright says that science fiction’s
hallmarks of “the gigantic, the over-the-top,
with extreme villains and lots of action”
are abundant. “The term space opera is a
little tongue-in-cheek. Being a St. John’s
graduate, I write philosophy, deep thought,
and other abstract theory into my stories. But
entertainment is the first priority. I want to
beguile on an idle afternoon.”
Set in the year AD 10,515, the novel centers
on two adversaries who endeavor—each in
their own different ways—to thwart an alien
threat, the Hyadas Armada, headed to Earth
to assess humanity’s value as slaves. In Judge
of Ages, opposing leaders Ximen del Azarchel
and Menelaus Montrose ultimately converge
in a climactic battle, replete with hi-tech
weaponry and cliometric calculus, for the
Empire and their mission to save their country
on the brink of battle. Leonard embraces
fantasy’s most compelling elements:
intrigue, magic, war, and forbidden romance.
“Conventions put a [story] structure in
place,” says Leonard, an avid reader of fantasy
fiction. She also looks beyond fantasy for
inspiration, observing authors such as Jane
Austen, Charlotte Brontë, and W. B. Yeats to
create archetypal and distinctive characters.
“I try to put my own twist on the fantasy
genre,” says Leonard, who models her novel’s
heroine on Elizabeth Bennet, the protagonist
of Pride and Prejudice. Leonard also gives a
nod to contemporary best-selling works such
as The Hunger Games and the Twilight saga;
there is a heated romantic tension between
Prince Corin and Tam, Moth and Spark’s
dual protagonists. “I wrote this book for my
15-year-old self,” says Leonard. “I always liked
making up characters.”
fate of the planet
and its human
inhabitants.
At its core,
the story is
conventional
science fiction,
riffing from
legendary
authors such as
Isaac Asimov,
widely regarded
as a master of science-fiction storytelling.
“On some level, though, my attitude and
personality come through,” says Wright. “I
get my ideas from the subconscious mind,
the persistence, the work—and the muse
Sensawunda.” Sensawunda, or “sense of
wonder,” is one of science fiction’s defining
characteristics. “The sense of wonder of
science fiction differs from other natural
wonders or personal miracles in a man’s life—
the wonders of first love, or childbirth, and so
on,” says Wright. “Science fiction concerns
only those specific wonders that are not
eternal and not known to all men.”
—Gregory Shook
The College || st.john’s college || spring 2014 |
The College st. john’s college summer 2013
43
�bibliofile
Bliss
By Hilary Fields (SF97)
Redhook Orbit (Hachette Book Group), 2013
Santa Fe-based writer Hilary Fields (SF97)
wrote her first novel at age 16 and later penned
three historical romances under another name;
today she continues the bliss of reading and
wordplay. A voracious reader since childhood,
Fields cites Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings and
Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the
Galaxy as her all-time favorites. Set in the
City Different, her new novel, Bliss, centers on
Moonlight Sonata at the Mayo Clinic
By Nora Gallagher (SF70)
Alfred A. Knopf, 2013
Anyone who has experienced a baffling illness or
struggled to have a health condition diagnosed
may well empathize with Nora Gallagher’s
(SF70) journey recounted in her new memoir,
Moonlight Sonata at the Mayo Clinic. A
preacher-in-residence at Trinity Episcopal
Church in her hometown of Santa Barbara,
California, Gallagher begins her quest in 2009,
when a routine eye exam reveals an inflamed
optic nerve, a mysterious condition called
optic neuritis. The cause is unknown, and if
left untreated, it can lead to total vision loss.
Plato’s Laws:
Force and Truth in Politics
Edited by Gregory Recco and Eric Sanday
Indiana University Press, 2013
For this collection of 14 interpretive essays by
as many authors, editors Gregory Recco, an
Annapolis tutor, and Eric Sanday, an assistant
professor of philosophy at the University of
Kentucky, organized a team of scholars. Due
to its length and density, this work of Plato’s
is not as well studied as the others. This
volume looks at all the individual books of the
dialogue and reflects on the work as a whole.
Rather than provide interpretation of every
44 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014
Serafina Wilde, a pastry chef whose seemingly
perfect life begins to unravel. Her eccentric
Aunt Pauline comes to the rescue when she
offers to let her take over the family business,
“Pauline’s House of Passion,” and turn it into a
bakery, so long as she retains the shop’s “adult
store” in the back room. Throughout the novel,
Fields makes clear her love of baking; the
book is chock-full of sumptuous descriptions
of gooey pastries and other delectable baked
goods. But food is secondary to the novel’s
exploration into matters of the heart: finding
courage, friendship, family, and self-discovery.
Gallagher set off on a yearlong search to find
a diagnosis and treatment for her mysterious
condition. A meditation on faith, spirituality,
and vulnerability, the memoir is structured
in three sections—“Drowning,” “Limbo,”
and “Recalled to Life”—each chronicling
significant phases of her pilgrimage. Devoid
of sentimentality, she candidly describes her
encounters with the marvels and madness of
the modern medical system and illuminates
the sometimes dark path that ultimately leads
her to the renowned Mayo Clinic in Rochester,
Minnesota, a place built for those seeking
answers and cures. “It’s the nature of things to
be vulnerable,” says Gallagher. “The disorder is
imagining we are not.”
detail, the contributing authors explore the
facets of the text that they found to be most
interesting and rich. In addition, they read
drafts of each other’s essays and, in some
cases, included responses to other essays
within their own compositions. Although its
contributors come from different backgrounds
and concentrations, this collection has a
sense of connectedness throughout. Both
newcomers and veterans of the Laws can
discover fresh and valuable insight into Plato’s
work, reminding us of its relevance today.
—Erin Fitzpatrick (A14)
�alumni notes
1946
Peter J. Davies, Class of 1948,
writes, “Peter Weiss (A) was
honored on April 2, 2014, at a
reception following a forum on
Law’s Imperative: A World Free of
Nuclear Weapons, which examined
the current state of the law on
nuclear weapons and what needs
to be done to bring the obligation
to fruition. The event recognized
Weiss’s contribution to nuclear
disarmament and the rule of law,
and raised funds for the future
work of the Lawyers Committee on
Nuclear Policy (LCNP), which he
co-founded in 1981. He retired in
2013 as president, having served
in that position since its founding.
Weiss and LCNP played a key role
in the 1996 advisory opinion of the
International Court of Justice at the
Hague, which held unanimously
that ‘there exists an obligation to
negotiate in good faith for the total
abolition of nuclear weapons.’”
1952
A Contemplative Life
Pierre Grimes (A) reflects: “In 1948, my freshman year, I discovered in Plato’s Parmenides the roots of a profound metaphysics. In his Republic, I found the primary role of dreams,
dialectic, and contemplation. Clearly, with the Dark Ages we lost
that legacy.” In 1961, while earning his PhD from the University
of the Pacific’s graduate school, the American Academy of Asian
Studies, Grimes studied the Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna,
and, with Zen, contemplation. The publication of Grimes’s 1961
study of the Alcibiades dialogue in Yale Journal, QJSA, marked
the beginning of his “philosophical counseling,” says Grimes,
“as philosophical midwifery. Later, as the founder of the international philosophical movement, American Philosophical Practitioners Association, I have given more than 20 demonstrations
and papers at international conferences held at the University
of Liverpool, Oxford University, the University of Athens, the
University of Vancouver, and the University of Ontario. In 1978,
I founded the Noetic Society, Inc., for the Study of Dialogue
and Dialectic, and directed its Philosophical Midwifery Program,
which included dream study. In 1983, I joined with Chong-An
S’nim of the Korean Chogye Ch’an Sect to form the Opening
Mind Academy, which joined the Platonic tradition with Buddhism. Chong-An sealed me as Hui-An, his Dharma Successor
and master dharma teacher. In his autobiography, In My Own
Way, Alan Watts described me as a Jnana Yogi who ‘comes to
an authentic realization, or satori, by an intellectual rather than
an emotional or physical discipline.’”
1966
1967
Julia du Prey (née Busser) (A)
writes, “I now have four grandchildren who keep me feeling young.
Last October, I was in Bhutan on
a special tour, hiking to remote
monasteries and temples in this
very Buddhist country. My cousin,
Ian Baker, was the tour leader, a
Buddhist scholar and mountaineer.
Otherwise, my life has continued
more or less predictably. I still sing
and play the flute, do some writing,
and participate in a philosophy
study group.”
Sandra Hoben’s (A) volume
of poetry, The Letter C, will be
published by the Ash Tree Poetry
Series in 2014.
1969
Lee McKusick (SF) writes, “My
partial (three years) St. John’s education continues to fiercely interact
with my Cal State Los Angeles
American Studies education. I am
in my third career as a paraeducator
working with children. One of the
language problems I have run into
(with a nod to Wittgenstein) is how
to describe a young person without
The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 |
45
�alumni notes
1975
Class of 1969
Memory Book
Celebrates
45 Years
To celebrate their 45th
class reunion, members
of the Class of 1969 are
invited to share their memories for an online memory
book. Joseph Baratta (A)
will assemble the book,
which will be shared with
alumni at Homecoming
2014 in Annapolis from
September 12 to 14.
Alumni may submit text as
well as a photo or two. He
suggests you answer questions such as: How has
the college influenced your
life? What memories of the
years in college particularly
stand out in your mind?
Where have your travels
taken you?
Send your responses to:
Joseph P. Baratta
32 Hilltop Circle
Worcester, MA 01609
508-756-6015
josephbaratta@mac.com
using the painfully closed phrase,
‘severely mentally disabled.’ Every
day I bring both a scientific and
emotional attentiveness to my work
with individual special-education
children. I am often puzzling over
the learning pathways. For these
children, learning is a physical
process. While most of what I do is
simply caring for kids and keeping them safe, I get to see learning
as an interaction between brain,
memory, senses, and muscles. I have
been studying human motor-skill
development to provide words and
ideas to clarify what I observe in my
students. A side puzzle: Where and
how do disabled and slightly disabled
children show up in the great books
and other classical literature? Where
are portrayals of children with
cerebral palsy, non-verbal conditions, and autistic behaviors? What
are some of the books that explore
how the classical Athenian Greek
culture reckoned with the Spartan
Greek infant practices? Separately, I
recently ran for a local elected office
[in San Mateo County, Calif.], and
had the fascinating experience of
knocking on doors and establishing
face-to-face political understanding
with hundreds of voters. Others running for the same position outspent
me by an enormous margin. While I
did not win, I drew a fair number of
community votes.”
1971
Victoria Manchester Garrison (SF)
completed reading All On Fire, the
inspiring biography of the abolitionist, William Lloyd Garrison, her
ancestor by marriage. She is frequently in Taos doing grandmother
volunteering at the Waldorf School.
46 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014
“Stone Boat’s” Personal Best
Annapolis Alumni Director Leo Pickens (A78) writes, “Kudos
to Mike ‘Stone Boat’ Van Beuren (A) on his personal best
performance at the Head of the Charles Regatta held on
October 19, 2013. Stone Boat finished sixth in a field of more
than 50 competitors in the Men’s Veteran I & II Single Sculls
with a P.R. [Personal Record] of 20 minutes and 5 seconds.”
Commenting on the photo from the race, Van Beuren says,
“I had just made a move to the inside of the long turn at mile
two here. The wake of the boat in front is visible to the right.
I was by him 300 meters later.”
1973
1978
Since June 2013, Constance
McClellan (SF) has been serving
a two-year term in Moldova
with the Peace Corps. She is
working with Moldovan teacher
partners as an English teacher
for grades 5 - 12 in a village of
7,000 outside of the capitol city
of Chi in u. Although Moldova
may be Europe’s poorest country,
Connie enjoys the Internet,
hot water, Western toilets, and
excellent Eastern European food,
including homemade wine. After
almost a year and much language
training, she is finally beginning
to understand conversations in
Romanian, and to be more or less
understood when speaking about
concrete things (or about matters
with lots of English cognates).
Read her blog at cdmcclellan.
wordpress.com.
The 35th class reunion also capped
off 30 years of international living
and banking work for Chris Olson
(A), and 12 years of evaluation work
at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in
London, England. (The curious can
read his study of “EBRD’s Response
to the 2008-09 Financial Crisis”
at www.ebrd.com/downloads/
about/evaluation/1011.pdf.) In the
evenings, he practices as a trainee
psychotherapist with the Independent Group of Analytical Psychologists (IGAP.org), in the classical
tradition of Carl Gustav Jung, who
discovered psychological types
(familiar as Myers-Briggs typology)
and the collective unconscious.
He hopes to complete the training
within four years and to practice
analytical psychology at his home in
Rotherhithe, London.
�alumni notes
1982
Rob Crutchfield (A) has started an
online fundraising effort to help
Ruth Johnston (A85), who has a
debilitating illness. For more information, visit www.gofundme.com/
help-ruth-johnston.
1988
1983
Désirée Zamorano (SF) writes that
her novel, The Amado Women, a
family drama, will be published in
summer 2014.
1984
1979
To Greece and Back
Karen Bohrer (Anderson) (A) writes, “After 12 years living and
working in Greece, first at the American College of Thessaloniki
and then at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens,
I have repatriated. I am now the collections assessment and
development librarian at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in
Massachusetts. It’s a big change in ever so many respects, but
I’m jumping in with both feet, knowing it’s never the same river.
Before I left Greece, I had a wonderful experience related to the
college. A friend in the U.S. had advised a young acquaintance
who was traveling through Europe to look me up when she got
to Athens, and she came to see me at the library of ASCSA,
expressing a particular interest in the ancient authors. When I
asked why, Zara Amdur (SF11) revealed the name of her alma
mater. Neither of us was aware until that moment that we were
both alumnae. Despite our circumstantial differences, age being
not the least among them, the shared experience of St. John’s
enabled us to immediately connect on the human and intellectual levels that matter. E-mail is probably the best way to reach
me for anyone who’d like to. My addresses are karenbohrer@
yahoo.com or kmbohrer@wpi.edu.”
Bryan Cave, focusing on international and domestic litigation, arbitration, and regulatory disputes.
Ryan will serve as the Miami office’s
managing and hiring partner, and I
will serve as co-leader of the firm’s
international dispute resolution
practice (together with Rod Page).”
Pedro J. Martinez-Fraga (A)
writes, “I am pleased to announce
that, effective March 17, 2014, C.
Ryan Reetz and I have opened a Miami office for the law firm of Bryan
Cave LLP, a leading international
law firm with offices across the
United States, as well as in Europe
and Asia. The firm’s commitment
to its ‘one firm’ culture has resulted
in a strong track record of collaboration and cooperation across
the firm, with obvious benefits for
clients that have endured since its
founding 141 years ago. We will be
continuing our existing practice at
Tobias Maxwell’s (A) fifth book,
1977: The Year of Leaving Monsieur,
was published in March 2014.
1993
Inspired from her own experience,
Rachel Blistein (A) launched her
hair-care business, Original Moxie,
in 2009. She credits her ability to
teach herself basic chemistry and
to formulate complex hair-care
products to her St. John’s education.
“The process of reading original
texts on subjects from ancient Greek
to advanced physics gives you the
tools to learn anything,” says Blistein. “It also breaks down the fear
of tackling a totally foreign subject
from scratch and without intermediaries. Once you get over that fear, it
opens up a whole new world of possibilities.” Visit the company’s online
store at www.originalmoxie.com.
The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 |
47
�alumni notes
Correction: Richard Field (SFGI)
writes, “I received my PhD in 1993
from the University of New Mexico
in health, physical education, and
recreation, not history and philosophy as stated in the fall 2006 issue
of The College.”
1999
1997
1998
In addition to running her bee
farm (www.ziaqueenbees.com) and
having her second child a couple
of years ago, Melanie Kirby (SF)
served as the president of the Western Apicultural Society of North
America in 2013. Currently she is
the editor for an online beekeeping
newsletter with more than 30,000
subscribers (www.kelleybees.com).
She started the Rocky Mountain
Survivor Queenbee Cooperative,
which is an educational service organization helping to build capacity for
local pollinator preservation, promotion, and production. She shared
their efforts at the 2013 Apimondia
World Beekeeping Conference
in Kiev, Ukraine. This spring she
organized the 2014 North to South
New Mexico Pollinator Benefit
Lecture series, bringing pollinator
scholars to the Land of Enchantment. St. John’s hosted a lecture
by Dr. Thomas Seeley, a worldrenowned conservation biologist
from Cornell, on May 3, 2014. More
information: www.survivorqueenbees.org. Kirby is buzzed to be
sharing her apicultural academia
with her beloved alma mater.
In fall 2013, Santa Fe Advancement
Services Director Nick Giacona
(SFGI) returned as guest lecturer
to a Native American music class
at the University of Oklahoma. He
discussed the mythology behind
some of the ceremonial music and
dance the class was studying. He led
the class in a comparative mythology exercise by examining the local
differences and universal similarities between the Native American
Corn Maiden myths and the Classical Greek myths of Demeter and
Persephone. On the home front,
Nick’s daughter, Sarah, graduated
from New Mexico State University
last spring with a degree in fashion
design. She begins an internship
with the Walt Disney Company
in January. His son, Kyle, has
been accepted to the University of
Hawaii for the spring semester; he
plans to major in food science and
human nutrition, with an emphasis
in sports and wellness. Nick and his
wife, Keiko, are looking forward to
becoming “empty-nesters.” (Don’t
tell Sarah and Kyle.)
48 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014
On October 1, 2013, at Camp
Pendleton, Major Benjamin I.
Closs, USMC (A) received a medal
for outstanding meritorious service
while serving as the Executive
Senior Briefer, Intelligence Department, Headquarters Marine Corps,
Washington, D.C., from July 1,
2010 to June 30, 2013.
Mike Soejoto (A) and Abby Soejoto (A) write, “We had another
baby—Peter Dominic, born March
6—who slots in at the bottom of the
totem pole after Lucy (10), John
(8), Cecilia (6), James (4), and Beatrice (2), but ahead of McDuff the
dog. Abby continues to homeschool
the kids. Mike is partner at Pircher,
Nichols, & Meeks in Century City
and is head of the firm’s tax department. The older kids are playing
club soccer, which keeps us busy
and on the road most weekends.
We are excited to celebrate our
15th wedding anniversary this
summer. Feel free to drop us a
line, especially if you will be in Los
Angeles: asoejoto@gmail.com and
msoejoto@gmail.com.”
Dana (Ostrander) Warford (A) and
her husband, Mark, welcomed their
daughter, Peyton Avery, into the
world on July 30, 2013.
2001
Paige Maguire (A), who still lives
in Austin, Texas, has remarried.
In December 2012, she and Kevin
M. Schneider, a composer and producer, welcomed a son, Asa Wilder,
who joins his older brother, Daschel
Auden Maguire, now 11. Paige is senior strategist at Springbox Digital
Partners in downtown Austin. She
is also @fluxistrad on Twitter.
Cosmina Popa (A) is managing
director at Conscious Venture Lab
(CVLab), a new impact-focused
Mike and Abby Soejoto (A99) are homeschooling their family.
�alumni notes
business accelerator being created
in conjunction with the Howard
County Economic Development
Authority and the Maryland Center
for Entrepreneurship. Their goal is
to create new businesses that operate at the intersection of profit and
purpose, using the power of capitalism to create a more joyful, just,
and equitable society. For more
information, visit www.consciousventurelab.com.
2002
Ronald Osborn’s (AGI) new book,
Death Before the Fall: Biblical
Literalism and the Problem of
Animal Suffering, was published
in February.
Shelley Saxen (née Walker, SFGI,
EC03) and her husband, Doug
Saxen (EC03), are starting their
third and final year living in Peru.
Shelley covers human rights and
social conflicts as a diplomat with
the U.S. Department of State. Doug
continues his love of writing and has
been dedicated to his new digital illuminated manuscript project. They
hope to be back in Santa Fe later this
year for a visit and always joyfully
welcome Johnnie visitors to Peru.
Thanks to that fateful debut in
Rigoletto, she fell into the arms of
a British baritone. His role in Act
I was to grab her as she was about
to deck the reprobate Duke across
the face with a right hook—and
drag her, kicking and flailing, off
stage right. Helluva first meeting.
The baritone, an Oxford man, is
a chorister and a Catholic. Ms.
Buker would like to take a moment
to thank Mr. Tomarchio for his
Thomas Aquinas preceptorial,
since the sacred, the profane, and
the reason lying underneath come
up quite a bit with her fancy man.
Who knows, she may have to move
to London yet .. . and nay, even
confess? Next up, Santa Fe tutor
Jacques Duvoisin and she have been
compiling an anthology about St.
John’s College, with a working title,
The Selected Life. It’ll be chock
full of essays from tutors, alums,
current students, and others with
an abiding relationship with St.
John’s. The project was the positive outcome of various Facebook
interactions in which dissatisfied
alums were offering no active
solutions to telling the “story” of
SJC. “If there’s one thing I learned
CELEBRATE
Homecoming 2014
Annapolis
September 12–14
410-626-2531
Santa Fe
September 19–21
505-984-6103
alumni.stjohnscollege.edu
Lauren Shofer (A) is living in Aalst,
Belgium, where she is a chiropractic physician and mother of four:
Amelie (5), Julien (4), Emile (2),
and Celestine (7 months). Her
husband, Baldwyn Bourgois, is also
a chiropractic physician.
2005
On February 18, Samantha Buker
(A) got a request from the director
of Lyric Opera Baltimore: “Are you
interested in being a lissome Hebrew maiden in Nabucco?” Given
her wonderful first time onstage
last year in the Belle Époque house,
how could she resist a reprise?
left: Samantha Buker (A05) shines
in the 2013 production of Rigoletto
at Baltimore’s Lyric Opera. above:
Celebrating at the Nabucco cast party.
from seminar, it’s that saying what
something is NOT, is not the same
as saying positively what it IS,” says
Buker. Incidentally, her nine-to-
five financial publishing gig still
goes gangbusters, and she’s on the
board of PostClassical Ensemble,
the D.C.-based orchestra, which is
enjoying its 10th-anniversary season. She’s pleased to announce her
involvement in the newest thing in
so-called “classical” music: Future
Symphony Institute. This “think
tank” for music provides innovative
research and new initiatives whose
impact reverberates from her Mt.
Vernon neighborhood around the
world. Au fond de l’Inconnu pour
trouver du nouveau....
In what time might be called spare,
Samantha runs a portrait studio
(photography, drawings, paintings)
and can be reached for sittings via
7veilsstudio@gmail.com.
The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 |
49
�alumni profile
Generous Leadership
by Chelsea Batten (A07)
Jamaal Barnes (A10) shines as mentor, musician, and advocate
Those who graduated with Jamaal
“THE THING THAT CONNECTS
MY LIFE’S ACTIVITIES IS
A FIRM COMMITMENT TO
SUPPORTING THE HOLISTIC
DEVELOPMENT OF CHILDREN
AND YOUTH FROM ALL
ENVIRONMENTS.”
Barnes (A10) will remember a highlight
of his junior year: he was summoned
to the office of President Nelson and
informed that he had won the Harry S.
Truman Scholarship, commonly viewed
as the Rhodes of public service.
“It was funny,” he chuckles,
remembering the “hurrahing” of his
friends when they found out about it.
Looking back, he imparts credit for this
accomplishment to those who celebrated
with him. “The community at St. John’s
is a huge part of why I’m passionate
about public service.”
Barnes’s passion for public service
has taken him to various parts of the
world, as well as deeper into the relationships he has been cultivating since high
school. He made progress on his longterm goals by earning an EdM degree
50 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013
2014
in 2011 at Harvard; he is currently an
admissions officer at Harvard Graduate School of Education and proctor at
Harvard College. In addition, he serves
on the Alumni Advisory Board for the
Coca-Cola Scholars Foundation, and
as a trustee of the Touchstones Discussion Project (founded by tutors Howard
Zeiderman and Nicholas Maistrellis).
“I’d say that the thing that connects
my life’s activities is a firm commitment
to supporting the holistic development
of children and youth from all environments,” Barnes reflects. That key word—
environment—gives Barnes’s work in
public service a character unique to his
field. His insight that personal development is heightened by responding to a
given environment’s opportunities and
challenges was fostered by his experience with St. John’s College.
The setup for Barnes’s story reads like
the opening act of a highbrow comedy.
You take a first-generation college
applicant with energy, vision, and a 12year plan to pilot his life. You give him
one of the country’s most competitive
scholarships, and send him off to an
“East Coast” school, launching him on
his promising future.
What happens then? This goaloriented, energetic activist finds himself
in the midst of about 500 philosopherpoets who spend hours pondering the
question, “What is virtue?”
Of course, Barnes’s story is not
extreme. But his choice to attend St.
John’s, and the day-to-day experience
of life and study at the college, was
somewhat lost in translation when he
described it to family and friends.
“It’s one thing to be a first-generation
college student in a traditional sense;
it’s a completely different thing to be a
first-generation college student and go
to St. John’s,” he says.
�Despite the challenges and his
expectations of how he would function in
the college community, Barnes quickly
came to appreciate the opportunity
presented by the contemplative framework
of learning. “The ability to listen to each
other carefully, to take what we’ve learned
and cooperate effectively, was something
I learned to refine over the next few years.
The most wonderful deliverable that came
out of it was the Epigenesis project.”
In December 2007, Barnes joined forces
with three other Johnnies in creating a
leadership and mentoring program for
low-income youth in Annapolis. For 10
weeks the following summer, Epigenesis
led workshops based on the cornerstone
texts of the St. John’s Program, to help
participants identify their community’s
most urgent needs, and consider what it
meant for them to be good citizens.
“It’s hard for me to talk about justice
and equality,” Barnes says, “and not
think about what goes on at Clay Street.
I tried to play that out by being actively
engaged in the St. John’s community,
as well as being actively engaged in the
Annapolis communities.”
Following the success of Epigenesis,
Barnes devoted his energies to Crossroads
for Kids. As the director of their outdoor
youth leadership program, Barnes was
repeatedly confronted with a gadfly-like
question: “How do you measure growth in
leadership behaviors?” In the midst of the
rigors of junior year, he was led to answers
through several formative influences.
One was Michel de Montaigne, whom
Barnes calls—laughing but with perfect
sincerity—his “self-help guide” in what it
means to be socially responsible. Another
was tutor Chester Burke, who offered to
reread several Platonic dialogues with
Barnes as graduation approached.
“We read the Apology, the Crito, and
three or four other texts, and really
struggled with what does it mean to be
a person of society? To be good, both to
yourself and to others?” Those discussions, Barnes says, exemplified for him
the kind of generous leadership he was
striving to grasp. He also cites former
staff members Maggie Melson and Bronte
Jones as profound influences.
“It’s one thing to be a firstgeneration college student
in a traditional sense; it’s a
completely different thing
to be a first-generation
college student and go to
St. John’s.”
Barnes says that singing with the
college choral group, Primum Mobile,
brought him back to the human element
of living in community. “One of the
most beautiful things about music—in
particular, when there are multiple
people singing in polyphony—is a
moment of unity that’s created. Music
can create the ideal community.”
He brings up the example of singing
“Sicut Cervus” in Freshman Chorus.
“These voices coming together, weaving
their ways. You take any line by itself and
it’s an individual, but when you tie it all
together, it’s this beautiful community,
and the remarkable thing is that you don’t
have to be great singers. Freshman chorus
singing ‘Sicut Cervus’ is just as beautiful
as Primum Mobile.” He pauses and adds
this amendment: “The tenors can be a
little iffy sometimes.”
He pauses again, and when he
continues speaking, his voice is choked
with emotion. “The fact that music can
make me feel like I’m in community with
someone, that it can bring about emotions
that I can’t articulate in words...I don’t
get that sensation with anything else. My
hands are actually shaking right now.”
Barnes was also struck by the impact of,
as he puts it, “that quiet person in class,
[who] opens their mouth one time, and
really changes the way thoughts are built
in seminar.” It showed him that everyone
is able to play a valuable role in shaping a
community, whether their strengths are
in speaking, doing, listening, or simply
waiting for the right moment.
To those students who, like himself,
are burning to take their education
beyond the conversation and into
the greater community, Barnes says
that St. John’s provides an important
opportunity to generate self-momentum.
“If I didn’t go to St. John’s, I wouldn’t
have won the Truman, I wouldn’t
have won the Reynolds Fellowship in
Social Entrepreneurship from Harvard
University. If you learn through taking
action, the ability to be independent
and entrepreneurial in terms of creating
opportunities to be active in your
community is powerful.”
The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 |
2013
51
�alumni notes
2008
AMANDA RITTER
Aerospace Award
Wint Huskey (SFGI10) is a writer based in Philadelphia.
Toby Burress (A) and Alena
Sinacola (A) welcomed their
daughter, Jane Woolf Burress, on
December 4, 2013, in Cambridge,
Mass. Named in honor of Jane
Goodall and Virginia Woolf, baby
Jane is a delight. Their dogs Charlie
and Maggie have accepted the new
human into their pack with grace
and understanding. In other news,
after seven years in the Boston
area, they have recently moved to
Brooklyn, N.Y. Toby is enjoying his
new job as a systems administrator
with Google in Manhattan, and
both Jane and Alena are having a
wonderful time being a baby and a
mama, respectively. They’d love to
meet up with other Johnnies in the
area: alenasinacola@gmail.com.
2006
Aran Donovan (SF) was featured
in the annual anthology, Best New
Poets 2013: 50 Poems from Emerging
Writers, edited by Brenda Shaughnessy. Equally exciting, she is now
living in New Orleans, where several
other ’06 and ’07 Johnnies have also
congregated. Let her know if you’re
passing through the Big Easy!
2007
Maia (Huff-Owen) Nahele (SF)
writes, “I now live in Paris, where
I have a research and teaching
position in the Department of Philosophy at the Sorbonne (Paris IV).
In the whirlwind of the last few
years, I’ve regrettably lost touch
with many of you, and welcome
the chance to reconnect. I also
welcome visitors and passersthrough! I am looking to sublet
my lovely, quiet, light-filled, onebedroom apartment in the fourth
arrondissement for July and/or
August of this year. If there are
any Johnnies (students, alumni,
faculty, or staff) who would be
interested in landing in Paris for
the summer and need a fantastic
home-base, please drop me a line
at mnahele@gmail.com, and I’ll
send more information.”
2010
Wint Huskey’s (SFGI) first
novel, Blowin’ It, is scheduled to
be published in August.
52 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014
Trystan Popish (SF08) and
Carol Mohling at the 2014
NSTA Teacher Awards Gala
in Boston, Mass.
Trystan Popish (SF) was selected by the National Science
Teachers Association (NSTA)
Awards and Recognitions
Committee as the recipient for
the 2014 Wendell G. Mohling
Outstanding Aerospace Award
for her exemplary work with
informal aerospace science.
Popish, an Aviation Learning Center educator at the
Museum of Flight in Seattle,
Wash., was presented with
the award at the NSTA Teacher
Awards Gala during the association’s national conference
held in Boston, Mass., from
April 3 to 6.
2012
A New Course
Alexander Schmid (AGI)
has joined the faculty
at Escondido Charter
High School (ECHS),
one of the American
Heritage family of
charter schools
based in Escondido, Calif. Schmid teaches freshman logic and
rhetoric—a new course that he developed—and a law and
debate elective for juniors and seniors. Shawn Roner, the ECHS
Traditional Classroom program director, says that Schmid is a
valuable addition to the faculty “because we are focusing more
attention on developing student thinking skills in the freshman
year.” Schmid says, “I was delighted to have the opportunity to
teach a subject which I both love and live. When I was offered
the position, I knew I had to take it.”
�alumni profile
Mentoring Women in Business
by Gregory Shook
Elizabeth Powers (A89) Reveals
Hidden Bias in the Workplace
As a senior principal
at the New Yorkbased IMS Consulting
Group (IMSCG),
serving clients that
include four of the top
15 pharmaceutical
companies, Elizabeth
Powers (A89) has
followed a career
trajectory full of twists
and bends. At one point, her plans were nearly
derailed altogether. “I had a daughter early in
my career at Booz & Company (formerly Booz
Allen Hamilton),” says Powers, who spent nearly
13 years with the company, working her way up
from associate to vice president and partner.
“When I came back [to work], there weren’t that
many options for alternative schedules.” Powers
soon learned how hidden biases, or unconscious
bias—an implicit preference for certain types
of people based on their upbringing, gender,
race, experience, and values—can influence
important decisions, such as hiring, promotions,
assignments, performance reviews, and dismissals.
For the next six months, Powers shuttled back and forth between
New York and Chicago “on a team that wasn’t particularly family
friendly.” With the pressure to succeed at her job at the expense
of spending considerable time apart from her husband and
newborn daughter, Powers says that she nearly imploded. When
she was on the brink of leaving the company, a colleague came
to her support as both a mentor and a champion. Recognizing
that Powers had been put in an unfair situation based on her
circumstances as a new mother rather than her talent and ability,
“he convinced the firm to keep me and for me to stay on parttime,” says Powers, who continued to work part-time with the
company for the next five years. “That never would’ve happened
without that particular champion.”
That experience helped Powers become aware of hidden biases
and their potential impact on a person’s career. “Integrity and
equality are always at the forefront of my mind,” says Powers.
“Both men and women carry around unconscious bias which says
that women don’t belong in the workplace. It’s quite acceptable
now to be a woman as an entry-level associate or a mid-level
manager, but it’s still very hard [for women] to rise to the top
ranks.” To thwart the trend, Powers is coordinating a women’s
initiative at IMSCG to empower future business leaders to
become champions of their own careers and to raise awareness of
unconscious bias in the workplace. “I’m in a client service field,
and I love what I do,” says Powers, whose work on unconscious
bias is a topic at the forefront of many large businesses today.
A Wall Street Journal article (January 9, 2014) reports that as
many as 20 percent of large U.S. employers who offer diversity
training programs now provide unconscious-bias training.
Powers looks at what
“Integrity and equality other companies are
doing in terms of
are always at the
shedding light on
hidden biases in the
forefront of my mind.”
workplace—in particular,
understanding
communication style.
“It can be challenging to coach others to hit the right level of
assertiveness without being too assertive,” she says. “There’s a
different solution for everybody.”
Inspired by Robert Greenleaf’s book, Servant Leadership,
Powers advocates mentorship and the idea of a servant actually
being a leader. “That’s at the core of how I operate,” she says.
“I wish I could do that a lot better with my family, but when
I manage to do it, I’m always successful.” A graduate of the
Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, she mentors
Wharton students and alumnae but is “even happier to mentor
Johnnies. [Mentoring] is absolutely a way of paying back into the
karma bank,” says Powers. “And it’s just fun.”
Whether with her family, at the workplace, or at her Brooklyn
dojang (Powers is a red belt in hapkido), Powers says that being
successful means “living up to my commitments. I was given many
gifts, both in terms of talent and in terms of people who have cared
for me. It’s all about how I can live up to those gifts.”
The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 |
53
�transitions
A Good Conversation Is Hard to Find
LAUREL FISCHER (A11)
By Chelsea Batten (A07)
“It’s hard to find a good conversation,
after St. John’s.” This was the warning
delivered by Dr. Bernard Davidoff (A69)—
or, as classmates of his daughter knew
him, Bernie. He would say it while casting
a long glance around the perimeter of the
quad, part resigned, part wistful, and part
something else that I never could define.
It’s only now, seven years out from the
college, that I realize what he meant.
First, there’s the deflated anticipation
that follows most Johnnies after attending
their first Homecoming or croquet match
as alumni. There are new kids sitting on
your bench, living in your dorm room,
occupying your spot on the basketball
court or the FSK stage.
The tutors will talk to you, of course, but
even that’s not the same. Much as you love
their appreciation of your life, their undying
enthusiasm for whatever you’ve chosen to
do (or your efforts to make a choice), what
you really want to talk about with them is
what you used to talk about: Great Books.
Many Johnnies experience this, postgraduation. If you don’t live within
proximity of an alumni group, or can’t
make it back to your campus for alumni
events, you’re stuck in that wistful malaise
that Bernie was talking about: A good
conversation is hard to find.
Two years ago, two alumni, Harry
Zolkower (A82) and Nicole Levy (SF92)
decided to do something about this. In
collaboration with Annapolis Alumni
Director Leo Pickens (A78), they created
a virtual format for homesick Johnnies to
engage with tutors and with each other.
An online seminar? According to Mr.
Pickens, it was a hard sell to many tutors.
It’s difficult to recreate the magic of
seminar by dint of screenshots and earbuds.
In addition, says Mr. Pickens, some
members of the faculty feel that having
different groups of alumni, led each time
by different tutors, isn’t as pure as the
undergraduate experience, the thematic
unity achieved by one group that spends a
year in discussion together.
But perhaps alumni hunger for a good
conversation merits a leap into the digital
age. Many first-time participants came to
the online seminar I attended with skepticism. “It doesn’t surprise me anymore,”
says Mr. Pickens, chuckling. “But every
online seminar I’ve participated in has that
feeling of a genuine St. John’s seminar!”
“If you can’t get out of the
house and cross an easy
distance to a room where
people are gathered, this is
the next best thing. There’s
a hunger out there for this
kind of conversation.”
One tutor, Michael Dink (A75), who gave a
seminar in March, reported to other faculty
members that the reason it felt genuine to
him was “because everybody in the seminar
is seasoned in this form of conversation.”
Admittedly, Mr. Pickens says, nothing
can equal the synergy of 12 to 20 minds
in a room—despite the technical hiccups:
broken audio feeds, the tendency for
participants to look at their own faces while
talking. (Mr. Pickens chuckles again as he
recounts these hiccups.)
54 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014
“That said,” he continues, “folks are
getting together and having a St. John’sstyle conversation—a serious conversation
about a difficult reading—in a way that
feels genuine to what we try to do in our
community. If you can’t get out of the
house and cross an easy distance to a room
where people are gathered, this is the next
best thing. There’s a hunger out there for
this kind of conversation.”
The online seminars have attracted
alumni as far apart as Karen Immler
(AGI07), who lives in Slovenia, and Sunny
Hills (SF78), who lives in Maui. In the
online seminar I attended from Phoenix,
Arizona, nine other participants from
around the U.S. gathered together with Mr.
Pickens and tutor Michael Dink. Mr. Dink
chose the book of Jonah as the reading. It
was, I thought, a perfect selection—short
enough that it was easy to read at the last
minute (which, it turns out, is even easier
to do when you’re not a full-time student),
but full of opportunities for contention,
thoughtful silence, and questions following
upon the one with which Mr. Dink opened:
“Why is Jonah angry?”
What followed was, in fact, a powerful
rewind to freshman seminar, with all
its exaggerated tropes. There were the
stock participants: the over-talker, the
chronically silent one, the one who
consistently brings everyone back to the
opening question. There were the outside
references, the stalled silences, the odd
autobiographical analogy, and the followup question that starts as a statement,
devolves into a ramble, and ends with a
confession that the asker has forgotten the
question he intended to ask.
Also true to freshman seminar fashion
is the kindly tolerance with which the
tutor views the seminar’s foibles. Mr. Dink
seemed satisfied, even mildly surprised,
by the discussion. The online format, he
allowed, did lend itself to serial speechmaking. “I believe it’s important that
people be able to interrupt one another in
seminar.” But, he adds, he’s sanguine that
online conversations have all the potential
�in memoriam
provided opening and closing remarks.
Santa Fe tutors Janet Dougherty, Philip
LeCuyer, Michael Ehrmantraut, and Gregory Schneider, along with alumnus Adam
Visher (SF11), shared testimonials in honor
of their colleague and friend. The following
are some remembrances and excerpts from
remarks at the service:
“Laurence taught me many things as a
teacher, but one thing stands out. He
always tried to figure out what made a
student care and what things a student
cared about. Laurence could also make
you laugh, a gift that I appreciate more
and more every day. His skill with the quick
remark and the friendly jab were to be envied. In some ways, he was one of the best
conversationalists that I have ever met.”
– Gregory Schneider, Santa Fe tutor
Laurence Nee
August 5, 2013
Tutor, Santa Fe
In 2005, Laurence Nee (1970-2013) joined
the faculty in Santa Fe, where he was
treasured for his sense of humor, thoughtful insights, and gift for conversation. The
community gathered for a memorial held
on November 2, 2013, in the Junior Common Room. Santa Fe President Mike Peters
“Through his efforts as a tutor, my
appreciation for a much beloved novel
awakened, and my understanding and
appreciation continually grows. I will
never re-read Pride and Prejudice without
reflecting upon Mr. Nee’s love and respect
for the work. I am eternally grateful.”
– Lealia Nelson (SFGI11)
“I had the great pleasure of having
freshman summer seminar with Mr. Nee.
His presence was felt strongly at every
session and his sense of humor—especially
his tolerance of what I tried to pass as
humor—is something I shall never forget.”
– Nareg Seferian (SF11)
During the five years that he taught at the
college and the years that followed, Nee
made a remarkable impact on the community as a teacher, colleague, and friend.
He is remembered for his extraordinary
character and service to the college. “Personally, I have seen in him a kind of answer
to a question I consider significant, that I
first heard posed several decades ago: ‘Can
a Christian be a great-souled man?’ says
Santa Fe Dean J. Walter Sterling. “Laurence’s character is, for me, evidence in
favor of such a possibility. Be that as it may,
what one heard from his colleagues at the
memorial was that he possessed an extraordinary range of virtues of character, as well
as of intellect, a combination as beautiful as
it is rare. He made us a better college.”
The College magazine is grateful to Laurence
Nee for his article, “The Greatness of Shakespeare’s Plays,” in the summer 2012 issue.
www.sjc.edu/news-and-media
A Good Conversation (continued from p. 50)
of those that take place in the classroom,
if cultivated the same way: “I thought with
practice, and experience, participants
could get pretty good at it.”
It’s still a young endeavor, and alumni
are still being attracted to it. I imagine that
as these seminars go on, they will be like the
learning curve within a St. John’s class, in which
students become stronger, more generous,
and honest conversants with each other.
I recognize now that the look on my
friend’s father’s face was determination. I’ve
found that life after St. John’s requires such
resolve, if you’re not going to spend it in perpetual mourning for four irrecoverable years
of community and culture, all intense and
endearingly weird, threaded together by a
love of deep conversation. In some ways,
I’m loath to rejoin the online seminar.
Like going back for Croquet or Homecoming, it was hard to revisit that environment
without it being exactly the same as I remember. On the other hand, I’m not ready
to resign conversation to the past. Like the
books themselves, great conversation is
a daunting endeavor, especially when displaced by culture and time; nevertheless,
it’s worth pursuing.
The next virtual seminar will be in September.
For more information: leopickens@sjc.edu
CONNECT TO THE COLLEGE
Alumni online community:
http://alumni.stjohnscollege.edu
Agora career mentoring network:
http://alumni.stjohnscollege.edu
Click on “Career Services”
Alumni offices:
annapolis.alumni@sjc.edu
santafe.alumni@sjc.edu
Facebook:
facebook.com/stjohnscollege
The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 |
55
�in memorium
John Dendahl (H87)
November 9, 2013
Martha B. Jordan (SFGI86)
October 24, 2013
Martha Black Jordan (1932-2013),
alumna and member of the Board
of Visitors and Governors, died at
her son’s home in Coronado, Calif.
She was 80.
Jordan was
born in Mexico
City and educated
in the United
States. She first
visited Santa Fe
in the summer of
1980 and fell in
love with the city. As a student at St.
John’s, her favorite readings were
the Russians, especially Dostoevsky.
“I like Dostoevsky’s view of how the
world could be changed, and not
necessarily through revolution,” she
recalled.
Known for her generosity,
quiet grace, and inquisitive mind,
Jordan was also a gifted poet and
translator. She was a founder of the
Tramontane Poets of Mexico City,
a collective dedicated to being a
bridge between the poetry worlds
of Mexico and North America.
Jordan read her own work, as well
as translations, on The Poet and
the Poem, National Public Radio in
Washington, D.C.; at the Society of
the Americas and the Poetry Project
at St. Mark’s Church in New York
City; in Mexico City at La Casa del
Poeta and the Universidad Nacional
Autónoma de México; in San
Miguel de Allende at the Instituto
Nacional de Bellas Artes; and at St.
John’s in Santa Fe.
Jordan committed herself to a
long but fulfilling journey when
she decided to pursue ordination
in the Episcopal Church of Mexico.
She enrolled in a graduate pastoral
theology program at St. Mary of
the Woods College in Indiana. In
John Dendahl (1938-2013),
former Board of Visitors and
Governors chair, former Santa Fe
treasurer, and one of the founders
of the St. John’s College, Santa Fe
campus, passed away in Colorado.
He was 75.
Born in Santa Fe, Dendahl attended the University of Colorado
in Boulder, where he earned
degrees in electrical engineering and business administration.
During that time, he won two
NCAA titles with the university’s
ski team and was a member of the 1960 U.S. Olympic ski team. He was
inducted into the University of Colorado Athletic Hall of Fame and the
New Mexico Ski Hall of Fame.
In the 1960s, Dendahl worked as an engineer for the Eberline
Instrument Corporation (now a subsidiary of the Thermo Electron
Corporation) and later became CEO. Later that decade, during an
extended absence from the company, he served as chief financial officer
for the new St. John’s College, Santa Fe campus. From 1985 to 1987,
Dendahl served as chair of the college’s Board of Visitors and Governors.
Transitioning to a career in politics, Dendahl was appointed to the
State Investment Council and later served as secretary of New Mexico’s
Economic Development and Tourism Department. In 1994, he ran
unsuccessfully for governor. However, that same year he was elected
as state Republican Party chairman, a position he held until 2003.
Several years later, Dendahl and his wife moved to Colorado, where he
continued his interest in politics and wrote columns and letters to the
editor of The New Mexican.
He is survived by his wife, Jackie, and his five daughters: Debra
Hadley, Ellie Thurston, Katherine, Karen, and Lisa West.
2006 she was ordained a priest at
Christ Church in Mexico City, the
church where she was baptized and
married. That same year, Jordan
and her husband established the
Jordan Tutorship on the Santa
Fe campus, which has been used
to support the director of the
Graduate Institute.
She is survived by her husband
of more than 50 years, Purdy; three
children, Stephanie, Colebrooke,
and Robert; and four grandchildren,
Cecelia, Daniel, Nicholas, and David.
56 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014
Jules O. Pagano
Class of 1948
July 14, 2013
Jules Pagano (1925-2013), who
helped launch President John F.
Kennedy’s Peace Corps program,
passed away at his home in
Jamesville, N.Y., surrounded by
family members. He was two days
shy of his 88th birthday.
Pagano helped to formulate
Peace Corps policies in training and
education of volunteers for overseas
assignments, and established the
first Peace Corps Training Centers.
After the passage of the Higher Education Act in 1965, he was named
the first director of the Adult Education Division at the U.S. Office of
Education, and began a long career
in higher education. Pagano served
as dean and associate vice president
of Florida International University,
during which time he earned his
MPA and DPA from Nova University.
In 1979, he was recruited by Bard
College to serve as vice president
and provost of Simon’s Rock. He
later served as president of the Saybrook Institute, a graduate school
and research center.
Pagano and his elder brother,
Lee, attended St. John’s College
in Annapolis, where Pagano’s lifelong love affair with education was
cemented. He authored dozens of
articles on higher education, as
well as vocational and adult education. Pagano served as director
of the St. John’s College Alumni
Board from 1984-1988.
He is survived by his wife, Kathy;
brother Mo; son Ed; daughters
Debbie and Penny; grandchildren
Joy, Erin, Elise, Tiffany, and Jack;
great-granddaughters Rylee, Ellie,
and Arianna; and stepchildren
Angela, Jimmy, and Karen.
Robert Stewart (A09)
December 5, 2013
Born in Winston-Salem, N.C.,
Robert Stewart (1977-2013) found
his home at St. John’s, where he
explored his many interests and met
others who shared and appreciated
those interests. “His dream job
was to be a tutor at St. John’s,”
says his mother, Brenda Stewart.
The community gathered for a
memorial held on March 15, 2014,
in the Great Hall. “The room was
full of laughter and joy, as we all
remembered the sting of his wit,
the depths of his wisdom, and the
warm, all encompassing feeling
�in memorium
Also Deceased:
Ernest Dominguez, SF95
August 24, 2013
Harry O’Neill, SFGI79
December 10, 2013
Joseph Ablow, Class of 1950
November 14, 2012
Paul Ehrlich, Class of 1942
October 26, 2013
LeRoy Pagano, Class of 1948
February 6, 2013
Rachel Abrams, A72
June 7, 2013
Arthur Fort IV, SF91
December 20, 2012
Milton Perlman, Class of 1943
February 18, 2014
George Ackerman, A74
January 3, 2014
Douglas Fraser, AGI90
February 15, 2014
Emanuel Pushkin, Class of 1940
October 24, 2013
Lewis Alexander, Class of 1941
May 9, 2013
Charles Gentile, Class of 1950
July 24, 2013
Richard Rickard, SFGI72
October 24, 2013
Rodney Arthur, AGI88
November 7, 2013
Josef Gilboa, Class of 1962
December 4, 2013
Caroline Saddy, SF81
March 31, 2013
Lydia Aston, Class of 1955
December 26, 2013
Raymond Haas, Class of 1958
September 1, 2012
Roberto Salinas-Price, Class of 1959
August 13, 2012
Roland Bailey, Class of 1935
April 22, 2014
Darrell Henry, Class of 1961
August 16, 2013
Louis Shuman, Class of 1938
August 3, 2013
Eugene Blank, Class of 1945
July 15, 2013
Joseph D. Hines, SFGI70
December 27, 2013
John E. Siemens, Class of 1956
November 5, 2013
February 19, 2014
Rosalie Levine Boosin, Class of 1960
November 1, 2013
Constance “Connie” Weigle Mann,
(1947-2014), daughter of Richard
D. Weigle—president of St. John’s
College in Annapolis for 31 years,
and founder and president of the
Santa Fe campus—died at age 67 in
Winston-Salem, N.C.
A graduate of St. John’s College
in Santa Fe, she had an affinity for
the “Land of Enchantment” and
cherished her time and the many
friends she made there. After
graduating, she attended Yale
Divinity School, where she met
her husband, Tom. She also held
a master’s degree from Rutgers
University and worked as a sales
representative for an organizational
management company.
Known for her kindness, generosity, and loving spirit, Connie had
a special concern for hunger, and
served as a volunteer at the Second
Harvest Food Bank of Northwest
North Carolina, where she was a
Volunteer of the Year in 2013.
She is survived by her husband of
45 years, Tom; her daughter, Mary
Liz; her sister, Marta; and countless
other family members and friends.
Henry DeMuth Jawish, Class of 1952
October 21, 2013
Warren Skidmore, Class of 1947
December 21, 2013
William S. Bradfield, SFGI79
January 16, 1998
George W. John, Class of 1949
March 27, 2014
Robert Snower, Class of 1944
July 2, 2013
Wayne Brandow, Class of 1966
September 14, 2013
Beverly Kincaid, SFGI72
February 11, 2014
John M. Sommer, SFGI90
May 18, 2013
Gerald Buchen, SF72
July 31, 2013
Thomas D. Lyne, Class of 1946
May 20, 2008
Edward Paul Thomson, A80
October 10, 2013
Catherine Ann Caffrey, A69
February 12, 2014
Patrick Ramsey Magee, SF16
July 12, 2013
Judith S. White, Class of 1964
May 23, 2013
Richard B. Carter, Class of 1954
October 19, 2013
Stephen Mainella, Class of 1954
March 4, 2014
Cary Wilcomb, SF79
March 17, 1987
Lindsay Clendaniel, Class of 1944
March 10, 2014
Richard T. Mallon, Class of 1943
June 9, 2013
Peter Clogher, Class of 1947
June 28, 2013
John Mark Mason, A75
April 10, 2014
Norma Eleanor Williams,
Class of 1967
March 19, 2014
Cornelia Corson-Reese, Class of 1957
August 9, 2013
Richard Matteson, Class of 1948
February 13, 2014
Paul G. Cree, Jr., Class of 1952
April 8, 2014
Wilbur Matz, Class of 1940
March 29, 2014
Cyril K. Crume, SF81
September 28, 2013
David McMorran, SF75
February 24, 2014
Ellen Nancy Davis, Class of 1960
July 15, 2013
Grace McNeley, SFGI75
July 25, 2013
Anna Dietz, AGI80
February 20, 2013
Harry Neumann, Class of 1952
March 31, 2014
of his friendship,” says Elizabeth
Burlington (A08).
To read remembrances about
Robert Stewart, visit www.sjc.edu/
news-and-media
Constance Weigle Mann
(SF68)
Everett Wilson, Class of 1956
October 22, 2013
Bernard E. Wolsky, AGI91
November 8, 2013
Kevin C. Young, A78
June 5, 2013
The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 |
57
�philanthropy
The Philanthropy of Memory
by Sus3an Borden (A87)
James McClintock was a member of the
Class of 1965 who excelled in mathematics.
William O’Grady was a tutor with a strong
commitment to helping students in times
of need. Kitty Kinzer was a library director
on the Annapolis campus who cared for
the college community as much as she
cared about its collection of books. Tom
McDonald was a tutor who enthralled
students with his enigmatic but brilliant
analyses of poetry. All four were beloved
while they lived and all share something
in common after their deaths: Each was
honored by a memorial endowment fund
established by loved ones, contributed to
by friends and family, and appropriate to
preserve the memory of the way they lived.
Endowment funds are perpetual; they
serve as a solid foundation for the college,
which spends about five percent annually
on the purposes set out by those who establish each fund. The principal remains
intact and can grow through market performance or additional gifts to the fund.
For McClintock, who had won both the
geometry and the analytical mathematics
prizes as a student, the James R. McClintock (1965) Memorial Prize Fund was
established to permanently endow the prize
for analytical mathematics. For Kinzer, the
Kitty Kinzer Library Fund was established
to support all aspects of the library’s mission. For O’Grady, the William O’Grady
Fund was established to continue his work
helping students stay in school when financial concerns put their continued attendance in jeopardy. And for Tom McDonald,
a scholarship endowment established in his
name means need-based aid for students
who could not otherwise afford tuition.
These are just four of more than 400
funds that make up the college’s endowment, and they are among the roughly 10
percent that are memorial funds. These
funds serve both as tributes to the people
they memorialize and a way for their survivors to channel their grief and ensure
that a silver lining accompanies what is
usually a very dark cloud.
Dinesh and Jyotsna Pai chose to create
such a fund when their daughter Anjali (SFGI08) died in a traffic accident
“Anjali believed in paying
it forward. She felt that
knowledge was to be shared,
love was to be shared,
affection was to be shared.”
in March 2008, just a few months after
she finished her studies at the Graduate
Institute. Anjali was teaching in the AVID
program with the Santa Fe Public Schools
and preparing to move to Japan to teach
English. Her parents decided that the fund
should be used to support financial aid for
Graduate Institute students who plan to
become teachers. Her mother explains the
decision: “It’s not a profession that will
make anybody rich, it’s a profession of the
heart. And Anjali was all about heart.”
Lisa Boughter Saporta also chose to
create an endowment fund to honor her
husband, Larry Saporta (A91), a professor
of art history at Rosemont College in Pennsylvania. A few months after Larry’s death
in September 2011, Bryan Dorland (A92)
contacted her to suggest that they create
an endowment fund in Larry’s memory. “I
responded without hesitation that it was a
great idea,” she recalls. “It was a concrete
way to keep Larry’s spirit alive at an institution he cared deeply about. I knew it was
58 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014
one of the things we could do for Larry that
would be truly meaningful for him.”
It turned out to be truly meaningful
for Lisa as well, playing what she
describes as a tremendous role in
processing her grief. She decided that
the fund would support scholarships
for students who, like Larry, intend to
pursue a PhD after graduating from
St. John’s. After establishing the fund,
Lisa created a website for it (www.
lawrencelsaportaphd.org/memorial_
scholarship.php).
The Pais have also found that establishing the fund has helped them in their
sorrow. “Grieving is one thing, but keeping Anjali’s memory alive is even more
important,” says Dinesh.
Thanks to the permanence of endowment funds, every year, in perpetuity,
one student in Annapolis will be named
the Lawrence Saporta Scholar, and one
student in Santa Fe will be named the
Anjali Pai Scholar.
Lisa hopes that future Saporta scholars
will share Larry’s enthusiasm for St.
John’s College and his love of learning:
The Pais hope that Anjali’s values will
be transmitted along with the scholarship
that bears her name: “Anjali believed in
paying it forward. She felt that knowledge
was to be shared, love was to be shared,
affection was to be shared.”
�Lecture Fund in Memory
of Lieutenant Commander
Erik S. Kristensen (AGI00)
Erik S. Kristensen (AGI00)
June 28, 2005
An alumnus of the St. John’s
College Graduate Institute in
Liberal Education and the United
States Naval Academy, Lieutenant
Commander Erik S. Kristensen
died on June 28, 2005, while
he led a daring mission in
Afghanistan to rescue a four-man
SEAL reconnaissance squad
engaged in a firefight with Taliban
forces. LCDR Kristensen, seven
other SEALs, and eight Army
aviators were killed when their
helicopter was shot down. Four
soldiers fought courageously,
though only one survived. The
2007 book and 2013 film Lone
Survivor tell the story.
In 2013, Michael A. Zampella
(A92), a Navy Reserve
Lieutenant, founded a lecture
series, jointly sponsored by
St. John’s College and the
U.S. Naval Academy, to be
held annually at St. John’s
in Annapolis to honor LCDR
Class of 1963 Honors Curtis A.
Wilson with Endowment Fund
traditional for the 50th anniversary
of a class to make some contribution to the college to mark our
passage there,” note Class of
1963 alumni Robert Thomas and
Miriam Duhan in a letter to their
classmates. “One that everyone
felt we could rally around would
be some memorial or tribute to
[Curtis], whom almost all of us
knew and respected.”
Curtis A. Wilson
August 24, 2012
Tutor and dean, Annapolis
Inspired by his many contributions to St. John’s, and to scholarship in the history of science,
members of the Class of 1963
established a fund to honor the
memory of Curtis Alan Wilson.
Wilson was a world-renowned
historian of astronomy who twice
served as dean of St. John’s College in Annapolis. “It has been
The endowment will provide
funding for the prize awarded at
Kristensen’s memory. Known
for his great love of the arts
and literature, Kristensen spoke
French and was selected as an
Olmsted Foundation Scholar. He
planned to attend the Institute of
Political Studies in Paris after his
tour in Afghanistan.
Kristensen is survived by his
father, Edward K. Kristensen,
RADM, USN (Ret.), and his
mother, Suzanne Carrico Samsel
Kristensen, of Washington, D.C.
To make a gift to the Kristensen
Lecture Fund, send a check to
the college, or use the online giving
form for the Annapolis campus
at www.sjc.edu. (Select “other”
and designate the Kristensen
Lecture Fund.)
Commencement to the student
who carries out a fine laboratory
project. Members of the Class
of 1963 thought offering the
prize would recognize Wilson’s
devotion to the college and his
example of scholarship in the
sciences.
To read more about Curtis
Wilson, visit www.sjc.edu/news/
memoriam-wilson.shtml.
To make a gift to the Curtis Wilson
Scholarship Fund, send a check to
the college, or use the online giving
form for the Annapolis campus
at www.sjc.edu. (Select “other”
and designate the Curtis Wilson
Endowment Fund.)
About the St. John’s College Endowments
The college has three separate endowments that are composed of more
than 400 individual funds: one that benefits the Annapolis campus,
one that benefits the Santa Fe campus, and a common endowment
that benefits both. The total value of the funds as of June 30, 2013, was
about $145 million. Managed by the Board’s Investment Committee, the
endowment is invested in diversified products, from equities to bonds
to real estate; some alternative and hedge fund investments are also
included in the mix. For more information on the funds, please contact
Barbara Goyette (A73) at barbara.goyette@sjc.edu in Annapolis and
Victoria Mora at victoria.mora@sjc.edu in Santa Fe.
Milestone
Senior Gifts
The 2014 senior classes in
Annapolis and Santa Fe are
each leaving behind recordhigh class gifts, thanks to their
strong philanthropic spirit and
support from college staff and
alumni. The Class of 1984
offered a $2,014 tribute gift
when senior classes from both
campuses as a whole reached
84% participation. Board of
Visitors and Governors member Claiborne Booker (A84)
says, “When students both in
Annapolis and Santa Fe said
they wanted to raise money for
student scholarships, [several
of us from the Class of 1984]
had a thought: What if we could
do a little something in tribute
to them, some of whom are, in
fact, our progeny? At the very
least, we share that final digit
‘4’ with them, which means
we’ll see them at Homecomings
to come.”
Annapolis seniors raised
$13,792, which will be used to
create the Class of 2014 Scholarship Endowment Fund. Santa
Fe seniors raised more than
$7,100 for financial aid and
scholarships. Although 100%
participation has been reached
before in Santa Fe (Class of
2002), this was the first time
that 100% participation was
reached without a single caution deposit gift or pledge. Staff
on both campuses also offered
generous matching gifts.
The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 |
59
�alumni news
s av e t h e d a t e
Homecoming 2014
Annapolis
September 12-14
Santa Fe
September 19-21
Alumni Mentors Change Lives
Annapolis Career Services Director
Jaime Dunn with Hodson interns.
Homecoming 2014 is gearing up to be a fantastic weekend for
alumni. In addition to the annual Homecoming festivities—
seminars, banquets, dancing, student/alumni networking
events, and more—both campuses are commemorating special
occasions this year that will make your return to St. John’s
even more fun and memorable. Be a part of celebrating 200
years of the “Star-Spangled Banner” in Annapolis and 50 years
of great books in Santa Fe! Please join us and your classmates
as we celebrate and support St. John’s College. Online
registration will open in early June. A special rate is offered to
recent alumni. Reserve your lodging accommodations early.
Sarah Palacios and Leo Pickens,
directors of Alumni Relations
For more information:
http://alumni.stjohnscollege.edu.
Click on “Homecoming”
Annapolis Alumni Office
410-626-2531
Annapolis.Alumni@sjc.edu
Santa Fe Alumni Office
505-984-6103
SantaFe.Alumni@sjc.edu
60 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014
Many alumni who provide internships for St. John’s students find
the experience so rewarding that
it becomes a lifelong mentorship
opportunity. The Hodson Internship Program in Annapolis and
the Ariel Internship Program
in Santa Fe provide alumni with
such opportunities.
Each program offers stipends
ranging from $2,000 to $4,000
and encourages students to
gain practical experience while
exploring potential career
fields. Alumni-sponsored Ariel
opportunities include working
with Adam Braus (SF08) at his
new computer entrepreneurial
venture, 100State, in Madison,
Wisconsin and establishing
a self-sustaining community
garden at Fresno State University
with Christina Raines (A12).
Thirty-seven Hodson Internship Program grants were awarded for summer 2014, the most in
the Hodson program’s 14-year
history; students accepted 31 of
the awards. Hodson sites include
the National Prison Project
with the ACLU in Washington,
D.C.; the Center for Cognitive
Neuroscience in Philadelphia;
the Hainan Provincial Cultural
Heritage Research Association
in China; and Center Stage in
Baltimore.
This summer, four Hodson
interns will work with two
alumnae: Dr. Rachel Dudik (A02)
at the U.S. Naval Observatory
and Elisabeth McClure (A08) at
Georgetown University’s Department of Psychology in its Culture
and Emotions lab. Dudik, who
has hosted four Hodson interns
over the last few years, and McClure, who has hosted three, still
keep in touch with past interns.
McClure meets every few weeks
with Robert Malka (A15) via
Skype to analyze data for the
survey study he designed while
in her lab; they are hoping to
present the data as a conference
poster sometime in the next year.
McClure says that another former
Hodson intern, Liyu Jiang (A12),
stayed in her lab for nearly a full
year as a volunteer before returning to China. “She remains the
standard by which we judge research assistants,” says McClure.
“We often say, ‘For this task, we
would need a Liyu!’”
TEXAS SUPPORTS SUMMER ACADEMY
The Austin/San Antonio alumni
chapter, in an initiative led by
Kelly Bradford (SF79), Larry Davis
(SFGI87), and Paul Martin (SF80),
raised scholarship funds for six
high school students from the
East Central Independent School
District to attend this year’s
Summer Academy at St. John’s.
The chapter also plans to present
a complete 54-volume set of the
Encyclopedia Britannica’s Great
Books of the Western World to
one or more underclassmen from
the Austin/San Antonio area.
Does your alumni chapter
have a story to share? Please
send your stories to:
thecollegemagazine@sjc.edu
�alumni news
Alumni Association Board President Phelosha Collaros (SF00)
Truth by the Glass
“Alumni are passionate about making sure current students
have advantages they didn’t have in the past by providing
networking and mentorship opportunities. Alumni volunteers
also benefit by building their leadership and coaching skills,
the ability to recruit for their organization or industry, and
the satisfaction of helping someone achieve their goals.”
Piraeus 2014
Piraeus is offered several times
each year on each campus.
In Santa Fe on August 3-8,
Santa Fe tutors Jim Carey (Class
of 1967) and Marsaura Shukla
(A93) will lead five seminars
on selected Greek and Roman
Lives by Plutarch.
Tuition: $575 for seminars;
$250 for on-campus housing
and meals. Recent alumni
(graduates of the classes of
2003 and later) receive a 50%
discount on tuition.
Register online: https://
community.stjohnscollege.edu/
piraeus2014-august
CROQUET GOES GREEN
Kudos to the Annapolis Alumni Office, the student Environmental Club,
and Ted Canto, general manager of Bon Appétit Dining Services in
Annapolis! They took the initiative to make the annual Croquet match
an example of sustainability. “Our event sponsor, Waste Neutral, set up
several recycle stations around the front campus,” says Canto. “By the
end of the day, we recycled 4,000 pounds, about two tons, of products.”
During Homecoming 2013 in
Annapolis, Ruth A. Johnston
(A85), Michael Berger (A78), and
Jan Lisa Huttner (A73) signed
copies of their recent publications.
Berger’s Writing Well in School
and Beyond and Thoreau’s Late
Career and the Dispersion of Seeds;
Huttner’s Penny’s Picks: 50 Movies
by Women Filmmakers 2002-2011;
and Johnston’s A Companion to
Beowulf and Excavating English,
are available at the Bookstore.
GARY PIERPOINT
HOMECOMING
BOOK SIGNING
“Red wine is in the realm of
Apollo, white wine is in the realm
of Dionysus,” says August Deimel
(SF04) of Keuka Spring Vineyard,
New York, one of several alumni
winemakers at the second
annual Judgment of Annapolis
at In Vino Veritas on April 25.
Representing wineries from
California to New York, the event
also featured former tutor Abe
Schoener (A82) of The Scholium
Project; Dan Speck (A96) and
Paul Speck (A89) of Henry
of Pelham; Christina Turley,
daughter of Helen Turley, Class
of 1967, and John Wetlaufer,
Class of 1967, of Turley Wine
Cellars; Rory Williams (A07)
of Calder Wine Company;
and Zach Rasmuson (A95) of
Goldeneye. The group joined a
discussion on “Transparency,
Truth, and Terroir” and explored
the virtue of various grapes,
soils, and vines, as participants
tasted their wines. “A good wine
translates time and space,” says
David White, founder and editor
of the website, Terroirist.com; he
moderated the discussion.
The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 |
61
�johnnie traditions
History-Making Match
by Gregory Shook
For all its beloved nostalgia, the annual St. John’sU.S. Naval Academy Croquet Match on April 12 broke
a few barriers this year: Navy walked off with the
Annapolis Cup for the second year in a row. Spectators
donned hats as large and colorful as parade floats.
Leader of Togas
“As I thought about competition and what
it means at St. John’s, I became more concerned with making sure that everyone just
has a good time,” says Imperial Wicket Sam
Collins (A15) a junior from Fallsington, Pennsylvania. He admits that “it was “intense to
play such a close match again this year.”
Collins and Hector Mendoza (SF14) wowed
the crowd with a comeback shot that won
the only match in the Johnnies favor.
Secret Weapon
from Santa Fe
Certain Johnnie traditions still reigned:
alumni reunited with friends and
faculty, alumni from the Class of 1984
and Class of 2009 hosted friends in
courtside tents, the Freshmen Chorus
sang a spirited rendition of “St. John’s
Forever,” and the crowd of more than
4,000 spectators in festive attire—top
hats, seersucker, feathers, and pearls—
gathered for champagne picnics and
swing dancing. Imperial Wicket and
St. John’s junior Samuel Collins (A15)
led the charge against Navy after the
Johnnies revealed their uniforms: Greek
togas. Bursting through the doors of
Barr Buchanan, with mallets hoisted
in the air, the Johnnies greeted the
cheering crowd. “I wanted something
that would make a statement,” says
Collins. “The togas are a return to
our roots.” For nearly eight hours, the
Johnnies and Midshipmen jousted for
the Annapolis Cup, the longest match
since the rivalry first began. As the
sun set, the Johnnies lost 4-1, though
conviviality won the day.
Photos by Anyi Guo (A14)
62 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014
“Let’s make history!” says Hector Mendoza
(SF14), a senior from Tucson, Arizona, who
flew more than 1,600 miles to play with
the St. John’s croquet team. He played
an amazing game (he calls it “risky”)
and helped win the first match of the
day. “During my junior year in Annapolis,
I joined the team, along with this year’s
Imperial Wicket Sam Collins (A15), and fell
in love with the sport. I flew in the night
before, so I could help prepare the lawn on
the morning of the match. Croquet is the
best event at St. John’s.”
�Know Thy Neighbor
Navy Team Captain Midshipmen 1st Class
Ryan Lluy and Imperial Wicket Sam Collins
(A15) are comrades. “We played a match
or two against each other last year, so
we’re friendly,” says Collins. “He is a great
competitor and a good guy.”
Freshmen
Have Spirit, Too!
A newcomer to the team, Stephanie Hurn
(A17) (left) from Darien, Connecticut, made
the spirit-spot video for this year’s croquet
match. “It was a really great collaboration
and a lot of fun to make,” says Hurn. “We
were a bit nervous because we were doing
it a week before croquet, but we pulled
it together.” Visit: www.youtube.com/
watch?v=QlcVVQKiBc8
Design Champion
Daniela Lobo Dias (A13) was this year’s
winner of the annual 2014 Croquet
postcard/t-shirt design contest. “I wanted
to include the platypus, the unofficial
mascot at the Annapolis campus, as its
uniqueness and combination of many species suits St. John’s students quite well,”
says Lobo Dias, who plans to attend the
New York Film Academy this fall. Lt. Bobby
Schmidt, 28th Company officer, happily
accepts a t-shirt gift.
Navy’s Secret Weapon
Surprise! Navy alumnus, Dr. Ed O’Loughlin
from Hunt Valley, Maryland, has recently
begun mentoring both the Navy and the St.
John’s croquet teams. “St. John’s students
are a phenomenal group of men and women
who really get the idea of the sport—the
style, tactics, and play,” says O’Laughlin, who
invites the Johnnies several times a year to
play at his home croquet court. “It’s been a
wonderful thing to be involved with them.”
Feminine Touch
“Croquet is such a unique aspect of the St.
John’s life,” says Catherine Moon (A14) a
senior from Wolcott, Connecticut and one
of three women on the team of twelve.
“We just had a wonderful team dynamic
this year. We’re all close friends and like
doing things together outside of croquet.”
Mallet Man
Gary Dunkelberger, laboratory technician
in Annapolis and this year’s Prime Mover
(who has the honor of opening the
game with the first shot), handcrafts the
St. John’s team’s mallets. “I built nine
mallets last year and eight this year,”
says Dunkelberger. “I give the students
their choice of woods, weights, and sizes,
although all of the handles are made of
one wood (ash) and of a standard pattern.
A couple of players provided wood from
home, of familial/sentimental nature.
Those who purchase them treat them as
souvenirs of their St. John’s experience,
as much as sporting implements.”
The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 |
63
�st. john’s forever
Simian Souls
What are Annapolis tutors Peter Kalkavage, Eva
Brann (H89), and Eric Salem (A77) telling us?
“The occasion was the publication of our very
first Plato translation, the Sophist, in 1996 by
Focus [Philosophical Library],” says Kalkavage.
“We were supposed to do a ‘straight’ photo op by
the [original] Liberty Tree, but decided to ham
it up instead. There are three pictures, with each
of us taking turns being one of the monkeys.
Several years ago, I had them framed for us.”
64 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014
The trio of tutors collaborated on translations of
two of Plato’s other masterpieces, each of which
was published by Focus Philosophical Library.
In 2003, Brann, Kalkavage, and Salem translated
Phaedo, the great dialogue of Socrates talking
about death, dying, and the soul due to his
impending execution. In 2012, they translated
Plato’s Statesman, including an introduction,
glossary of key terms, and essay.
�eidos
“I never had a plan to be a photographer. I am
just an amateur. My punk friend in middle
school was into filming skateboarding and
encouraged me to get a film camera because
they were better cameras for less money. I
liked the feel of film and stuck with it. I
learned from the books of Ansel Adams. I have
photography to thank for nourishing my love of
science and laboratories. I developed a deep
connection with the darkroom at the college
and actually cried pretty hard when I left it. I
think its presence in my life is evident in my
work—the strange loneliness I felt while reading those difficult books, and the real struggle
to seek after things beautiful . . . . I am a photographer rather than a painter or a sculptor
because I love light and chemistry....Photographers are, at least in some way, operators
of machinery. I think photographers push the
boundaries of tools just like other artists. For
a photographer like me, luck is a big part of
the task: you cannot plan to stumble upon
something odd or intriguing. Since reading
War and Peace and some of the senior laboratory readings, I have come to appreciate
things that are beyond my own control.”
PHOTOS: From Etude for Freedom
by Adam Maraschky (A13). He
developed them in the college
darkroom, then self-published the
digital scans as a book. To raise
funds, Maraschky “jumped on the
Kickstarter bandwagon” and is
“grateful to all those who donated
to or encouraged the project and
hope they find joy in the images.”
In the Annapolis Admissions
office, there is a copy of the
book inscribed by Maraschky: “To
the prospective students of St.
John’s, may this book excite your
imaginations about the College.”
www.maraschkyphoto.com/
st-johns-college.html
�Non-Profit Org.
U.S. Postage
PAID
Annapolis, md
Permit N0. 120
Communications Office
60 College Avenue
Annapolis, MD 21401
ANYI GUO (A14)
ad d r ess se rv i c e r e qu est e d
�
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<em>The College </em>(2001-2017)
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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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Volume 39, Issue 1 of the <em>The College</em> Magazine. Published in Summer 2014.
The College
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College
The
summer 2013
•
S t. J o h n ’ s C o l l e g e
•
Annapolis
•
S a n ta F e
Copernicus
Imagination & Discovery
�from the editor
The College
is published by St. John’s
College, Annapolis, MD,
and Santa Fe, NM
thecollegemagazine@sjca.edu
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.
Editor
Patricia Dempsey
patricia.dempsey@sjca.edu
Contributing Editor
Gabe Gomez
Associate Editor
Gregory Shook
Art Director
Jennifer Behrens
Contributors
Anna Perleberg Andersen (SF02)
Chelsea Batten (A07)
J.H. Beall
Nutchapol Boonparlit (A14)
Erin Fitzpatrick (A14)
Charlotte Lucy Latham (SF02)
Jennifer Levin
Robert Malka (A15)
Paula Novash
Greg Recco
Henry Robert, Class of 1941
Design Consultant
Claude Skelton
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
ii | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013
On Copernicus
“�... I began to be annoyed that
the philosophers, who in other
respects had made very careful
scrutiny of the least details of the
world, had discovered no sure
scheme for the movements of the
machinery of the world, which has
been built for us by the Best and
Most Orderly Workman of all.”
Copernicus’s Preface and Dedication to Pope Paul iii
Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) was born in
Royal Prussia, a region of Poland. He studied at
universities in Poland and Italy and was, among
his many pursuits, a mathematician, astronomer, classicist, linguist, and economist. He
proposed a groundbreaking idea, in which he
upended Ptolemy’s observations with a heliocentric model that placed the sun, rather than
the Earth, at the center of the universe.
Copernicus’s book, De revolutionibus orbium
coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial
Spheres), was published in Germany during the
last year of his life; it was met with controversy
and debate, a resistance not so unfamiliar to
those who propose revolutionary ideas, even in
modern times. Copernicus’s heliocentric theory marked a fundamental shift in assumptions.
Although his model was not proven until later,
it “supplanted forever the former way of understanding our place in the universe,” notes Annapolis Dean Pamela Kraus. As Santa Fe Dean J.
Walter Sterling (A93) tells us, “The Copernican
revolution became both (partial) cause and icon
for Modernity and for the intellectual and spiritual revolutions that propel it,...”
In this issue, faculty consider Copernicus and
Ptolemy and how, at St. John’s, the sequence of
study requires of students “a combination of reasoning and imagination employed in a different
way than they are used to....” notes Dean Kraus.
Do such leaps of scientific insight rely on the
imagination? Annapolis tutor Jim Beall considers Ptolemy’s Almagest and Copernicus’s work
in his essay, “Imagination and Creativity,” noting that “for all its vividness and limitations,
imagination seems to go hand in hand with creativity.” The alumni profiled in the feature “Seeing Stars” would agree. They seek a “delicate
balance,” as U.S. Naval Observatory astronomer
Rachel Dudik (A02) says, with analysis and observation, instrumentation and imagination. Not
surprisingly, the technology at their fingertips is
sophisticated. Yet aspects of their work exploring
the cosmos have not changed since Copernicus’s
time: the deep curiosity to know more, the challenge of unanswered questions.
Can a black hole hurl across galaxies? Erin
Bonning (A97) contributed research to the
discovery of such a gargantuan “runaway.” At
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Kevin Parker (A79) creates futuristic simulations that allow
communications with satellites. Gabrelle Saurage (EC04) flies most evenings on the “Clipper
Lindbergh,” the largest airborne observatory in
the world. For Donna Contractor (SF82), celestial observations are woven into tapestries.
Copernicus had not only tremendous powers
of observation and the imagination and intellect to articulate his ideas, but also the courage
to be committed to them. This commitment,
along with “resiliency and a strong set of analytical skills,” says Harold Hughes (A84), senior
managing director at Alliance Bernstein and St.
John’s Board of Visitors and Governors member,
is among the qualities lauded in this issue by
visionary entrepreneurs.
In his essay, “Shadow of War,” Henry Robert
(Class of 1941) recalls a different kind of commitment: a fight for democracy and freedom. He
describes how the conflict in Europe was brought
to campus. At the other end of the generational
spectrum, Charlotte Lucy Latham (SF02) invites
recent graduates to candidly share—as she does in
this issue—their journeys: life after St. John’s.
Thank you to all those who have contributed
their time, talent, and insights to this issue.
Thank you, dear readers, for your letters and
stories! We heard from many of you, young
and old, who applaud The College’s new design
(it debuted with the Shakespeare issue) and
stories that celebrate St. John’s through the
voices of alumni, students, and faculty. Please
let us know how we are doing. I look forward to
hearing from you. —PD
The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 |
1
�su m me r 2 013
volume 38, issue 1
feat u res
page
16��
james kegley
Greenfield Library archives
NASA, esa
Donna Contractor, Tunnel Vision (detail)
From the thought experiments of Huygens or Einstein to
Copernicus’s model of nested circles with the sun at the
center, the very nature of thinking through a scientific
challenge involves the imagination. —Greg Schneider, tutor
departments
p a ge
2 4��
page
3 4��
Imagination
and Creativity
Seeing
Stars
Shadow
of War
Faculty members consider
Copernicus and a revolution
that required “bold, imaginative insight.” Images from
the Hubble Space Telescope
illuminate the universe.
Five alumni explore the
cosmos, whether observing
the birth of a star, detecting
phenomena in deep space,
coding satellites, even
weaving wool thread to
illustrate a theorem.
Symbols on a brick wall
during the 1940s spoke
louder than words. The
traces of a prank remain
visible today.
��From Our Readers
Bibliophile
42 �Alumni Notes
4
38 �Gary Borjesson, tutor, dissects the art
46 �Profile: Mimi Nguyen (A09) riffs
C
� opernicus Stories
�Letters
From the Bell Towers
6
E
� ntrepreneurs: The Value of Ideas
Harold Hughes (A84)
Dominic Crapuchettes (A97)
Jac Holzman (Class of 1952)
7 Visionaries: Robert Malka (A15)
8 �
Judgment of Annapolis
9 �Polity Radio: Jessica Kjellberg (A14)
10 �� onversations with the Chair
C
11
Starry Nights
12 �Ariel Intern: Bilsana Bibic (SF13) �
13 �
Ancients Google Earth
14 �
Investing in Banking: Gordon Seltz (A14)
H
� odson House Welcomes Alumni
on the cover:
Copernicus illustration
by Gary Kelley
2 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013
al u mni
15 �Mike McQuarrie: New Athletic Director �
Sarah Palacios: New Alumni Director
of friendship and the role of authority
in Willing Dogs and Reluctant Masters.
39 �Thomas Simpson (Class of 1950), tutor
emeritus, illuminates connections
among three thinkers in Newton
Maxwell Marx.
on identity and high fashion in the
blogosphere.
50 �Profile: David Drury (SFGI09)
deciphers Tocqueville in a mobile
classroom.
51 �In Memoriam
40 ��Ellen Dornan’s (SF93) Forgotten Tales
of New Mexico celebrates the rich
heritage of the Land of Enchantment.
�Tutors Eva Brann (HA89), Peter
Kalkavage, and Eric Salem’s (A77)
Statesman, the latest installment in
their series of Plato translations.
�
Richard McCombs on the irrationalism of Søren Kierkegaard.
54 �Philanthropy: Hallie Leighton (SF92)
and Michael Chiantella (A97)
55 Transitions: Charlotte Latham (SF02)
56 �Almuni News: Homecoming 2013
Johnnie Traditions
58 �Croquet: Johnnies Lost in Wonderland
60 � t. John’s Forever
S
Eidos
61 Ebby Malmgren (AGI88)
above: Rachel Dudik (A02) at the
U.S. Naval Observatory.
The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 |
3
�from our readers
Magical Moment
Explaining St. John’s is tricky,
whether to the world outside
(“great basketball team?”), to
our inner circle (“great books?”),
even—perhaps especially—to
ourselves (“what do we mean by
great?”). For me, it is Copernicus ,
or rather, the way we read him, that
embodies the Program’s essence.
us, that Earth is not the center
of the universe. That the Earth
is just another planet and that
all of us are moving around the
sun. And though it was but a few
years before the start of the third
millennium, with space shuttles
in orbit and a flag planted on the
moon, the suggestions came to us
as nothing short of a shock.
“�We shake our heads in disbelief that
Copernicus’ book was for centuries
banned by the Vatican, or that Galileo
was brought to trial for upholding similar
ideas. (“E pure muove, he muttered as
”
he trudged defeated out of court).”
Jennifer A. Donnelly (A96)
The sophomore reading list
is celestial, from Genesis to the
Almagest. In Santa Fe, where I
spent that year, the expansive sky
seemed to bring the heavens even
closer. As the summer became fall,
our mathematics tutorial resumed
the work on Ptolemy begun in
freshman year. Under the goodhumored guidance of our tutor
Mr. Pesic (who, rumor had it, had
discovered an element), we picked
painstakingly through the classic
model—Earth standing stock still,
sun, moon, and stars spinning
around it. Chalk dust drifted from
the blackboard and ink-stained
fingertips as all through winter
we drew circle after circle backing
this up. The premise was contrary
to the received wisdom of our day,
the geometrical manipulations
were long and complex—but they
worked.
Then spring rolled around,
bringing warm sun and De Revolutionibus. The title, already, was
suspect; and the contents between
the cover were revolutionary indeed: consider, Copernicus asked
In our day, the solar system is
a truth taught to schoolchildren.
We shake our heads in disbelief
that Copernicus’ book was for
centuries banned by the Vatican,
or that Galileo was brought to trial
for upholding similar ideas. (“E
pure muove,” he muttered as he
trudged defeated out of court).
But after the journey through
Ptolemy’s equants and epicycles,
the St. John’s scholar comes to feel
how a now commonly accepted
fact was once earth-shattering.
Soon enough, the effect wears
off and Copernican ideas become
acceptable—as they did, eventually, to the Vatican. But this return
to our familiar notions never
completely eclipses that magical,
fleeting moment when we saw
our world in a way contrary to the
ways we always believed it to be.
T.S. Eliot has written: “the end of
all our exploring / will be to arrive
where we started / and know the
place for the first time.” What better way to sum up St. John’s?
—Jennifer A. Donnelly (A96)
4 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013
copernicus haiku
not at some center.
more over here. with us guys.
now. how bad is that?
Charles Jones (A79)
Double Dactyl
This is the first double dactyl I
ever wrote. Inspired may be too
strong a word, but after all that
study of Ptolemy I was impressed
by the superior economy of the
Copernican hypothesis.
Tollemie, shmollemie.
Heliocentricists,
Sun down to sun up they
Reckon aright,
Save the appearances
With an hypothesis
Counterintuitiive,
Earth in its flight.
—Robert Main (A71)
Courage of Copernicus
I remember being fascinated in
sophomore math class by the nerve
(read “courage”) of Copernicus. I
also remember reading his description of motion, during which he
cites a passage from the Aeneid
that we had only just read for seminar. Coincidence? I think not.
But a couple of years earlier, I
had had the pleasure of visiting the home town of the man
himself—Torun, in the north of
Poland. They have his house, and
a monument to him at a central
square that bears the inscription,
“Nicolaus Copernicus Thorunensis, terrae motor, solis caelique
stator,” meaning, “Nicolaus
Copernicus of Toruń, mover of
the Earth, stopper of the Sun and
heavens,” or so Wikipedia tells me
today. I myself remember reading
back then, “Nicholas Copernicus:
he stopped the sun with one hand,
and moved the Earth with the
other.” Don’t ask me whether or
not I made that up. All I know is
that Copernicus got to hold the
universe on his fingertips in a way
that our smartphone-abundant
age cannot quite match.
—Nareg Seferian (SF11)
heather wilde (a09)
Readers Share
from our readers
Critical Thinking in Warsaw
I just returned from Warsaw,
Poland, setting up a new satellite
office, and went on a tour that
started at the Copernicus statue....
I’d never been anywhere in the
Eastern block, and I was surprised
by the people there. They had a
pragmatism that I associate with
their Russian neighbors; they were
able to explain the good and bad
of Communism without any hint
of shame. It was my own American
guilt that I had to drop at the door
when speaking to these phenomenal people.
Whenever I travel anywhere,
the way that I speak and phrase my
thoughts makes it hard for people
to immediately believe that I’m an
American. I’m able to argue any
point. ... People are amazed at the
seemingly unbounded knowledge
I have. I always point out that you
do not need to know about a topic
ahead of time to be able to discuss
it thoughtfully. I teach critical
thinking to everyone I can. That’s
what St. John’s means to me, and
that’s what I do for a living.
—Heather Wilde (A09)
allowed you to insert a location
and a date, so one of the things Mr.
Beall did was to input Alexandria,
Egypt around Ptolemy’s lifetime,
showing us what the stars could
have looked like at that time. But
the best part was that after resetting the date to the then modern
time, he asked the audience to
pick the location. My immediate
response (I can’t remember if I was
the first to speak—I want to say I
was) was to ask for the sun. That
was awesome: most planetariums
that I’ve been to were geocentric,
and I remember a few students
commenting how useful that’d
be when you got to Copernicus,
because you could switch back
and forth between having Earth
and the sun at the center. Another
popular request was Pluto, giving
you the ultimate outsider’s look
into our solar system (Man, are we
so tiny from that perspective). If
I remember right, there was even
a request to go onto an asteroid—I
can’t remember if we did that one.
—Babak Zarin (A11)
Good, Gooey Gravy
The best parts of lab at St. John’s
were the first year basics and
then our biology labs. First year
had all the magic and creativity
of the best learning experiences;
genuinely at work with material
which evoked ideas about both
the universe of “stuff” around us
and the principles inherent in all
this good, gooey gravey. Secondly,
Biology and the wonderful world
of dissecting frogs and pigeons—
plus the funky fruit flies—opened
up a whole world of awareness. It
profoundly deepened one’s sense
of the designs at work in nature.
As Melville wrote, one came faceto-face with a “dull blankness full
of meaning”; nature’s unceasing
change and infinite variety, an
order one had to learn to obey in
order to command.
Unforgettable. Great stuff.
Thank you!
—John Dean (A70)
Letters
An Exemplary Tutor
The new issue of The College
[Summer 2012] landed in my
mailbox. . . I like the new format
very much. In his Shakespeare
story on page 4, John Dean refers
to Mr. McGraw. I am certain that
he talking about Hugh McGrath,
whose name is pronounced “McGraw.” Mr. McGrath was indeed
an exemplary tutor with a special
gift for languages and literature.
After nearly 40 years, I remember
many of the things he said in my
junior-year language tutorial. He
deserves to be remembered under
his real name.
Jessica Weissman (A73)
A Minor Wonder
Before I put it in the recycling bag,
I wanted to send you this belated
note of thanks for the Summer
2012 issue. I appreciate not only
the color photos and illustrations,
but the quality of the articles. The
increased focus on alumni who are
doing outstanding and/or unusual
things will make the magazine a
better promotional tool for the
college. . . . Considering that St.
John’s is a small college and many
of its alumni, like myself, either
“march to different drummers” or
fall out of step and do not achieve
material affluence, The College is
a minor wonder.
—Kevin Snapp (SF72)
Praise Deserved
Congratulations on a very fine
Summer 2012 issue.... And thank
you, Mr. Kowalski (SF84) for your
class note (1994) on the acclaim
bestowed on your 1999 novel,
Eddie’s Bastard. The book was
read; it deserves the praise on the
cover and The Guardian’s citation.
—H.A. Hammond, Class of 1947
Choosing the Sun
Mr. Beall opened the planetarium
for students to see a demonstration
of the new planetarium software
that had just been installed. Seeing
as how I had missed going in my
freshmen and sophomore years, I
jumped at the chance . . . . The show
was fantastic. The new software
The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 |
5
�“�It’s amazing what happens
when the world understands
that you are committed
to something.”
Gary Pierpoint
A group of aspiring Johnnie entrepreneurs packed a forum during
Homecoming in Annapolis to talk with three visionary alumni: Harold
Hughes (A84), senior managing director at Alliance Bernstein, an
investment management company, and Board of Visitors and Governors
member; Jac Holzman (Class of 1952), record executive and founder of
Elektra Records; and Dominic Crapuchettes (A97), founder and copresident of North Star Games.
Harold Hughes (A84), Dominic Crapuchettes (A97), and Jac Holzman (Class of 1952) mentor students.
What are the skills and qualities needed to be a successful entrepreneur?
HH: You need to be relentless and willing
to take calculated risks. We often read stories about entrepreneurs who took ridiculously stupid risks [that] somehow work
out well. What we don’t hear about are
[endeavors] that failed. Resiliency, a strong
set of analytical skills, and the ability to
take calculated risks are so important.
JH: Most important for me is understanding what commitment is and making
it—not only to a project, but also to every
minute aspect of an idea. In the early
’70s, for example, I was given a finished
tape of the band Queen’s first album to
demonstrate a London studio’s [capabilities]. The band was going to sign a deal
with Columbia [Records], but they had
only committed verbally. I pursued them
relentlessly for three and a half months,
waiting for Columbia to drop the ball.
Ultimately, I was able to swoop in and sign
Queen to Elektra. To be a successful entrepreneur, you need to have a strong belief in yourself. Part of commitment is saying, “I’m going to pretend I’m right and
see how it turns out.” It’s amazing what
happens when the world understands that
you are committed to something.
DC: Being a Johnnie, when considering an idea, I look to Plato and Aristotle
and ask myself: What is the good? How
am I serving the community? With any
pursuit, it’s important to understand how
to bring value to the community and determine efficient ways to do [it]. To be an
entrepreneur requires commitment to an
idea, [which] usually takes considerable
6 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013
by Robert Malka (A15)
interpreter who has just bailed
from his scheduled appointment, or a prospective investor
has important questions about
our company’s financials.
Suddenly, everyone (including
me) forgets I am a student as I
rush out the door.
Jac Holzman, Class of 1952,
founder, Elektra Records
time—sometimes 10 to 15 years—to come
to fruition. Fundamental skills such as
understanding finance, accounting, and
marketing are also essential.
Why do Johnnies excel as
entrepreneurs?
HH: In order to be a good entrepreneur,
a person needs to have the ability to make
decisions sometimes without having all
the data. Johnnies have a strong set of
analytical skills based on their deep understanding of truth and ethics, not just
right and wrong, but the laws of nature.
Business school offers one equation and
one variable. Entrepreneurs need to make
decisions using multiple variables. Johnnies are adept at making [such] decisions.
I’ve been in my career for 29 years, but I
know that in another 29 years, my job may
not exist. I’ve trusted my decisions to stay
[in a position] or move on.
JH: Listening is something Johnnies typically do quite well. It took me a long time
to learn how to listen because I have so
many ideas, but it has been so important
to me. My St. John’s experience was the
perfect incubator. I did a lot of listening [because my] class had a number of
seasoned [World War II] veterans who
had seen a lot of life. I’ll never forget the
opening question at the first seminar: Do
you think Achilles wanted to die to achieve
immortality on the battlefield? One of the
veterans started talking about [his experience at] war, and I learned to respect the
real-life grounding they had. I had grown
up [in New York City] in a protected environment, so for me, being a Johnnie was
about shedding that and connecting with
the world. Connecting with the world is
the seed of our entrepreneurship.
DC: Johnnies are really good at learning how to solve problems and to work
through them in order to determine a best
course of action. For someone interested
in a start-up venture, success is dependent on one’s ability to work well with
other people. For example, my business
partner and I partnered with a company
that went bankrupt, and they owned the
rights to all our games. I maxed out three
credit cards to win back our inventory.
That was a huge risk, but I felt I could
declare bankruptcy and start over if I had
to. Fortunately, sales went very well, and
our leap of faith paid off.
Anyi Guo (A14)
Entrepreneurs:
The Value of Ideas
(Trying) to Live the Great Books
What advice would you give to
budding entrepreneurs?
HH: At a time when so many people
emphasize service to society, there is a
feeling that making money is evidence of
a lack of service. But that’s not always the
case. While Frederick Smith was a student at Yale, he wrote a paper that became
his business plan for Federal Express. He
received a low grade on that paper, but
he persevered and found something that
serves society’s need.
JH: An important aspect of entrepreneurship is knowing when to let go. Follow
your instincts. Trust yourself and don’t be
afraid. Pursue an idea because you love
it, and hope that others will see its value.
You may inspire others to accomplish
things. You never know how it’s going to
turn out. [At the forum,] I was impressed
by the student interest. The idea to put
the plaque up between the two dorm
rooms I had at St. John’s was great.
DC: I’m an advocate for finding your passion. In business, it may take three to five
years to develop a brand and work out the
kinks. If you lack passion for what you’re
doing, you’ll run out of steam and likely
give up. Focus on adding value to others.
Any good business is serving the community, which Johnnies do well. Determine
what the community needs, and provide
value in the most efficient way possible.
Read more: www.stjohnscollege.edu/admin/
AN/careers
– Gregory Shook
My first don rag included a
warning to fix an early bad
habit: I kept walking out of
class to take phone calls. I had
to be in class, I was told, if I
wanted to learn something.
Since then I have rarely, if ever,
left class to answer a phone
call. So it goes.
Now I am a sophomore, and I
still run a telecommunications
company that I co-founded with
my mom and a fellow Johnnie,
Zeke Schumacher (A15). I
work full-time. (The immediate
relevance of those calls speaks
for itself.) Our company, Malka
Communications Group, Inc.,
provides a number of communications solutions for the
Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing, such
as mobile-phone data plans
and interpretation services.
For example, an office with a
Deaf employee or client can
download our app onto an
iPad, which allows him to dial
one of our interpreters, who
mediates between both parties
remotely while both clients
are in the same room. We are
also an international consulting firm that cooperates with
several countries to implement
communications services for
their Deaf populations.
This business venture was
a natural choice for me, a
Child of Deaf Adults (CODA).
In addition to learning sign
language, I grew up in and
Of all the issues I
must face, maintaining my role as a
serious, committed
student is the hardest. It can be jarring
to jump from the
quiet solitude of
reading Chaucer to
lobbying European
Union Representatives via Skype.
around Deaf culture, my first
home. I am protective of
that culture. I have also been
interested in business since
childhood; when I was twelve,
I tried to create a card game
company and almost made it.
At seventeen, I was on the way
to founding a non-profit to help
provide legal services to the
disenfranchised, but lacked the
infrastructure and experience.
Juggling my business and St.
John’s can be overwhelming,
especially since headquarters
are located in my hometown
of Los Angeles. I often wake
up early to catch up on work
from the evening before,
wolf down lunch, and have a
“morning” meeting by noon.
Several times, I have been in
the fray of a great discussion
in the coffee shop when my
phone buzzes. An employee
asks me what to do about an
Of all the issues I must face,
maintaining my role and image as a serious, committed
student is the hardest. It can
be jarring to switch gears from
negotiating contracts with
vendors to allocating money
as a student on the Delegate
Council, or to jump from the
quiet solitude of reading Chaucer to lobbying European Union
Representatives via Skype.
Why do I stay at St. John’s?
Because running a company
requires understanding people
and motivating them toward
a fleshed-out vision. To do so,
I must know how to listen,
articulate, and think critically.
St. John’s has taught me these
skills very well.
“But,” says my inner Devil’s
Advocate, “valuable skills or
not, you seem to be missing the
point of St. John’s. Why are you
running a company when you
are supposed to contemplate,
and be otherwise immersed
in the Johnnie bubble?” Good
question, Devil-Friend. On one
level, this is my income, and
on another, it’s my life. But
more than that, I seek to live
the Great Books. For me, that
means more than just discussing and thinking about them; it
means doing Good in the world.
Why wait, if I can do my best
to live them now? I love the
learning that we do together at
the College, but I cannot do it
without also giving back to the
community.My education feels
incomplete without it.
Although eventually I want to
move on to other ventures,
this business niche has a
special place in my heart, and
the experience will continue
to change me for as long as I
pursue it. I think I can say the
same thing about St. John’s,
itself a niche venture with a
special place in my heart.
To reach Robert Malka:
(818) 943-7350
or rjmalka@gmail.com
The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 |
7
�from the bell towers
from the bell towers
New
Pathways
briefly quoted
In Your Dreams
Recently, the St. John’s alumni Facebook
page was buzzing with comments from
Johnnies who have all had the same
reoccurring dream: they are in the
basement of McDowell Hall, unable to
open their mailbox.
“Glad to know I’m not the only
Johnnie with that dream. The
schedule, the mailroom...and
the tutor who is disappointed
because you haven’t been to
class in months.”
—Edward Conway (SF00)
“�OMG, I have the same mailbox/class
schedule dream too! That and the one
where I show up on the last day of
math class and haven’t done the
readings all year.”
—Hillary Fields (SF97)
Carroll Barrister’s
School Spirit
Considering that the Annapolis campus was
the site of a Civil War camp and hospital, it
is no surprise that for decades, students and
staff have reported seeing ghosts, including
soldiers and a shadowy cloaked figure, on
campus and inside the historic buildings.
On June 14, Carroll Barrister reopened its
doors as home to Admissions. How do
the spirits feel about the renovation? They
declined to be interviewed.
Dr. James Schamus (a81),
CEO of Focus Features
and professor of professional
practice at Columbia University’s
School of the Arts,
2013 Commencement speaker,
Annapolis
The Judgment of Annapolis
You’re traveling through another dimension—a journey into a
wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination.
Your next stop: Polity Radio!
© Mary Ella Jourdak/maryellajourdak.com
“� am highly entertained that I’m not the only
I
one with this dream! What’s really funny is
that I almost never dream about the dorms,
dining hall, boathouse, classrooms, etc.
But that MAILBOX gets me constantly!”
—Cindy Lutz-Spidle (A98)
Read more at:
www.facebook.com/stjohnscollegealumni
What is Chris Nelson (SF70), Annapolis
president, reading to Cady, the college
dog? Let us know:
thecollegemagazine@sjca.edu
Polity Radio
Breaks New Ground
Gregory Shook
o f f t h e wa l l
“For if you’re just out there
blindly and instinctively
reacting to stuff, you’re
definitely not free; you’re
an automaton or a mere
animal . . . . whether or not the
world will always be able to
make use of you, the world
needs you—thinker-doers,
doer-thinkers, genuinely free
human beings.”
Johnnie winemakers gathered on April 5 for the
third annual In Vino Veritas wine event, organized
by The Friends of St. John’s. From left: August
Deimel (SF04) of Keuka Spring Vineyards in Penn
Yan, New York; Zach Rasmuson (A95) of Goldeneye Winery in Philo, California; Abe Schoener
(A82) of The Scholium Project in Fairfield, California; Sue Bishop (AGI03) of Bistro Freres Wines
in Arnold, Maryland; Alex Kongsgaard (SF05) of
Kongsgaard Wine in Napa, California; Christina
Turley, daughter of Helen Turley (Class of 1967)
and John Wetlaufer (Class of 1967) of Turley
Wine Cellars in Templeton, California. Evan Frazier
(SF04) of Kongsgaard Wine is not pictured.
8 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013
The two-day event led with the Judgment of
Annapolis, a reimagining of the Paris Tasting of
1976 that put Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars (founded
by Warren Winiarski, Class of 1952) in Napa
Valley—and California wines—on the map. A
wine-paired reception, with a dinner created by
renowned Baltimore chef Jerry Pelligrino, followed at the home of President Nelson. Johnnies
kept the wine and conversation flowing the next
day in the Francis Scott Key Lobby, where alumni
and other noted winemakers talked about
their craft, and poured and discussed nearly
100 wines and craft-brewed beers arranged by
country of origin.
With the launch of the premiere
episode last May, which featured
a dramatic reading of “The TellTale Heart,” on-campus music
and bands, and a radio serial
starring a St. John’s vigilante superhero, Johnnies have entered
new terrain. And the response
has been “overwhelmingly
positive,” says Jessica Kjellberg
(A14), producer and co-founder
of the college’s first-ever online
radio program. She also serves
as the program’s creative
director, bringing together segments that reflect the diversity
of the students who submit
them. Other segments include
readings of essays and poetry,
music, student-written radio
dramas, and more drawn from
the college community. The
fall 2012 episode featured a
candid interview with Annapolis
President Christopher Nelson.
“Some students just walk in
and do something spontaneous,” says Kjellberg. “Others
help by lending their ears and
offering opinions. We want to
be mindful of the listener.”
“� wanted to create
I
a forum that is fun
and entertaining
but would
foster greater
communication
between students,
tutors, and staff.”
Jessica Kjellberg (A14),
producer and co-founder of
Polity Radio
Kjellberg, who is considering a
possible career in journalism,
has discovered hidden talent of
her own through Polity Radio.
“I learned how to edit on the
first episode,” she says. That
D.I.Y. spirit is at the core of the
radio program and its group of
dedicated student organizers.
“We set up the equipment
ourselves and do a lot of problem solving,” says Kjellberg,
undaunted by teaching herself
new skills and figuring things
out as she goes. “Being Johnnies, we’re pretty comfortable
working with systems that are
unfamiliar.”
The idea for Polity Radio came
to Kjellberg while working as
an admissions tour guide at
the Annapolis campus during
summer break. “It was the
first time I really took notice
that there was a much larger
community here beyond the
students and tutors,” says
Kjellberg, who approached
fellow classmate and Polity
Radio co-founder Robert Malka
(A15) with her idea. “I wanted
to create a forum that is fun
and entertaining but would
foster greater communication
between students, tutors, and
staff,” she says.
Kjellberg hopes that the radio
program will continue to grow
after she graduates. “I don’t
see it as an end in itself,”
she says. She envisions the
program someday developing
into a live, on-air radio station,
but for now, she’s focused on
the program’s primary mission. “Polity Radio is valuable
and needed. It’s indicative of
ideas of the polity as a whole,”
says Kjellberg. “Everyone is
encouraged to be part of the
conversation.”
Listen to Polity Radio at
polityradio.wordpress.com.
–Gregory Shook
An award from the new Pathways Fellowship will help Adam Maraschky (A13)
decide which branch of chemistry he
wants to pursue after he graduates from
St. John’s. “The Pathways Fellowship
provides funding and enables rising St.
John’s juniors and seniors and graduating
seniors from both campuses to transition
into graduate study or careers that call
for special or prerequisite work,” says
Jaime Dunn, director of Career Services
at the Annapolis campus.
Maraschky will use his award to study
organic chemistry courses at the University of Maryland in College Park. In the
summer of 2012, Maraschky received
a Hodson Trust internship grant and
spent three months studying plasmonic
solar cell technology at the University of
Maryland. “In my case, organic chemistry was a bit of a dream,” says Maraschky,
who took AP chemistry courses in high
school. “I wanted to take the course
before attending St. John’s because I like
thinking about the shapes of molecules
and the energetics of reactions.”
With a Pathways Fellowship, students
can spend their summers gaining specific prerequisites and knowledge, and
immerse themselves in their St. John’s
education during the academic year.
“My plan for now is to spend two years
doing more undergraduate course work
while researching and working, then apply for a master’s program in materials
engineering,” says Maraschky.
—Nutchapol Boonparlit (A14)
briefly quoted
“I am quite sure that
everything we do—consciously
or unconsciously—makes
a difference. Every act of
kindness and every act of
cowardice. There are always
consequences. It has been said
that if anything matters, then
everything matters.”
Jill Cooper Udall,
member, St. John’s College Board
of Visitors and Governors,
2013 Commencement speaker, Santa Fe
The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 |
9
�from the bell towers
Hello, dear friends. I am
never too old for games.
This year, the night before
Croquet, there was a
“thunder-battle.” The
term comes from
chapter IX of J.R.R.
Tolkien’s The Hobbit, and
nothing better describes
the explosive downpour
that hung in Annapolis
until the late hours of the
night. It was ominous, a
warning that it would be
a long battle for the Cup
with an unhappy end. Nevertheless, Croquet Saturday
dawned with clear skies.
at St. John’s College
AN INTELLECTUAL
ADVENTURE
for High School Students
More than 145 students
from around the world
immersed themselves in
Summer Academy 2013 in
Santa Fe and Annapolis.
Learn more: www.stjohnscollege.edu
Starry Nights
Conversations
with the Chair
“She was looking about for
some way of escape, and
wondering whether she could
get away without being seen,
when she noticed a curious
appearance in the air: it
puzzled her very much at
first, but, after watching it a
minute or two, she made it
out to be a grin, and she said
to herself, ‘It’s the Cheshire
Cat: now I shall have somebody to talk to.’”
-Alice, Alice’s Adventures in
Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
Do you know
a student
who belongs
at St. John’s?
Let us know.
annapolis :
admissions@sjca.edu
or 410-626-2522
santa fe :
admissions@sjcsf.edu
or 505-984-6060
10 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013
That morning I was called
upon to aid in seminars on
Alice in Wonderland (chapter
VII, “The Mad Tea Party” and
chapter VIII, “The Queen’s
Croquet Field”). I listened to
chair sitters ponder Alice’s
journey and her interactions
with the Mad Hatter, the Dormouse, the Queen, the King,
and the Cheshire Cat who
after Alice is my personal favorite character. Admittedly,
this could be because I, like
so many others, identify with
Alice: the dizzy journey Alice
takes, a tumble in which
language seems almost nonsensical, the logic puzzling,
but where the games are
fun in their intricacy. Indeed,
my own journey has been
filled by the characters of my
sitters, quite a few of whom
that day were already in their
Gatsby-esque seersucker
(something I confess I wish
to see more of: the Jazz Age
was closer to the fashion of
my childhood).
By noon, the Croquet match
popped open like champagne. Unlike Alice’s match,
there were no warring
hedgehogs, no flamingo
mallets that flew away, no
human-card arches, and no
complaints that people were
not attending to the rules
of the field. And unlike the
Chesire cat, Cady (the college
dog) was well behaved.
Sadly, the thunderous omen
of the night before came
true: the match went on and
on and on, a great “thunder
battle” between the Imperial
Wickets. You know the rest.
Within moments, my wall
on Facebook was filled with
anguished cries –“sobs” and
“scowls” and “will wonders
never cease”– followed by
jokes that the loss required
a new drinking policy and
athletic director. Thankfully,
no one followed the example
of the Queen of Hearts in
calling for beheadings.
I must admit a kind of quiet
welcome of the fact: there is
no shame in the Naval Academy winning a round once a
decade; the match becomes
more interesting when the
result isn’t a predetermined
given. After all, look at Alice
and her adventures. —JC
(www.facebook.com/johnnie.
chair)
On clear evenings after seminar, Johnnies
experience firsthand the deep fascination
that humans across the centuries have
had with the night sky. From Ptolemy
to Newton and Copernicus to Kepler,
the stars and planets have played an
important role in the study of not only
astronomy but physics and theology.
“Astronomy addresses the question of the
Whole,” says Margaret Matthews (A14),
archon of the Astronomy Club on the Annapolis campus, “which are implications
for everything else we learn in the world.”
The Astronomy Club conducts not only
stargazing but also planetarium shows
for classes and community members who
are interested in learning more about the
motion of the heavenly bodies. “Anybody
NASA, esa, hubble space telescope—Taken Under the “Wing” of the Small Magellanic Cloud
Summer
Academy 2013
from the bell towers
“�Astronomy addresses the
question of the Whole,
which are implications for
everything else we learn
in the world.”
Margaret Matthews (A14), astronomy archon
who wants to come and look at the stars is
welcome,” says Matthews. “We invite all
guests to join us.”
By witnessing and understanding the
laws that govern the motion of the stars,
we can better comprehend the laws that
govern everything from the orbits of a
planet to the path of a falling stone. The
planetarium shows offered by the Astronomy Club provide students with the
opportunity to observe these phenomena
directly, seeing what Ptolemy saw in the
night sky over Ancient Greece. “By placing
Earth at the center, Ptolemy is thinking
of the heavenly bodies themselves as they
appear to an observer on Earth,” says
tutor Nicholas Maistrellis.
During planetarium shows, archons
guide students through various motions of
the stars, replicating many of the observations that early astronomers made in their
studies. They host special shows for freshmen when they begin to study astronomy
in their second semester. Students are
introduced to the motions of the stars that
Ptolemy uses as references so they can
grasp the line of reasoning he pursued
in developing such ideas as epicycles and
eccentric motion.
Stargazing hosted by the Astronomy
Club is open to all members of the community. “In the winter, we saw the Andromeda Galaxy. In the spring, we see Saturn,
Mars, and a bit of Venus,” says Matthews.
Archons are always present to help visitors
learn how to use and operate the telescope.
“It takes a lot of practice and patience to
become familiar with the various stars and
constellations, but it helps to be curious
and have a sense of wonder.”
briefly quoted
“We must have intellectual
bravery, that is, the
courage to push forward,
to continue seeking truth
even in the face of doubts
about its very existence....
St. John’s has given me the
tools: the ability to listen,
think, speak, write, and
ultimately act.”
Grace Tyson (ao13),
speech to The Caritas Society, April 2013
—Nutchapol Boonparlit (A14)
To learn more visit: www.stjohnscollege.edu/
admin/AN/observatory
The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 |
11
�from the bell towers
from the bell towers
Bilsana Bibic (SF13):
Ariel Internship at
the United Nations
How the Ancients
Googled Earth
Bilsana Bibic (SF13)
One of the more unique structures on both the Annapolis and Santa Fe campuses is the Ptolemy stone, an
ancient Greek tool used to measure changes in the motion of the sun at apogee. “Ptolemy is one of the very
earliest to take something that seems very complicated
and reduce it to rational and comprehensible ideas,”
says tutor Nicholas Maistrellis. “The Ptolemy Stone has
only one function: it allows you to measure how high
the sun rises at noon. By doing so, we can measure how
quickly or slowly the sun orbits around the Earth.”
gabe gomez
Inspired by her life experience and activities at St. John’s, Bilsana Bibic (SF13), a senior from Montenegro, has chosen a career
in international relations and development, focusing on immigrant and refugee
rights. “My country was very involved with
refugees during the war in Kosovo,” says
Bibic. “Refugees especially have problems with traveling documents and basic
necessities for life. There is also the issue
of education, to prepare students to face
the world with a necessary set of skills.” In
addition, she hopes to fight unemployment
in her country and internationally.
Bibic became interested in international
relations and conflict resolution as a high
school student at the United World College
in Costa Rica, where she lived with people
from 80 different countries. At St. John’s,
she served on the Student Review Board,
building upon her skills by participating
in mediation. That experience helped
prepare Bibic to address opposing views
and face challenging questions “without
being paralyzed by fear,” she says. “You’re
not just an observer. You learn that you
can’t know everything on your own, that
you need a community to see the openings
for improvement.”
To prepare for her career, Bibic took on
Rousing production of Kiss Me, Kate
Artist-in-Residence Roy Rogosin (SFGI09) directed Santa Fe campus students, alumni, and staff in a
rousing, fully-staged production of Cole Porter’s Kiss Me, Kate in the Great Hall last December. The
Tony Award-winning musical involves the often amusing difficulties encountered by a troupe of players
performing a musical version of William Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew. At the center of the
conflict is Fred Graham, the director, producer, and star, played by Sidney Velasquez (SFGI14), and his
leading lady and ex-wife, Lilli Vanessi, played by Elizabeth Hyde (SF16). Pictured are members of the
company. Back Row: Sidney Velasquez, Elizabeth Hyde, Joseph Muse (SF16), Cody Winning (SF12), Hania
Stocker (SF12), Dana Relue (SF15), Ruochen Bo (SF14), and staff member Susan Kaplan. Front row: Yue
Gong (SFGI13), John Panagiotidis (SFGI14), Hope Lang (SF15), Roy Rogosin, and Melissa Balch (SFGI14).
two significant projects last summer that
also allowed her to work on current, pressing problems. During her Ariel internship
at the United Nations in New York, she
worked one-on-one with the Ambassador
of Montenegro on his mission and agenda.
“I really got to see what it means to represent my country and how we represent
ourselves to the world—what our priorities
are, what we’re looking to gain from the
international community. Since we became independent from Serbia, we’ve had
to learn how to develop a country based on
democracy. A true republic, I suppose.”
Using the pass that came with her internship to attend many U.N. meetings, Bibic
gained a broad perspective on the needs
and interactions of many nations.
Before heading to New York, Bibic
joined three other Johnnies in the Republic of Georgia to work on a Project for
Peace with high school students who were
affected by Georgia’s civil war, a conflict
that remains unresolved. The Johnnies
held seminars for the participants as a
prelude to a political conference where the
teens discussed new ways of looking at the
civil conflict with refugees and representa-
12 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013
tives from government and NGOs. In seminars, they read and discussed the Oresteia,
focusing on questions of war. They also
studied history, took conflict resolution
training, and visited refugee camps to see
what it was like to live under such conditions, witness the consequences of war,
and learn from the refugees’ stories.
These experiences opened the teenagers’ eyes. “At the political conference,”
says Bibic, “the adults were a bit hostile
because they didn’t think the kids had
the right to ask them questions about
the conflict. A proud moment for our
team” occurred, she says, when one girl
explained “they’d been learning about
conflict resolution and the importance of
listening, and it really hurt them that the
adults weren’t giving an example of that. A
lot of Georgians still blame Russia for what
happened during the civil war, and the kids
asked if the conflict could be resolved without Russia. I think the people there were
very impressed with their approach.”
—Jennifer Levin
“It’s very important for studying Ptolemy,” says Nino Benashvili (A16). “It’s what we use to measure the angle
of the sun relative to the Earth.” Ptolemy states in the
Almagest that the sun’s highest point in the sky changes
during the year due to its angular orbit around the sun.
This slanted revolution is what causes the differences in
length of daylight and determines the seasons.
Freshmen in math tutorials in Annapolis can study a
smaller version of this phenomenon through a twelveinch wooden model called the armillary sphere. Built
by St. John’s College craftsman Gary Dunkelberger, the
model uses a set of rings to illustrate the differences in
the revolutions of bodies around the Earth. The lateral
ring represents the motion of the heavenly spheres; an
angular ring represents the motion of the sun. “Ptolemy’s universe can be very hard to imagine, so the
armillary sphere gives you a three-dimensional model
of the whole thing,” says Maistrellis. “You can actually
use the Ptolemy Stone in correlation with the armillary
sphere and information from the Almagest to find your
location on the Earth.”
– Nutchapol Boonparlit (A14)
talk of the tow ers
This spring, four longtime tutors at the Annapolis campus, Deborah Axelrod, Nancy Buchenauer, Nicholas Maistrellis, and Jonathan
Tuck, have formally retired. Students, faculty,
and staff gathered on April 24 in the Great Hall
for a ceremony to honor their combined 150
years of dedicated service to the college.
Two new tutors have joined the faculty at the
Santa Fe campus. Marsaura Shukla (A93) joins
the college from the University of Chicago where
she received her PhD in theology. Raoni Padui
comes to the college from Villanova University
where he received his PhD in philosophy.
In Annapolis, four new tutors have joined the
faculty. Sarah Stickney (A04) joins the college
from Johns Hopkins SAIS Center in Bologna,
Italy, where she was also a Fulbright Scholar. She
received her MFA in poetry from the University
of New Hampshire. Brendan Boyle comes to the
college from the University of North Carolina
in Chapel Hill, where he taught classics. He
received his PhD from the Department of Classics at the University of Chicago. Leah Lasell
(SFGI04), who received her BA in mathematics
from the University of Chicago and her PhD in
philosophy from the University of Texas, taught
mathematics at St. Paul’s School in Concord, N.H.
Christine Lee joins the college from the
University of Bristol. She received her PhD in
political science from Duke University.
Terry McGuire (HA12), assistant to the dean
and a 44-year staff member at the college, was
named an honorary alumna.
briefly quoted
“At St. John’s, we acquire
the skill of interacting with
other people’s minds. By
not restricting ourselves to like
minds, we discover what’s
weak about our minds
and what’s really strong
about them.”
Hannah Crepps (SF13),
interview with The Santa Fe New
Mexican, May 17, 2013
The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 |
13
�from the bell towers
Michael McQuarrie:
Gordon Seltz (A14) credits his interest in
business and economics to his experience
with the math tutorials during his freshman and sophomore years. “For math, we
have this logic-based system that we use to
explore and explain the world,” says Seltz.
“Economics is simply taking that a step
further by applying it to human behavior.
By doing so, we can see how business and
finance affects us in very real ways.”
Seltz, who plans to pursue an investment-banking career, was awarded funding by the Hodson Trust and interned last
summer at George K. Baum and Company, a middle-market sized investmentbanking firm in Denver. “Economics
is an amalgamation of political factors,
environmental factors, and business
factors,” says Seltz. “It’s an abstraction
of everything working together, similar
to the liberal arts program at St. John’s
where we see all the subjects as being interconnected. Economics is a field where
that mentality is carried on.”
“I was responsible for research, taking
aggregate data, analyzing it, and putting it in a logical and comprehensible
format,” says Seltz. “I was also in charge
of monitoring the market and updating
various databases. There was a lot of opportunity for learning by osmosis.” Seltz
recalls how, as an intern, he was asked to
do calculations to update the database for
the firm. “The executive vice president
asked me to consult an analyst about how
to do them. The analyst wasn’t there. So
I found the document where the calculations were already done and sort of
reverse-engineered it to find the formula.
It is similar to what we have to do in a St.
John’s math tutorial: we have to figure
“�Economics is... an
abstraction of everything
working together, similar
to the liberal arts program
at St. John’s where we see
all the subjects as being
interconnected.”
The Hodson House-Carroll Barrister
House project was funded by gifts from
the Hodson Trust and by a grant from
the State of Maryland. Extensive new
landscaping, including four gardens and
new seating areas, are also featured
in the space between Chase Stone,
Pinkney, and the new building.
out how one gets from a general question
to a specific answer. My St. John’s education helped me adapt to this completely
foreign and new environment.”
This summer, 34 students received
funding through the Hodson Trust
Internship Program. They will work at
organizations such as the U.S. Naval
Observatory, the Library of Congress,
and the University of Chicago’s Institute
for Mind & Biology.
Gary Pierpoint
Hodson Intern
Investing in Banking
Representatives from the Hodson Trust
and the Board of Visitors and Governors,
along with Annapolis faculty and staff,
gathered to dedicate the new Hodson
House on June 21. Its modern, urban
design blends seamlessly with its historic surroundings. The building houses
the Advancement Office and the new
Alumni Center. Featuring a seminar/
meeting room as well as administrative
and faculty offices, the Hodson House
served as a temporary space for the
college’s Admissions staff, which moved
out of the Carroll-Barrister House while
it underwent a full renovation that was
completed in June. The Carroll-Barrister
House, originally constructed in 1722
and located on Main Street in Annapolis, was moved to campus in the 1950s.
This major renovation is the first since
then. The newly refurbished Admissions
Office will provide a welcoming first stop
on the campus for the college’s visitors
and prospective students.
– Nutchapol Boonparlit (A14)
14 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013
Hodson House, home to the new
Alumni Center
New Athletic Director
in Annapolis
Lauds Amateurs
Among many pleasant surprises since
joining the St. John’s faculty, new Annapolis Athletic Director Michael McQuarrie
discovered a collection of old photos and
records of the college’s sports history.
In the 1880s, when St. John’s had more
intercollegiate teams, the college played
basketball and football against McQuarrie’s alma mater. “I was going through
all these old records, and I saw photos
of Elon University. I thought, ‘St. John’s
College really played Elon? How long ago
was that?’”
programs, thinking that students need that
push. At St. John’s, students don’t require
that push quite as much, if at all.”
Previously McQuarrie was the director
of recreation at the New School in New
York City. At this university containing
seven different colleges, “much of my job
entailed marketing and advertising, simply making sure the college community
knew what was happening in the athletics
program,” he says. Dedicated to creating
and continuing programs centered on
students’ needs, McQuarrie essentially
built the New School’s athletic program
from scratch; he focused primarily on the
intramural program and clubs as opposed
to competition with other schools. It
prepared him well for St. John’s. “When
I first started, I said to one of the gym
assistants, Eric Shlifer (A13), that I love
“�I’ve worked and been a
student at schools that claim
to be student-centered,
but that term takes on new
meaning at St. John’s.”
gary pierpoint
Katie Matlack
Hodson House
Opens Its Doors
Since his arrival last summer, McQuarrie has grown increasingly appreciative of
the student-centered athletics program
at St. John’s. The fact that Johnnies are
often proactive in their education—from
tennis to Tchaikovsky to Tocqueville—has
been a refreshing but not entirely surprising discovery. McQuarrie, who grew up
in Montgomery County, Maryland, was
drawn to St. John’s largely because of how
athletics are taught here. “I’ve worked and
been a student at schools that claim to be
student-centered, but that term takes on
new meaning at St. John’s,” he says. “At
other colleges and universities, administrators, faculty, and staff usually manage
amateur athletics,” says McQuarrie.
“He replied, ‘Well, you’re going to love
it here!’ My role is to be here for the
students and to be able to, as best I can,
produce the [results] they want.”
As an athletic director, McQuarrie best
serves the college community by being
“flexible, understanding, and above
all, an educator. Anyone who works at
a college is an educator,” he says. Not
surprisingly, mentors have played an
important role in his athletic and intellectual development. “When I was a kid,
my mom was my baseball coach for three
years,” says McQuarrie. “During college,
I had two sociology professors, one at
Elon University and one at the University
of North Carolina at Greensboro, who
taught me how to teach and how to help
students learn.”
—Erin Fitzpatrick (A14) and Gregory Shook
New Alumni Director
in Santa Fe is a
Johnnie at Heart
Anne Staveley
from the bell towers
Sarah Palacios,
the new director of
Alumni Relations at the
Santa Fe campus, has a
Johnnie-like spirit. This
winter she participated
in Piraeus in Santa Fe,
where the focus was on
Dante’s Inferno. Aside
from loving the reading
and the discussion, Palacios was thrilled to receive feedback from an alumna who stated that
if she had not known Palacios wasn’t a Johnnie,
she never would have guessed. An avid reader
who cites Jane Austen and Thomas Hardy
among her favorite authors, she also looks forward to re-reading works such as Oedipus Rex.
Originally from Pojoaque, New Mexico, Palacios
previously served in alumni relations at her
alma mater, Stanford University, where she
worked with young alumni as well as in student
development. Palacios recognizes the importance of reaching out to what might be referred
to as the “future alumni” population. “In alumni
relations, we have four years to help current
students create a love for and connection to the
St. John’s community,” says Palacios. “You’re an
alum for far longer than you were ever a student. You’re an alum for the rest of your life.”
Palacios welcomes the opportunity to be
working for a small, private college. “Private
colleges have more unified communities,” she
says. Seminars and alumni events, such as
Piraeus and the alumni-student ski day, have
helped her get to know the St. John’s alumni
community. “I can learn so much from alumni,” says Palacios. “I invite everyone to reach
out to me, even if I haven’t had the chance to
reach out to them yet. Send me an e-mail, or
call, or drop by the office. My door is open.”
Palacios earned her bachelor’s degree in cultural psychology with an emphasis on American Indian identity; she also has an MBA from
the University of New Mexico. She hopes that
her research on the challenges encountered
by first-generation college students, specifically minority students, can benefit St. John’s.
Her background will also be useful in
understanding the varying needs of alumni.
Palacios says, “I get the sense that no matter
how long it’s been since alumni have been to
St. John’s for a visit, they step on campus and
it feels like home.”
—Jennifer Levin
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Imagination
and
Creativity
by J. H. Beall
Imagination and creativity seem at first gloss to be positive
things that hold high sway in the court of modernity. They are said
to be responsible for much of the good in our lives and the source
of the relative comfort in which the majority of us can live. These
claims are, to my mind, true. Given the high regard in which these
terms are held, it is of interest to investigate them in some detail.
Exploring the Cosmos:
Faculty members
consider Copernicus and
a revolution that, to be
understood, requires
“careful observation,
study and reflection and
bold, imaginative insight,”
notes Annapolis Dean
Pamela Kraus.
opposite: A barred spiral
galaxy was captured in
spectacular detail in this
image taken by the orbiting
Hubble Space Telescope.
Superimposed over the
photo is Copernicus’
diagram from 1543 of the
movement of the planets
around the sun—a page from
De Revolutionibus Orbium
Coelestium, published the
same year.
photos: courtesy nasa, esa,
the hubble space telescope.
16 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013
As the word suggests, imagination seems
to be associated with an image that one
can hold in the mind, like the “picture” of
a cat or a unicorn. But the idea of imagination can be extended beyond that of a
simple picture. In Psychology: The Briefer
Course, William James talks about the different kinds of imagination. For example,
he catalogs an “auditory imagination”
that can be as delightful as “Fingal’s
Cave” or some terrible tune that keeps
reprising itself in one’s head, mewling
like a hungry cat, but for no good reason.
My favorite example in James’s work is
the kinesthetic imagination. Anyone who
has ever seen a friend (or especially one’s
child) fall down and felt the shock of it for
themselves has had the experience of the
kinesthetic imagination.
There is also a species of imagination
that James doesn’t directly address. Most
of us have felt it when we are alone, walking at night. It’s that strange feeling that
makes us afraid to turn around and look
behind us, dreading what we suppose to
be there. The vividness of this experience
is much like a kinesthetic occurrence. It
can be quite arresting—and not particularly positive.
James is quick to point out that the
imagination is of different degrees for
different people. In some individuals,
it is remarkably vivid, and in others, it
is barely a capacity. To illustrate this,
imagine three “dots,” like dots on a
piece of paper. Now imagine four dots.
Now imagine five. Now imagine seven.
Now imagine thirteen. At some point for
most of us, the image gets fuzzy. Yet it is
easy to think about the number seven or
a million or 106. This by way of analysis.
It is not my intention to cast aspersions
on the imagination or to say that it is not
powerful in some ways. To say the least
of it, imagination is a complex subject.
Eva Brann’s wonderful book, The World
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imagination and creativity
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The introduction of Copernicus, which follows, presents
another kind of imaginative
challenge, to return to the
familiar assumption that the
sun is the center. Students have
to revolutionize their thinking
twice, then, once to register
the appearances and imagine
them accounted for through
Ptolemy—this is an undoing
of a former opinion; and then,
again, to take stock of the revolution through Copernicus. They
are in an optimum position to
appreciate and even appropriate the fuller meaning and
consequence of the Copernican
revolution—that to understand
the appearances, or our experience, however fundamental,
requires careful observation,
study and reflection, and bold,
imaginative insight.
How do we encounter
Copernicus in the program of
study at St. John’s?
This study of Ptolemy continues into the fall semester of
the sophomore mathematics tutorial, as his account
becomes more complex in
order to address the various
positions of the planets, which
do not appear to travel in an
uninterrupted circle around the
earth. We focus on the motions of Venus. After that study
we turn to Copernicus, whose
account revolutionizes astronomy, since it replaces the
geocentric with a heliocentric
model. Although the account
was not finally proven until
later, after the telescope was
invented and certain measurements could be taken, it supplanted forever the former way
of understanding our place in
the universe.
This is an important sequence
for our students. The astronomy sequence in these years
first restores the appearances,
that is to say, our experience,
to a kind of primacy; and then
students begin to appreciate
Ptolemy’s achievement, how
he combined the observed
regularities of the heavenly
bodies, representing them and
accounting for their movements through geometry.
This requires in our students
a combination of reasoning
and imagination employed in
a different way than they are
used to.
Ptolemy then proceeds to turn the world upside down. He applies
his mathematical knowledge to the motions of the heavens, a
region between the Earth and the divine.
of the Imagination: Sum and Substance, is an intensive consideration of the topic.
Imagination for all its vividness and limitations seems to go hand in hand with creativity.
This was brought to mind recently when my
niece, an accomplished photographer, posted
an image of a deer track on Facebook with the
footprint oriented upside down. That is, the inverted deer track—filled with water in the soft
earth—looked “heart-shaped.” She posted the
image on Valentine’s Day with an appropriate
caption. This simple re-orientation of an existing image now had a new aspect, a new meaning
for someone looking at the picture.
This bears on the question of what creativity actually is. In certain glosses, the word can
suggest creation “ex nihilo,” which in the Latin
means literally “out of nothing.” One can think
of the Prime Mover in Aristotle’s Physics and
Metaphysics, or the Lord’s “Let there be light”
from the Old Testament. In Aristotle’s case, the
example clearly shows that the essential source
of motion has no antecedent cause. And clearly,
God has no cause beside itself.
But this interpretation of the word “creativity” might be too strict. In the case of the photograph of the deer’s footprint turned upsidedown, the new aspect that is revealed brings
together a particular image with a particular day
and a particular set of associations. It connects
an image with an understanding. This is essential for coming up with something new.
18 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013
Ptolemy’s Almagest and Copernicus’s work
are particularly fine examples of this more general idea of creativity.
In Ptolemy’s case, as students at the college
discover in the second semester of the freshman
year, there is a metaphysical justification for using mathematics to discover the regularity behind
the flux of experience. Ptolemy begins with Aristotle’s division of the “theoretical [sciences] into
three immediate genera: the physical, the mathematical, and the theological.” Ptolemy despairs
of finding the regularity behind physical things,
those below the lunar sphere, since they are too
changing and complex. In addition, he believes
theological science is too high, too transcendent
for us, being related as it is to Gods or Prime Movers. Yet the mathematical is within our grasp, and
Ptolemy has Euclid’s Elements to show the truth
of that. Yet there is little or no motion in Euclid’s
Elements. Ptolemy, however, proceeds in a way
worth quoting whole cloth:
And therefore meditating that the other two
genera of the theoretical would be expounded
in terms of conjecture rather than in terms of
scientific understanding [emphasis mine]: the
theological because it is in no way phenomenal
and attainable, but the physical because its matter is unstable and obscure, so that for this reason
philosophers could never hope to agree on them;
and meditating that only the mathematical, if
approached enquiringly, would give its practi-
−Pamela Kraus, Annapolis dean
The Heart of the Whirlpool Galaxy
The freshman mathematics
tutorial spends much of the
academic year studying Euclid’s Elements, going through
many of the propositions in
its twelve books. In the spring
semester, the tutorial turns attention to Ptolemy’s Almagest,
the work that assumes that
the earth is at the center, and
ends the year by introducing
Ptolemy’s geometrical account,
concentrating on his account
of the sun.
tioners certain and trustworthy knowledge with
demonstration both arithmetic and geometric.
. . . [W]e were led to cultivate most particularly
. . . this theoretical discipline” (Almagest, trans.
by R. C. Taliaferro, University of Chicago Press:
Great Books edition, 1952.
Ptolemy then proceeds to turn the world upside
down. He applies his mathematical knowledge to
the motions of the heavens, a region between the
Earth and the divine. This bears on his fascination with circles, since the most manifest motion
of the sky is the rising of the Sun in the east and
its setting in the west. More properly, there are
also the uniform circular motions of the “fixed”
stars that Ptolemy uses as his elements to show
this underlying order behind the flux of experience. As such, Ptolemy’s Almagest is the forerunner of every modern physical theory.
Of course, “saving the appearances” by
showing their underlying regularity in spite of
manifest variations requires a bit of artifice, and
Ptolemy’s theory is a fine example of such amplification. The point here is that he took elements
he already knew from Euclid and from his own
One of our Socratic hypotheses
is that to come to know for
oneself, even just to inquire for
oneself, presupposes recognition of one’s own ignorance, i.e.
our knowing that (or what) we
do not know. In many respects,
our “knowledge” that the earth
revolves around the sun is the
paradigm specimen or occasion for breaking open our too
easy confidence in what we
know. What we think we know
is counter-intuitive (it appears
that the sun is moving and we
and the earth are still). It does
not seem to be derived from
our everyday experience (or our
ways of talking: the sun rises
and sets). Furthermore, most
of us cannot “replicate” or even
narrate the body of theory and
evidence and experimentation
that have gone into this knowledge. Under cross-examination,
it seems that we are trusting in
the authority of others: books,
scientists.
Now, at St. John’s, we do
“cross-examine” this knowledge (and we do replicate
or narrate its history and
development). It turns out to
be a long and hard question
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imagination and creativity
Q&A
as to what would decide the
issue between a geocentric
and heliocentric “hypothesis”
or “theory.” As I understand
it, it is not until the nineteenth century (roughly 300
years after the publication of
Copernicus’s theory) that some
astronomical measurement or
observation appears to weigh
decisively in favor of the Copernican theory.
The comparative study of
Ptolemaic and Copernican
astronomy (and its later
development) is one of the
most powerful introductions
to the hidden questions of
the philosophy and history of
science. It is probably the most
significant and the most telling
case of the problems associated with science’s “ascent”
from appearance to reality, as
well as the most telling case
of the problems associated
with relating mathematical
models to nature and natural
phenomena.
–J. Walter Sterling, Santa Fe dean
The Copernican revolution
became both (partial) cause
and icon for modernity and for
the intellectual and spiritual
revolutions that propel it. Kant,
very famously, analogized his
philosophical revolution in the
Critique of Pure Reason to the
Copernican revolution. This icon
has meant different things for
different thinkers: a defiant challenge to received authority, philosophical and theological, in favor
of one’s own reason (this may
be seen as “political” as well,
e.g. with Galileo’s trial and his
alleged “And yet it moves”); the
displacement of Man from the
center of the cosmos (or the loss
of a “center”), a displacement
that arguably undermines Biblical cosmology, or Providence; the
abandonment of “naïve” observation; the movement toward a
consistent mathematical physics
of matter in motion, freed from
religion and metaphysics; the
paradigm for the indefinite and
open-ended revision of scientific
theory. And so on.
Spiral Galaxy NGC 3370
Hubble’s Sharpest View of the Orion Nebula
The point is not to generate
a fixed skepticism among
our students or faculty, nor
to rehabilitate geocentricism,
but rather to bring to the fore,
for our conscious study and
reflection, a variety of hidden
assumptions that lurk behind
our everyday knowledge or our
tacit acceptance of scientific
knowledge. How do we apply
mathematical models to
“physical” phenomena? How
do we “save the appearances”? What kinds of arguments
or evidence can persuade us of
the truth of a physical model
or theory? Can such theories
be “proven” at all? The “facts,”
or the “appearances,” admit of
various interpretations. What
criteria are most important in
adopting one over the other—
predictive power, coherence
and consistency, elegance or
beauty, theological argument,
physical argument, mathematical argument?
Did Copernicus change
scientific thought?
–J. Walter Sterling, Santa Fe dean
Copernicus’s inversion from a geocentric to a heliocentric model
of the universe still required something other than simple circles,
which led him to place an epicycle at the center of the Sun.
and others’ observations of the motions of the
sky, and brought those together to give us a new
understanding of the regularity behind the appearances of the world. Ptolemy’s epicycles are,
of course, the key part of the model.
One of that model’s complexities is the assumption that Venus’s and Mercury’s epicycles are
centered on the Sun. This in turn is necessary
because of the observations that Mercury and
Venus never exceed certain angular distances
from the Sun.
For example, when Venus is the “evening
star” (that is, when it is in the sky after sunset),
it gradually attains a greater and greater distance away from the Sun, a phenomenon especially noticeable because Venus is so bright. The
maximum angular distance of Venus from the
Sun—Venus’s maximum elongation—is around
20 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013
44 degrees, so that when Venus is at maximum
elongation after sunset, it is remarkably far from
the Sun. Yet immediately after this, it begins to
approach the Sun again, eventually moving past
the Sun in order to lead it across the sky, thus becoming the “morning star.” Mercury is the only
other planet that has this apparent association
with the Sun, although Mercury’s maximum
elongation is much smaller at 15 degrees of arc.
Ptolemy seeks to explain these observations by
placing each of the planets on an “epicycle,” a circle upon which the planet moves as the center of
the epicycle moves in a perfect circle around the
center of the Earth. In the special case of Venus
and Mercury, the center of their epicycles is tied
to the position of the center of the Sun, as the Sun
moves around the Earth. For Mars, Jupiter, and
Saturn, the centers of their epicycles have no spe-
cial relation to the Sun. Ptolemy uses his model
to explain the special motions of each of the planets, but makes an ad hoc assumption about where
Venus and Mercury’s epicycles are centered, albeit an assumption required by observation as it
manifests itself in his theory. That is, there is no
explanation arising from Ptolemy’s model that
explains the special status of Venus and Mercury.
It is precisely this sort of complexity that Copernicus seeks to address with his heliocentric or
Sun-centered model in his work, On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres. By placing Earth as
the third planet after Mercury and Venus, Copernicus gives a natural explanation not only for the
maximum elongations of Mercury and Venus, but
also for the retrograde motion of Mars, Jupiter,
and Saturn, without resorting to epicycles.
Yet Copernicus’s inversion from a geocentric
(Earth-centered) to a heliocentric model of the
universe, while it solved the problem of the maximum elongation of Venus and Mercury and the
retrograde motions of the “outer planets,” still
required something other than simple circles,
which led Copernicus to place an epicycle at the
center of the Sun.
Of course, Newton’s interpretation of Kepler’s laws provided a simpler explanation still:
an inverse-square force law for the attraction
of the planets, and a force directed to the Sun’s
center. Newton’s model saved the appearances
by placing the regularity in the understanding
and not in the imagination.
In these examples, creativity and imagination
have more modest poses. They help us rearrange
the elements given to us by experience (or our
predecessors’ observations and theories) into a
new understanding of the ever-changing flux of
experience before us. At the heart of this fluence
are certain “regularities” which we now call
physical laws and theories. These relate matter,
time, motion, and our experiences with a mathematical regularity that is truly remarkable. And
even if the day-to-day world seems like shadows
on a cave wall, the regularities we have begun to
notice suggest an underlying structure and light
from which these shadows are cast.
Visit Jim Beall, Annapolis tutor, on Facebook
for daily astronomical postings.
He presented the first modern
account of a unified, systematically arranged planetary system
revolving around the sun. The
world no longer is what it looks
like. There is now a split between
being and appearance. Perspective and relative motion enter
as major players in physical
science.
--Peter Kalkavage, tutor
Was imagination essential
to a scientist such as
Copernicus?
Absolutely. It is a real challenge
to the imagination to think that
perhaps this world upon which
we are standing is moving! And
that the sun is standing still! It
takes even more imagination
to grasp how what we seem to
see can be explained on those
grounds. It takes almost as
much imagination, however, to
think that the world is round,
and that the sun is millions of
miles away, larger than the earth
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But in addition to all this, Copernicus’s system did not make any better predictions than Ptolemy’s, and it
was also not primarily based on new
evidence. (He was before the telescope: new evidence did not begin
to pour in until Galileo.) Perhaps Copernicus’s most important argument
is that in his theory, the solar system
makes more sense as a whole, as a
system: and that argument appeals
powerfully to the imagination. Ptolemy’s planets were not related to
each other in any satisfying way; he
analyzed each separately. It wasn’t
even clear which were closer to the
sun. In Copernicus, the planets are
all locked into one easily imaginable
whole. The relative sizes of the orbits and their arrangement is more
satisfying to the intellect because it
is so graspable by the imagination.
--Henry Higuera, tutor
Imagination was indeed essential
to Copernicus, as it was for all the
astronomers who came before
him. We cannot stand outside the
cosmos to see its scheme. Nor
can we perform experiments on it.
We can only observe, and based
on our observations, formulate
hypotheses that are true to what we
observe. This is where imagination
comes in—as the power of devising
hypotheses.
--Peter Kalkavage, Annapolis tutor
It strikes me that many aspects of
science involve imagination. For
the sake of argument, let’s define
imagination as the faculty or act of
forming ideas or conceptions using
images beyond what is present to
the senses. Though scientists rely on
the senses for observations and in
experimentation, many of their ideas
involve an imaginative act. From the
thought experiments of Huygens or
Einstein to Copernicus’s model of
nested circles with the sun at the
center, the very nature of thinking through a scientific challenge
involves the imagination.
--Greg Schneider, tutor
Mathematical astronomy is the most beautiful application of
mathematics to the visible world. The heavenly bodies exhibit
an unsurpassed regularity in their motions. Chance seems to be
either absent or negligible. The heavens are deeply connected
with the divine—with theology. — Peter K alkavage, tutor
Why is astronomy included
in the Program?
We don’t do “astronomy” as a
subject. To be frank, I think that
what we do is string together brilliant excerpts by three or four very
great thinkers (Ptolemy, Copernicus,
sometimes Kepler, and Newton) who
treated astronomy. These works and
their authors are worth appreciating
on their own and comparing each to
each on many levels: geometrical,
logical, imaginative, methodological,
and even theological.
Ptolemy, Copernicus, and Newton
each give different answers as
to why we study astronomy. As a
college, we think that each is worth
taking seriously.
--Henry Higuera, tutor
Mathematical astronomy is the most
beautiful application of mathematics to the visible world. The heavenly bodies exhibit an unsurpassed
regularity in their motions. Chance
seems to be either absent or negligible. The heavens are deeply connected with the divine—with theology. Also, mathematical astronomy, to
a greater extent than other sciences,
brings to the fore the curious thing
we call a hypothesis. It also gives
us an opportunity to discuss what it
means to “save the appearances.”
Ancient thinkers, especially those
influenced by Pythagoras, believed
that mathematical astronomy was
good for our souls. Mathematical
astronomy is the effort to think of
the visible world in its wholeness.
--Peter Kalkavage, tutor
You will probably get many different
answers to this question. Among
the various reasons that occur to
me, one is that astronomy was
included among the original liberal
arts. To be an educated human, you
had to know something about the
22 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013
cosmos of which we are a part. To
the ancients, the heavenly spheres
were eternal, so contemplating their
motions was a way to reflect upon
the eternal. And even the ancients
acknowledged that astronomy has
practical features for agriculture, for
navigation, etc. In the introduction
to On the Revolutions of Heavenly
Spheres, Copernicus himself argues:
“Unquestionably the summit of the
liberal arts and most worthy of a
free man, it is supported by almost
all the branches of mathematics. Arithmetic, geometry, optics,
surveying, mechanics and whatever
others there are all contribute to it.
Although all the good arts serve to
draw man’s mind away from vices
and lead it toward better things,
this function can be more fully
performed by this art, which also
provides extraordinary intellectual
pleasure.”
Also, what are we to make of the
sun’s not really being at the center
of the earth’s movement? The “center” in Copernicus is a mathematical
average of the centers of all the
non-concentric planetary orbits. Also,
what physical assumptions does
Copernicus have to make in order to
reject Ptolemy’s arguments against
a moving earth, and how secure is
the ground for these assumptions?
What physically must be going on in
a sun-centered cosmos? Is the sun
somehow a cause of motion? Why
are the planets (and now the earth)
moving at all? And why in circles?
In our world of atomic clocks
and light-obscured night skies,
my students and I have less daily
contact with the heavens. We tend
not to think of the eternal or the
gods when we look up at the stars,
but looking at the motions of the
sun and the planets and the moon
raises many fascinating questions
about motion, mathematics, and
physics, not to mention our place in
the order of things.
To me, Copernicus occupies this
fascinating place between Ptolemy
and Kepler. He retains Ptolemy’s reverence for circles while being willing
to take the bold step of asserting a
sun-centered universe. Why does he
insist on circles and spheres in his
model?
--Greg Schneider, tutor
Describe an opening question
on Copernicus that still
fascinates you.
Why is Copernicus not more bothered by his little epicycle, the radius
of which in effect reduplicates the
eccentricity of the equant? How big
a problem is it that the orbit that
results from this little epicycle is a
circle that has a slight bulge, or, as
Copernicus puts it, “differs imperceptibly” from a circle?
Another important and persistent
question is the following: Has the
meaning of “hypothesis,” and of
“saving the appearances,” changed
in the transition from Ptolemy to
Copernicus?
--Peter Kalkavage, tutor
--Greg Schneider, tutor
Is there a certain proposition
or mathematical element of
Copernicus’s work that amazes
or puzzles you? Why?
It puzzles me why Copernicus, who
boasts of having more systematic
unity than Ptolemy, doesn’t say more
about the sun’s not being the mathematical center of the system.
--Peter Kalkavage, tutor
Active Galaxy Centaurus A
itself, which Ptolemy already argued
for. In this way Ptolemy was also “a
scientist such as Copernicus.”
tutor views
Related to the last question, as a
predictive model, Copernicus’s approach turns out to be less accurate
than Ptolemy’s. Both rely on circles,
but Ptolemy’s arrangement gives
remarkable results in predicting the
positions of the planets, compared
to Copernicus’s model. This fact has
always puzzled me. It raises intriguing questions about what makes a
scientific model more compelling or
powerful, from its predictive features
to its agreement with experiment to
its more aesthetic features.
With regard to a specific proposition,
his proof of the immensity of the
heavens compared to the size of the
earth in Chapter Six for some reason
fascinates me. It relies, to some extent, on lines drawn from the center of
the earth and from a point on its surface, seeming, at immense distances,
either parallel or the same line. The
proof anticipates some things that
Newton does much later and highlights interesting ways in which our
sense experience does or does not coincide with a mathematical portrayal
of the same phenomenon.
Perhaps Copernicus’s most important
argument is that in his theory, the solar
system makes more sense as a whole,
as a system: and that argument appeals
powerfully to the imagination.
— Henry Higuera, tutor
--Greg Schneider, tutor
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23
�Seeing
Stars
Most of us gaze at the night sky with the naked eye or a backyard telescope, yearning
to know more. These Johnnies have pursued, with deep curiosity, answers to the
mysteries of the cosmos. Using sophisticated instrumentation, they are observing
and recording celestial phenomena in far-flung galaxies, communicating with
satellites that observe Earth, bringing their Johnnie imaginations to the puzzles of
binary black holes, and illustrating mathematical theorems with thread.
“�Instrumentation remains
‘a delicate balance’
because you need to
know what the question
is before constructing a
means to an answer.”
Charting the Cosmos:
Rachel Dudik (a02)
is a Star Detector
—Rachel Dudik (a02)
by Anna Perleberg Andersen (sf02)
photos of Rachel Dudik by James Kegley
In Plato’s Theaetetus, Socrates tells a humorous anecdote
about Thales of Miletus, often considered the first philosopher
proper in the Greek (and hence the Western) tradition.
24 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013
Thales, he claims, was so focused
on looking upward at the stars
one night that he fell down a well,
prompting a servant girl to laugh
at him “because he was so eager
to know the things in the sky that
he could not see what was there
before him at his very feet.” We
have no way of ascertaining how
much of this tale is true, of course;
it has been suggested that Thales
was in the well on purpose, knowing he’d be able to see the stars
better through such darkness.
The story illustrates how closely
philosophy has been linked to
astronomy since the beginnings of
both—from Aristotle and Ptolemy
to Newton and Copernicus.
So it’s no surprise that the field
of astronomy attracts Johnnies—
although it’s not a career that
Rachel Dudik (A02) ever expected.
Growing up in central Pennsylvania, Dudik “was good at math and
science,” she says, “but I really
liked art and literature.” Now she’s
an astronomer employed by the
Department of Defense at the
U.S. Naval Observatory (USNO) in
Washington, D.C, surrounded by
dyed-in-the-wool stargazers, most
who “knew they wanted to be
astronomers from the time they
were seven,” she says. “So they
were out with a telescope looking
at the constellations; I was in my
room drawing.”
During her senior year, Dudik attended a lecture on black holes by
Shobita Satyapal, a professor at
Virginia’s George Mason University.
She was immediately (forgive the
pun) sucked in by “the fact that
there were these massive things
lurking out there in the centers of
galaxies and that their presence
could only be observed through indirect means. Also, I just like very
powerful exploding things.”
Dudik’s lab tutor, Jim Beall—also
an adjunct professor at GMU at
the time—arranged this lifechanging lecture. He describes
Dudik today as an “intelligent,
resourceful, and accomplished
scientist.” In 2002, Beall recommended her for Satyapal’s summer internship at GMU immediately after graduation. When the
university began to offer doctorates in astronomy, they actively
recruited St. John’s students—an
unusual resource for the so-called
“hard” sciences. Dudik was one of
these initial recruits: “There were
two Italians and three Johnnies,”
she recalls. In January 2009, she
became the first to earn a doctorate from the new program—a
PhD in Physical Sciences with a
concentration in physics and astronomy. (The program has since
changed slightly.)
“Going from the Socratic method
to advanced coursework in modern
physics wasn’t an easy transition,’”
she recalls. Although she took a
few undergrad astrophysics classes
to get up to speed, Dudik attributes her success to the program’s
chair, Maria Dworzecka, who was
a strong supporter of St. John’s students, and Satyapal, who became
The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 |
25
�Rachel Dudik (A02) is
on a quest to increase the
precision with which we
chart our universe.
knowledge of astronomy. Dudik
needs to understand some engineering to guide their work, as she
must decide what the detector is
supposed to do and how to make
it happen. Instrumentation remains “a delicate balance,” Dudik
says, “because you need to know
what the question is before constructing a means to an answer.”
Dudik’s advisor. As a graduate of
Bryn Mawr, Satyapal understood
the liberal arts approach to math
and sciences. “She was an amazing advisor for someone with my
background,” says Dudik. “It was
like I hadn’t left home.”
“�You need to catch
every single light
particle, and not
confuse them with
According to Dudik, modern astronomy can be roughly subdivided anything else.”
into three spheres: observation,
theory, and instrumentation. During her graduate studies, which
included a fellowship at NASA’s
Goddard Space Flight Center, she
concentrated on observation, using
astronomical data to investigate
how black holes are formed. A layperson might imagine a figure in
a white lab coat, squinting through
the eyepiece of a telescope and
taking furious notes. Today, however, a camera, spectrometer, or
other device far more precise than
the human eye plays the role of
squinter, and the telescope itself
might be in space.
Because data is only as good as
the instrument that gathers it,
ever more sensitive (and expensive) equipment must be built for
discoveries to continue. As Dudik
began her post-degree career, she
moved away from the observational
side of astronomy. “I’m the kind of
person who likes to study something really hard for about six years
and then wants to do something
else,” she says. Since May 2008,
her work at the USNO has primarily involved instrumentation. Once
again, she has benefited from a
St. John’s mentor—Bryan Dorland
(A92), chief of USNO’s Astrometric
Satellite Division, who has allowed
her to learn engineering on the job.
“His having the background that
I did has been very important for
me,” says Dudik. “He’s also very
supportive of my career, teaching
me what I don’t know.”
The U.S. Naval Observatory was
founded in 1830 as the Depot of
Charts and Instruments, caring
for the Navy’s nautical charts and
chronometers—the means for
ships to orient themselves in time
as well as space. Both are vital to
celestial navigation. Throughout
the 19th century, the observatory honed the accuracy of these
tools. Systematic observations of
heavenly objects led to scientific
achievement. In 1877, using the
largest refracting telescope in the
world, Asaph Hall discovered the
two moons of Mars. That telescope
is still in use today.
Although technology has evolved
considerably, the USNO’s mission
has changed little; they determine
the positions and motions of celestial bodies, the Earth, and precise
time; they keep the official time of
the United States, now determined
by atomic clocks aboard GPS satellites. Those same satellites act as
26 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013
high-tech sextants, allowing ships
to determine their exact positions.
The quest for increased precision
in celestial observation—and
the expansion of our charted
universe—requires constant innovation. Dudik and Dorland work
in detector development, seeking
ways to improve the informationgathering capabilities of the
USNO’s telescopes. These detectors are sensitive to visible light,
similar in purpose to those found
in any camera phone. Since their
extraterrestrial quarry is often
too faint to be seen, they are far
greater in strength: “When you
take a picture with your phone,”
explains Dudik, “there’s light everywhere.” Stars, however, can’t be
seen without the most expensive
detectors. “You need to catch
every single light particle, and not
confuse them with anything else,”
she says. No mean feat in the
blackness of space.
Each “hybrid” detector has two
layers. One layer consists of a
material sensitive to a certain
wavelength of light—silicon for
the visible spectrum, and usually
mercury cadmium telluride for
an infrared detector. The second
layer is an electronic readout;
data from both layers is “smashed
together” to create a single detector. Additional electronics “send
signals to the readout layer on
the detector to tell it when to integrate and when to stop integrating,” says Dudik.
The detectors are built by engineers
in California, who may have little
While the USNO’s main mission
is practical astrometry, the Navy
realizes that its scientists must do
research, too. At the end of March,
Dudik spent two nights at Palomar
Observatory in California, using
data from its telescopes to search
for planets orbiting different stars.
Sometimes ground-based
observation isn’t enough for the
research Dudik wants to do –she
needs an instrument far out in
space. NASA’s multi-billion-dollar
space telescopes are, of course, in
high demand. Detailed proposals
must be submitted and reviewed
before a project is granted observation time. “You’re competing
against hundreds of astronomers
across the country who all have
really great ideas on science
targets to use these particular
telescopes,” says Dudik. “You have
to look at the science idea from
every angle.” Luckily, that is a skill
familiar to Johnnies.
“An essential part of being a good
researcher is reading on your own,
coming up with your own ideas,
writing really good papers—and being critical of your own ideas,” she
says. She has noticed that traditionally trained physicists are often able
to solve problems, but less able to
think of new ones. The numerous
philosopher/astronomers on the
St. John’s Program have inspired
her. Beyond the usual suspects,
she mentions Kant, whose 1755
monograph, Universal History and
Theory of the Heavens, was the
first work to theorize that nebulae
glimpsed through telescopes were
actually distant star systems like
our own Milky Way, later called
“island universes.” Now they are
known as galaxies, and we can see
farther into the heavens than Kant
or Thales ever imagined.
seeing stars
Searching the Universe:
Night Flights with
Gabrelle Saurage (ec04)
by Anna Perleberg Andersen (sf02)
Gabrelle Saurage (EC04)
considered herself “done with
astronomy” after years as a
telescope operator. She was
pursuing a master’s degree in
philosophy from the University
of New Mexico until this past
January, when she was offered
a chance to fulfill a childhood
dream: to work for the National
Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The telescope she drives these days—or
rather, these nights—makes its
home in the guts of a converted
747 airplane, and casts its
infrared eye on celestial objects
far and near, recording images
at wavelengths that no other
telescope can.
The project, which has a
planned 20-year lifetime, is
called the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy,
SOFIA for short—an evocative
name for any Johnnie. It’s the
largest airborne observatory
in the world, the result of a
partnership between NASA
and its German equivalent,
the Deutsches Zentrum für
Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR).
SOFIA’s revamped 747, dubbed
the “Clipper Lindbergh”
after the pioneering aviator,
contains a 17-ton telescope
with three internal mirrors,
which reflect and focus energy
from space through an infrared
camera called FORCAST
(Faint Object Infrared Camera
for the Sofia Telescope). The
camera was developed by scientists at Cornell University;
its largest mirror is 2.7 meters
across. Operating from NASA’s
Dryden Aircraft Operations
Facility in Palmdale, California, SOFIA’s night flights carry
anywhere from 14 to 38 people
within the gutted and rebuilt
interior of the aircraft.
Evenings at Dryden begin
with a crew briefing where,
clad in her khaki flight suit,
Saurage joins other members
of the team to go over the rules
and objectives for that flight,
such as what objects they’ll be
observing and what specialized instruments will be used.
Many sub-groups take part in
the mission: the flight crew;
the operations crew, which
includes Saurage and another
telescope operator; and visiting
astronomers gathering data on
a particular heavenly body or
phenomena. All are shepherded
by a mission director. In addition, NASA’s public outreach
means that media and science
educators are often present.
Saurage’s role is crucial, as she
is responsible for the exacting,
computer-driven process of
actually moving the telescope,
“working with astronomers
trying to get observations of
different things. Every night it’s
something different.”
Many objects in space
emit their energy at infrared
wavelengths, hidden not only
Inset photo: Gabrelle Saurage (EC04)
The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 |
27
�from the human eye but from
ordinary cameras and telescopes located beneath the
earth’s stratospheric clouds.
Other objects are obscured
by interstellar dust or gases
that visible light cannot pass
through—but infrared can. SOFIA, then, is able to perceive
things previously invisible,
such as newborn stars at the
hearts of galaxies, exotic
molecules never before detected in space, or the vibrant
Modern science
“wasn’t really tackling
the questions I was
looking for,” which
were Big Questions:
“How did this all
get started?
layers of cloud surrounding
the planet Jupiter, with the
heat of the planet spilling
through. Wavelengths emitted
by a given object tell scientists
much about the materials it
is made of, providing insights
into the construction of the
universe as well as its turbulent
history. And because NASA is
a government agency, SOFIA’s
awe-inspiring images are freely
available to the public: a visit
to the project website, sofia.
usra.edu, is the best kind of
Internet black hole.
For Saurage, some of the information that SOFIA collects
speaks directly to her intellectual interests: “You tend
to lean either macro or micro
[in science]. Some people are
interested in DNA and genetics, so they might lean toward
biology and chemistry, even
particle physics,” she says.
“I’m interested in galaxy
structure and star formation.
seeing stars
Because of that, the part of
physics that always interested
me was cosmology, the story of
the beginning.”
While other Johnnie astronomers followed philosophy with
physics, Saurage took the opposite path. She earned a B.S. in
physics in 1996 from Southwest
Texas State University (which
dropped the “Southwest” in
2003). She “drove” telescopes
at various observatories: McDonald in west Texas and W. M.
Keck in Hawaii—near the summit of Mauna Kea, Keck houses
the largest optical telescope on
Earth. Although Saurage found
the work rewarding, she felt
that modern science “wasn’t
tackling the questions I was
looking for,” which were Big
Questions: “How did this all get
started? What is all this?”
Saurage enrolled in the Eastern Classics program, where
her favorite readings were from
Indian philosophy, exploring
“the relationship of humanity
to divinity.” Cosmology stories
from the Upanishads continue
to influence her work. After
receiving her master’s, Saurage put in time at the Apache
Point observatory in southern
New Mexico, but found herself
drawn back to philosophy—until SOFIA came along.
Saurage finds that her St.
John’s education occasionally
confounds the scientists with
whom she works. “I’m an oddball—but to me it makes sense,
because it fits in the realm of
pursuing these ideas. I have
always been more oriented
toward math and science in
the classical Greek way. I don’t
see the divisions that we create in the modern American
university. If I’m interested in
how the universe works, I’m
not going to isolate myself in
any one of those fields. It’s all
up for grabs.”
28 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013
Intergalactic Wanderers:
Erin Wells Bonning (a97)
Trails a Nomadic Black Hole
by Anna Perleberg Andersen (sf02)
In 1971, British astronomers Donald Lynden-Bell and Martin
Rees hypothesized that the center of the Milky Way galaxy contained a black hole—no run-of-the-mill black hole, either, but a
gargantuan one now known to be the mass of four million suns.
Three years later, a pair of Americans, Bruce Balick and Robert
Brown, discovered an enormous
source of radio waves in a region
of our galaxy called Sagittarius
A, now widely accepted as the
theorized black hole. In fact, the
astronomical community now believes that most, if not all galaxies
contain what is termed “supermassive” black holes. How these
are formed, however, and their
connection with the creation of the
galaxies themselves, is still a topic
of intense debate and research.
Erin Wells Bonning (A97), along
with her University of Texas at
Austin colleague Greg Shields,
recently gained the attention of
Science News with a paper that
may contribute greatly to our
understanding of these giant
phenomena. Scientists believe
“�You have to go on
faith that there is
reason and meaning
to be found there,
and you struggle
with it. [Science] is
the same process.”
rick dahms
seeing stars
that when galaxies combine, their
two central black holes sink to the
center, orbiting each other until
they eventually merge. Computer
simulations, says Bonning, suggest
that these pairs “are giving off
gravitational radiation, ripples in
space-time propagating away from
the binary black hole. It’s something that’s predicted in Einstein’s
theory, and there are experiments
going on right now attempting to
detect this phenomenon.”
These simulations also imply
something perhaps more astounding: that the union of two black
holes can release energy so great
as to fling the new object entirely
out of its home galaxy, sending it
flying across the universe until it
settles elsewhere. The idea of such
a “runaway” black hole remains
unproven, however. Researchers
like Bonning and Shields have
combed through dozens of likely
candidates, and now believe they
have identified one. In 2012, a
team of Dutch astronomers led by
Remco van den Bosch discovered
an anomalous black hole at the
heart of a galaxy called NGC 1277,
250 million light-years from Earth.
This black hole is much larger than
the galaxy’s size would predict—a
staggering 17 billion solar masses.
Bonning and Shields’s explanation
is that it’s a nomad, having been
hurled quintillions of miles over billions of years to reach its position.
If true (and in theoretical astrophysics, it’s a long road to certainty), this would be the first definite
evidence supporting the “runaway”
theory. As such, it is exciting to the
scientific community—although
difficult for laypeople to wrap their
heads around. (Andrew Grant’s Science News article on Bonning and
Shields’s paper can be read online
at www.sciencenews.org/view/
generic/id/348554/description/
New_home_for_runaway_black_
hole.)
Astronomy was always an interest for Bonning, as “a little geek
girl [who] read all about black
holes and relativity and quantum
mechanics, and it was just the
coolest stuff I’d ever heard of.”
While she devoured “anything
and everything” in the space and
physics section of the library, her
supportive parents nurtured her
interest in science, giving her a
small telescope, a microscope,
and a chemistry set. “One of my
fondest childhood memories is of
the day when my dad and I played
hooky (me from second grade) to
go visit the Air and Space Museum
in D.C.,” she says. “For the longest
time, I thought it was the ‘Erin
Space Museum’ because obviously
it was built for me!”
Like other Johnnie astronomers,
Bonning cites Annapolis tutor Jim
Beall’s influence in her choice of
astronomy as a career: “He was
my freshman seminar tutor, and
we eventually ended up working
together at the Naval Research
Lab for a couple of summers
while I was an undergrad” in 1996
and 1997.
Beall calls Bonning “a young woman of enormous energy, focus, and
goodwill.” He is “especially fond” of
her postdoctoral discovery of the
concurrent radio and gamma ray
The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 |
29
�seeing stars
seeing stars
variability of an active galaxy—because he discovered the first such
concurrent variability years ago.
During her junior and senior
years at St. John’s, Bonning was
invited by USNA professor AnneMarie Novo-Gradac to work in her
optics lab. (Novo-Gradac is now a
program executive in astrophysics at NASA headquarters.) “She
allowed me to audit her class, gave
me homework sets. She was just
amazing,” Bonning says. “I learned
so much from her in the lab, about
science and also about the professional reality of being a scientist.”
In 2004, Bonning earned a PhD
in physics from the University of
Texas at Austin. She has since
held a Marie Curie Fellowship at
Observatoire de Paris à Meudon,
“�I was a little geek
girl [who] read all
about black holes
and relativity and
quantum mechanics, and it was just
the coolest stuff I’d
ever heard of.”
and was the Debra Fine Postdoctoral Fellow at Yale University.
Currently she is a teaching fellow
in physical sciences at Quest
University Canada in Squamish,
British Columbia. Quest’s educational philosophy is “in some
respects very similar to St. John’s,”
Bonner says. “It’s very studentcentered, discussion-centered,
everyone around a big table.” (The
school’s chief academic officer is
former Santa Fe tutor Jim Cohn.)
As an educator, Bonning believes
her job is “not to place knowledge
into the mind of the student, but
to lead the student through the
process of learning.”
Bonning divides her time between
teaching and research, which for
her and other astronomers in
Hypatia’s Legacy
If Thales of Miletus was the first classical astronomer, Hypatia of Alexandria was the first woman
to gain wide renown in the field. Hypatia, who
flourished in Roman Egypt during the fourth
century C.E., was educated by her father, Theon,
and is said to have authored The Astronomical
Canon. She also studied and taught mathematics and Neoplatonist philosophy. Apparently she
was murdered by a Christian mob, caught up in
a conflict between the bishop and the prefect
of Alexandria. Although her work is lost, she is
immortalized not only in numerous historical
novels but in the heavens themselves; her name
has been given to an asteroid in the belt between
Mars and Jupiter, and to a crater on the moon.
In the modern era, it remains common to hear
concerns that women are under-represented in
the hard sciences. Whether this lack of diversity is the result of institutional discrimination,
cultural conditioning, or inherent gender differences is an ongoing and controversial discussion. Physics (of which astronomy is considered
a sub-discipline) is the most male-dominated
of the sciences—but many St. John’s-educated
women who have gone on to astronomy careers
feel comfortable in their field. Rachel Dudik
(A02), an astronomer at the U.S. Naval Observatory, and Erin Wells Bonning (A97), a teaching
fellow at Quest University in Canada, agree that
astronomy has changed drastically in the past 10
to 15 years in terms of gender balance, as a new
scientific generation advances.
academia involves more computermodeling and data-crunching than
direct observation of the heavens.
“The vast majority of time is not
spent at the telescope,” she says.
“You go and take your data, and
then bring your data back to your
home institution, where you use
it to answer whatever questions
you’re posing to the universe at
that time.”
The topics of Bonning’s questions
are nigh incomprehensible to
the outsider: “Multiwavelength
observations and theoretical
modeling of active galactic nuclei
and relativistic jets. Astrophysics
of strongly gravitating systems.
30 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013
Both are grateful for the example and guidance of older female scientists, like George
Mason University’s Shobita Satyapal (Dudik’s
post-graduate advisor) or NASA’s Anne-Marie
Novo-Gradac, who mentored Bonning in her
optics lab at the U.S. Naval Academy. “At the
observatory,” Dudik says, “I’m really outnumbered, but I don’t think that’s for lack
of effort. We have tried to hire a number of
women there, and most of them end up choosing not to come.” She thinks many prefer to go
into education.
Bonning, too, admits that “you can be the
only woman in a room, but we’ve really come a
long way. My advisor has experienced overt sexism—professors actually saying, ‘Women do not
belong in this class; you’re taking the space of a
man.’ I’ve never heard that, and most of my female colleagues have not.”
Gabrelle Saurage (EC04) studied physics as
an undergraduate at Southwest Texas State University, where she was the only woman in her
department, among both students and faculty
members. “There was always an awkwardness
about that,” she says, “but I was never harassed,
just looked over.” The university now has a female professor on staff, who contacted Saurage
years after her graduation, just to check up on
how her career was progressing. “I thought that
was great!” says Saurage. “Because there are
so few women, we all need to take care of each
other and encourage each other to keep doing
what we’re doing.”
— Anna Perleberg Andersen (sf02)
Electromagnetic signatures of
binary black hole mergers and
post-merger recoils. Sources of
gravitational radiation, binary
black holes, numerical relativity.”
In less technical terms, these
subjects of study seek to learn
about the origin, construction, and
continuing life of the universe.
Asked about which Program
readings have most influenced
her scientific career, Bonning
names not Ptolemy, Newton, or
Copernicus (although they certainly
helped), but Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. “Not because of any
questions it made me ask about
astronomy, but because it’s the sort
of training we’re given at St. John’s,”
she explains. “We’re given a book
and we’re asked to read it, and we
trust that it makes sense. You have
to go on faith that there is reason
and meaning to be found there,
and you struggle with it. [Science]
is the same process. We observe
the universe, and there seems
to be a system of physical laws
that describe what we see, that
are knowable through reason.” Although most of her scientific training took place outside St. John’s,
Bonner is grateful for an education
in “being fearless when presented
with something that doesn’t seem
to make sense at all.”
Donna Loraine Contractor (SF82) at her loom, and one of her tapestries, Involute Curve.
Weaving Theorems:
Donna Contractor (sf82)
Intertwines Art and Science
by Gregory Shook
Is it possible to express the
hundreds of ways to solve the
Pythagorean Theorem using
only cotton yarn and a loom?
For Donna Loraine Contractor (SF82), a mathematicianturned-weaver, this question
speaks to the heart of her work.
Sharing her love of quadratic
equations, elliptical curve
theory, irrational root rectangles, and the golden mean, last
year Contractor put out a call to
scientists and mathematicians
to collaborate in creating woven, visual models of intricate
and beautiful constructs; an
example of which is Apollonian Gasket, a piece from her
“Universal Language” series.
As a part of her “New Math
Plus” series, she may feature a
tapestry based on a Copernicus
theorem. Contractor has a gift
for illustrating complex ideas in
ways that are easy to understand. “I meet a lot of adults
who think, Math? I hate math!”
says Contractor. “And then they
look at the piece and start letting go of their mathophobia.”
Contractor did not go to art
school. In true Johnnie fashion, she learned to weave by
reading, observing, and engaging with other artists. Her selftaught approach coupled with
a passion for great minds such
as Apollonius of Perga, Helge
Von Koch, Gerog Cantor, and
Copernicus help her create
distinctive works of art. “I’m
good at finding books, reading
them, and pulling in all that
information,” says Contractor.
“Part of the reason I got into
working with mathematical designs was through the process
of self-teaching about color
and design theory. Throughout
the history of art, so much of
design and composition were
thought out in terms of mathematics. I’m showing those
actual concepts in my tapestries. With my designs, I pull
the mathematical idea—things
like where the horizon line and
focal point should be—to the
forefront and illustrate that.”
Contractor first came to New
Mexico in 1977 to attend St.
John’s. Arriving in Santa Fe by
Greyhound bus, the Midwest
transplant from Kenosha,
Wisconsin connected with
the Southwest spiritually and
intellectually. She has called
New Mexico home ever since.
Planting roots in Albuquerque,
Contractor works from home
inside a 350-square-foot studio
built from a converted garage
by her architect husband,
Devendra Contractor (SF79).
The setting is ideal. “He’s done
a wonderful job lighting it, with
lots of windows to let in sunlight
from all directions,” she says.
“�Throughout the
history of art, so
much of design
and composition
were thought out
in terms of mathematics.”
“I put crystals in the window,
which cast lovely rainbows.”
Having originally set out to
pursue interests in math and
science, she increasingly found
herself wanting to nourish her
artistic soul. Contractor discovered weaving by happenstance—a moment that would
forever change her life. “I
walked into my friend’s house,
The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 |
31
�seeing stars
seeing stars
Back to the Future:
“�We had to basically
write our own operating systems. Now
it’s more a matter of
integration, what we
call ‘glueware,’ or
putting all of those
pieces together.”
Kevin Parker (a79) Helps
Humans “Talk” to Satellites
by Paula Novash
and there was a beautiful,
six-foot loom with these great
baskets full of colorful yarn.
That attracted me to weaving
right away,” she says. Given
her mathematical bent, it is no
wonder she was fascinated by
the loom, with all its intricate,
moving parts. “My primary
loom has a dobby mechanism,
pneumatic tensioning system,
and a worm gear,” says Contractor. “I love the parts!”
Contractor enjoys weaving tapestries that teach, tell
stories, and express ideas.
Though math and science are
perhaps the themes closest to
her heart, she looks to other
weaving traditions such as Old
French, Native American, and
Oaxacan as well as other artists’
work as sources for ideas. “I
have a series of tapestries called
‘The Fractured Square’, which
is about looking at artists who
I am excited and inspired by,
such as Gustav Klimt,” says
Contractor. “I like the idea of
the seemingly fractured nature
of life in this modern world.
You try to pull yourself together
and make a whole out of all the
pieces.” Creating tapestries
that celebrate theorems, precision and elegance of geometric
forms, formulas and the beauty
of color and balance, Contractor finds peace in the fine
details of weaving. “You have
to love the process and how the
loom works.”
In the 1985 science fiction film, Back to the Future, teenager
Marty McFly is accidentally transported back thirty years
using a time-traveling DeLorean automobile.
When scientist Emmett Brown
proposes returning him to his
own era with a plan that involves
harnessing electrical energy from
a bolt of lightning, Marty is skeptical. “Don’t worry,” Dr. Brown reassures him. “As long as you hit that
wire with the connecting hook at
precisely 88 miles per hour the
instant the lightning strikes the
tower, everything will be fine!”
Kevin Parker (A79) may not be a
professor of sci-fi lore, but he also
juggles precise, high-tech options
while trying to predict the future.
As a software engineer, he creates
satellite simulators at the NASA
Goddard Space Flight Center
in Greenbelt, Maryland, and is
currently working on the Joint
Polar Satellite System (JPSS),
developing the next generation of
polar-orbiting weather satellites.
NASA Goddard has several dozen
satellites in space, doing a variety
of jobs that include gathering
information about global climate
change. In addition to ensuring
a continuation of over 50 years
of weather satellite observations,
these new JPSS satellites will generate more accurate and timely
weather- and climate-related
data, ultimately saving lives and
property by allowing scientists to
monitor catastrophic phenomena
like tornadoes and hurricanes
more closely than ever before.
Parker is creating the Flight Vehicle Test Suite, a high-fidelity simulator that tests ground systems
32 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013
for the JPSS project and trains the
engineers who run it. Once a satellite is launched, Parker explains,
it streams data to these engineers
in the control center. They make
sense of the data and respond,
he says, with “messages that the
satellite will understand.” Calling
himself a “fake rocket” scientist,
Parker makes replica systems—
literally “fake rockets”—that
allow scientists and engineers to
practice this process.
“�It is like composing
a response that
not only makes
grammatical sense,
but endeavors
to sound like [a
particular] person.”
Parker uses e-mail as a metaphor
to help laypeople understand the
different types of simulation tools.
A low-fidelity simulator, he says, is
like a program that can generate
“To” and “From” fields, a subject
line, and maybe some gibberish
for a message. A medium-fidelity
simulator could go a bit further
and respond to a message in
a routine way, by picking out a
phrase like “How are you?” and
answering “Fine.” But Parker’s sophisticated high-fidelity simulators
have the ability to respond to the
spacecraft itself. That, he says, is
like “having some sort of artificial
intelligence parsing an e-mail and
composing a response that not
only makes grammatical sense,
but endeavors to sound like [a
particular] person.”
Parker provides this example to
illustrate the simulators at work:
A satellite’s ground system sends
a command to fire a thruster
that will turn the spacecraft. A
low-fidelity simulator would track
the command. A medium-fidelity
simulator would realize that the
thruster is being fired and is
now hot. A high-fidelity simulator
would do all of these things plus,
says Parker, “register the force on
the spacecraft, gradually increase
the temperature readings from
around the thruster, reduce the
amount of fuel remaining, and
indicate to any device on the
spacecraft that looks outward that
it’s turning, and that whatever it’s
looking at now is different from
what it was looking at before.”
Parker describes the bricklayer
in the traditional story, who says
he’s not simply slapping together
masonry, but building a cathedral.
For instance, during Superstorm
Sandy, weather satellites helped
forecasters determine that the
hurricane, which was expected to
shift out to sea, was actually turning back toward the New York/
New Jersey coastline. “Without the
weather satellite input, they would
never have seen that,” he explains.
“So that’s the ‘great cathedral’
part of the work” that Parker’s
simulators make possible.
more a matter of integration,
what we call ‘glueware,’ or putting
all of those pieces together. You
can actually go out and buy the
software that is the core of a
spacecraft control center.” Parker
has also seen many technologies
developed by NASA scientists
filter down to the wider public.
For instance, charge-coupled devices (CCDs), instrumental to the
Hubble’s photographic processes,
now are widely used in digital
cameras and medical imaging.
“The Hubble,” he jokes, “is like
a digital camera the size of a bus.”
jen behrens
Donna Loraine Contractor,
Tunnel Vision
This integrated view is natural for
a Johnnie; a long tradition connects astronomy and the liberal
arts—Kepler united theories of astronomy, mathematics, music, and
theology in his Harmonices mundi,
for example and early Christians
recognized astronomy as one of
the seven liberal arts as far back
as the sixth century AD. Parker
thinks the connections between
disciplines could be strengthened
as society is increasingly shaped
by engineering and technology.
“Even at St. John’s, which has a
decent science program, it’s still
very much weighted towards liberal arts and literature and history,”
he says. “Both sides really need to
talk to each other a lot more.”
After graduating from St. John’s,
Parker spent several years in
Illinois while his wife Tina (A79)
was in graduate school; she has
an master’s in zoology. When they
returned to Maryland, he got a job
with a Goddard contractor. During
his 30-year tenure there, he has
completed two advanced degrees
(a computer science master’s
from Johns Hopkins University
and a Master of Astronomy from
James Cook University) while
contributing to a variety of highprofile projects that include the
infrared-optimized James Webb
Space Telescope. At NASA Goddard, visitors can peer through
huge glass windows to view a
dust- and contaminant-free “clean
room” where scientists and technicians clad in full-body white suits
are working on James Webb. The
telescope, scheduled to launch in
2018, will seek out some of the
youngest planetary systems and
oldest galaxies in the universe.
Parker’s contributions included
writing scripts to ensure that science instruments work together
within the Webb’s framework, so
that “all the pieces are talking to
each other,” he explains. Parker
has also developed simulators
and code for the Hubble Space
Telescope and the Fermi Gamma
Ray Space Telescope.
Over the years, Parker has
observed major shifts in his work
due to radical changes in technology. When he started, “We had to
basically write our own operating
systems,” he recalls. “Now it’s
Parker enjoys the creative challenges of his work—“It’s like
getting paid to solve puzzles,” he
says—but in his day-to-day routine
of writing and testing code, he
sometimes loses sight of how
much he’s contributing to the
advancement of science. A good
reminder, he says, comes from
visitors to NASA Goddard. “It’s
really appealing to show someone around, because I see the
enthusiasm. I remember [walking
past] a bunch of scientists, and
on their door it said ‘Origins of the
Universe Section.’ And I was like,
‘holy cow.’”
For more information on the JPSS
project and the James Webb and
Hubble Space telescopes, visit
www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/
home/index.html.
The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 |
33
�Shadow
of War
by Henry Robert, Class of 1941
Some who attended or worked at St.
John’s in Annapolis may have wondered about certain discolorations
of the brick on the outer northeast
wall of Chase-Stone House (facing
King George Street). For a long time,
the stains were prominent. They
have faded through the decades, but
what’s left of them is clearly visible if
one looks closely. Their origin may
be of some interest.
Members of St. John’s College class of 1941
34 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013
Between the window frames of the first and second stories
(above the basement) is a horizontal line of lighter-colored
brick a few inches wide, running from front to back. The
building had a side porch until its
complete renovation in 1963, and the
line of lighter brick is where the porch
roof was attached to the building wall.
Below the porch roofline at a
level that would have confronted you
Henry Robert, class of 1941
directly if you stood on the porch,
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35
�When I went to bed, it must have been around
two a.m.; nothing seemed amiss. That morning
when we got up, lo and behold, staring passersby
in the face on the outside brick wall of Chase
House’s side porch, were two accurately drawn,
neatly painted swastikas.
We knew that in
all probability, we
were moving toward
war, even if much
of the country’s
population wouldn’t
face the fact.
opposite page: Members of
the Class of 1944, St. John’s
College 1944 Yearbook,
p.30. Photos courtesy of
The Greenfield Library
archives. Class of 1941 and
Henry Robert images:
SJC-P-1906; SJC-P-0214.
are two squares of similarly lighter-colored brick
approximately 30 inches on a side, centered
from front to back on the wall, maybe fifteen feet
apart. These discolorations arise from a very
different cause from the one along the porch
roofline, and they make a bit of a story.
The relevant incident happened one weekend
in the early spring of 1941. The student body
of the college, if I remember correctly, then
numbered about 125. It was my senior year as
a student in the first New Program class, the
only class that had students in both programs.
There were nine of us New Programmers and
my recollection is then in the Old Program.
A few words about the campus climate at that
time may be appropriate. That period may
have been looked upon as part of a “golden
age.” It was exciting, to be sure. Apart from the
many directions in which this was true at the
intellectual level, I believe we as students took
a certain devilish satisfaction in thinking of our
college as a place where “anything can happen
and usually does.”
Among the factors that contributed to this
atmosphere, the college had been through a
period of “civil war” between the Old (elective)
Program students on the one hand, and the
college administration on the other, supported
by the New Program students. For a couple
of years, there evidently was a feeling among
Old Program students that they were merely
tolerated. Through those two years, acts of
vandalism, particularly window breaking, were
a regular occurrence. These acts most often
happened in the wee hours of Sunday mornings,
doubtless done by students after drinking. This
conflict had subsided by the year 1940-41. The
ten or so Old Program students in my class were
the only ones left, and by then our small senior
group had become one happy brotherhood. Yet
much of the student body’s conditioning as to
what might be expected on Sunday mornings
persisted.
The other significant overriding element in
campus outlook was that we knew that in all
probability, we were moving toward war, even
36 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013
if much of the country’s population wouldn’t
face the fact. England was deep in it. The
continent of Europe was blacked out, cut off
from civilization, overrun by Hitler’s Nazis
the preceding June. The Navy, in their outpost
across the street, well knew that we were already
at war in the Atlantic.
On the Saturday evening of the weekend of
our episode, there was a formal dance in Iglehart
Hall. I lived on the top floor of Stone House that
year. When I went to bed, it must have been
around two a.m.; nothing seemed amiss. That
morning when we got up, lo and behold, staring
passersby in the face on the outside brick wall of
Chase House’s side porch, were two accurately
drawn, neatly painted swastikas. These 30-inch
squares with arms two or three inches wide,
inscribed with green paint, were the emblem of
the enemy, the symbol of Hitler’s Nazis!
The Navy obviously didn’t think it was funny.
An “unconfirmed report” had it that Winkie
Barr’s telephone rang promptly at 9:00 a.m.
Monday. A voice demanded to speak to him, and
instantly barked, “This is the Superintendent’s
Office. Get those things off that wall NOW!” At
that time, it was easier said than done. Today
you could call a power-wash man who does paint
removal. He would come with his machine, fitted
with an attachment to feed certain chemicals
into the spray. Armed with this rig, he would—
for a fee of several hundred dollars—quickly wash
away all traces of paint.
Evidently, that technology did not exist or
was not readily available in 1941. A laborer
from the college’s Buildings and Grounds force
went to work with a pair of heavy-duty rubber
gloves, a bucket of acid, and a scrub brush, with
which he scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed.
Two days later, the swastika patterns were
gone, but in their place on the wall were two
thirty-inch squares of brick uniformly stained
a conspicuous yellowish-green. And there they
stayed! Apparently that was the best anybody
knew how to do, leaving the wall for the weather
to do what it would—very slowly—through the
years to come.
The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 |
37
�bibliofile
bibliofile
Gary Borjesson:
Dogs and the Art of Friendship
“Dogs have four
hundred times the
power of sense
that humans
have.”
With a nod to Aristotle,
Gary Borjesson, tutor at the
Annapolis campus, says that
friendship is an art. Like
all arts, it requires mindfulness and practice in order to
flourish. In his debut book,
Willing Dogs & Reluctant
Masters: On Friendship and
Dogs (Paul Dry Books, Inc.
2012), Borjesson uses our
relationships with dogs as
a way of examining themes
central to all friendships,
such as spiritedness and the
role of authority with those
we love and want to love us
in return. “I was already
interested in dogs, but as a
teacher and as a student of philosophy, I was
especially interested in friendships, particularly
in the moments when one friend has to tell
another friend something hard and when we
find ourselves judging or holding something
against another friend,” says Borjesson. “Those
moments are really difficult for human beings
to sort out.”
As the book’s title suggests, Borjesson is
interested in exploring inequalities in friendships, in which one person has some responsibility toward the other. He conducted his
research from both scientific and philosophical
points of view, refining what he learned by
working with his canine companions, Kestra, a
mixed-breed of German shepherd and Border
collie, and Aktis, a nine-year-old German
shepherd. The dogs helped to illustrate the
book’s themes and bring them to life. “We
often want to keep friendships unconditional,”
says Borjesson. “We don’t like the idea of judging our friends, and yet at the same time we are
always engaged in keeping score. The point
of practicing friendship is to get beyond the
inequalities, to develop trust through mutual
understanding.” Part of the path to achieving
this in our relations with dogs—or children or
students, for that matter—is by compassionately
using our authority to educate them. Borjesson
also points out that with his dog, Aktis, “the
best promise for reaching a kind of equality was
38 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013
to figure out what sorts of activities he takes joy
in doing and bring him a sense of accomplishment.” Tracking turned out to be the perfect,
shared activity. Says Borjesson, “Dogs have four
hundred times the power of sense that humans
have, so I’m meeting Aktis where he can be
fully realized, which is part of the way Aristotle
defines happiness—activity of the soul in accordance with virtue.”
Borjesson argues that a friendship is a journey wherein both parties have a choice. “If dogs
are to be called friends, and not merely friendly
in the natural, familial sense, then they, too,
must be capable of choosing us as friends,”
says Borjesson. Training a dog, he says, builds
a dog’s capacity to choose and creates a world
that is more coherent and trustworthy. This
point relates to the role of spiritedness in
friendships. “Spiritedness is the drive in the
soul, both in the human and the canine soul, to
be sociable and put oneself out there, to fight
and love, to compete and cooperate.” Part of
what masters try to achieve through training
and education is to use authority to nurture the
cooperative nature of spiritedness.
Many dog owners may agree with Borjesson’s comparison of friendships with dogs and
parent-child relationships. In the classroom,
Borjesson sees a similar dynamic in his role as
tutor. “Like most teachers, I naturally want
my students to like me,” says Borjesson. “Yet
I can’t let this desire override my responsibility to compassionately use my authority when
doing so is in the student’s best interest. At St.
John’s, those occasions are relatively rare, as tutors and students feel more of a connection and
regard for our mutual interest. When classes are
at their best, the issue of authority disappears
because we’re all sharing responsibility for
making the conversation fruitful and enlightening.” Borjesson relates that experience to working with Aktis and Kestra. “There are moments
when you use your authority to encourage and
praise, others when you use it to discourage and
correct, but as the training proceeds, you and
the dog begin simply to enjoy cooperating on
behalf of common good.”
—Erin Fitzpatrick (A14) and Gregory Shook
Thomas Simpson:
A Vision of Science
Simpson
illustrates that
there is much to
be gained from
revisiting the
major works of
this familiar—
albeit unlikely—
trio of thinkers.
What do Isaac Newton, James Clerk Maxwell,
and Karl Marx have in common? In his recent
publication, Newton, Maxwell, Marx: Spirit,
Freedom, and the Scientific Vision (Green Lion
Press, 2012), Thomas Simpson, Class of 1950
and tutor emeritus, proposes that these three
iconic figures share a vision of science that
lends itself to achieving intellectual, material,
and spiritual freedom. The book is a collection
of three of Simpson’s earlier essays (“Science
as Mystery: A Speculative Reading of Newton’s
Principia,” “Maxwell’s Treatise and the Restoration of the Cosmos,” and “Toward a Reading
of Capital”). These essays were first published
more than 20 years ago, under the editorial
direction of John Van Doren, in the Encyclopedia
Britannica’s annual series, The Great Ideas
Today, as supplements to the Great Books of the
Western World. Simpson expands beyond the
essays—reprinted in their original form—adding introductory and concluding essays. He
considers each separate work as an inquiry into
and also a response to the fundamental ideas of
science and nature of each of the three authors’
time—one’s concepts of which, says Simpson,
necessarily concern one’s beliefs about society
and freedom.
Simpson reads the three essays anew. Inspired
by fresh insights, he connects the material and
proposes a dialectical thread that begins in the
17th century and develops a vision of science that
remains challenging today. Simpson illustrates
that there is much to be gained from revisiting
the major works of this familiar—albeit unlikely—
trio of thinkers; their intense regard for the
human spirit is what unites them.
Beginning with Newton, Simpson writes: “We
once approached the Principia as the founding
work of modern physics; now we see it as the culminating work of serious alchemy—a mathematical biology of all natural functions, inclusive of
the very cause of life itself—and indeed, as Newton’s book of life. The unity of Newton’s thought
may astound us, as we ourselves try to piece
together in our own time a coherent picture of
the world; thus, the Principia holds a central
place in Newton’s theology, since the concept of
force restores scope for God’s active presence in
the world, a presence crucial to Newton’s faith,
for which mechanism had left no room.”
Simpson is passionate about the scientific
contributions of Maxwell. He has published
three books on the subject: Maxwell on the
Electromagnetic Field: A Guided Study (Rutgers
University Press, 1998), Figures of Thought: A
Literary Appreciation of Maxwell’s Treatise
on Electricity and Magnetism (Green Lion
Press, 2006), and Maxwell’s Mathematical
Rhetoric: Rethinking The Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism (Green Lion Press, 2010).
Simpson writes, “Maxwell perhaps reflects the
larger course of human history when with equal
concern he carries this same human spirit to the
level of its democratic manifestation.”
Arguably, Simpson’s connection to Marx is
the most curious, as he examines the science
behind Marx’s vision of human society. “It
is almost as if we had read Capital until now
only as ideology, failing to confront the vastly
expanded concept of science which Marx is
proposing, in which society itself, its institutions and its practices, become objects of serious
scientific thought,” writes Simpson. According
to Simpson, Marx extends the scope of science,
and would have us reason as a community, intelligently and cooperatively, in matters belonging
to the social domain as we do in those of nature
and technology.
A dyed-in-the-wool Johnnie, Simpson reminds
us that a great work of science is a great work of
literature. He invites readers to explore Newton’s Principia, Maxwell’s Treatise on Electricity
and Magnetism, and Marx’s Capital with fresh
eyes and open minds, receptive to the possibility
of rethinking prior notions about these individuals whose revolutionary ideas have been reduced
and even distorted over time. When taken together and presented as an intertwined scientific
vision, these complex works underscore that
history is never left behind, but always remains
an integral part of the present.
—Gregory Shook
Thomas Simpson and illustrator Anne Farrell
(A69) recently released an e-book, Lewis
Carroll Meets the Imaginary Number,
available on iTunes. To learn more:
http://thomasksimpson.com.
The College ||st. john’s college ||summer 2013 |
The College st. john’s college spring
39
�bibliofile
Forgotten Tales of New Mexico
By Ellen Dornan (SF93)
The History Press, 2012
Coinciding with the 100th anniversary of New
Mexico’s statehood, Ellen Dornan’s (SF93)
Forgotten Tales of New Mexico takes readers
on a voyage through the state’s colorful past,
from the Apache Wars to Los Alamos. In the
collection of 40 quirky stories rife with complexities and controversies, Dornan carefully
balances oral history, genealogy, and scraps of
400-year-old documents to present alternate
The Paradoxical Rationality of
Søren Kierkegaard
By Richard McCombs
Indiana University Press (Indiana Series in the
Philosophy of Religion), 2013
In his new book, The Paradoxical Rationality
of Søren Kierkegaard, Santa Fe tutor Richard
McCombs presents Kierkegaard as an author
who used irrationalism as a deliberate strategy
to present rational arguments about reason and
faith, often via the use of pseudonymous writings. McCombs finds Kierkegaard’s pretense
“rational enough to be instructive and mistaken
Plato Statesman: Translation,
Introduction, Glossary, and Essay
Eva Brann (HA89), Peter Kalkavage, and Eric
Salem (A77)
Focus Philosophical Library, 2012
This valuable new translation of Plato’s Statesman by three St. John’s tutors does justice to
the distinctive character of the philosopher’s
style. Plato’s artistry exists in the nuances of
diction and register, metaphor and allusion
that leave the reader with much to think about
when the resources of the argument turn out to
be insufficient to answer all our questions. It is
particularly useful to have a translation of Plato
40 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013
interpretations of individuals and events that
shaped the course of the state’s development.
From heroic outcasts and scheming governors
to women warriors and fierce revolutionaries,
she sheds light on stories unfamiliar even to
New Mexicans. For those who have ever wondered about the tiny plaque commemorating
Fray Geronimo de la Llana in Santa Fe’s
St. Francis Cathedral, or why New Mexico leads
the nation in midwifery care, Dornan’s tales
surprise and delight and give readers the inside
scoop on the rich heritage of the Land
of Enchantment.
enough to need correction.” Initially, McCombs
explores Kierkegaard’s conception of reason
and why Kierkegaard thought his irrational
rhetorical pose was necessary to communicate
its opposite. In subsequent chapters, he delves
more deeply into the paradox that Kierkegaard
creates through his use of indirect communication regarding the paradox. McCombs shows
evidence of Kierkegaard’s respect for reason
in several instances, such as his great admiration for Socrates, whom he could not respect
so highly if he did not respect reason, “For to
esteem Socrates but not to respect reason would
be like loving circles but detesting roundness.”
that acknowledges this supreme importance of
style by its exquisite attention to detail and its
unerring ear for what is both readable English
and faithful to the peculiar speech and thought
of the dialogue’s main speaker, the stranger
from Elea. The translators include thoughtfully chosen aids that prepare the novice for the
journey and help the serious student to delve
into Plato’s restless political and philosophical
imagination. —Greg Recco, tutor
“�Students have to revolutionize their
thinking twice, then, once to register
the appearances and imagine them
accounted for through Ptolemy—this
is an undoing of a former opinion;
and then, again, to take stock of the
revolution through Copernicus.”
— Pamela Kraus, Annapolis dean
The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 |
41
�alumni notes
1934
Celebrating a Century
Mary J. Leslie writes, “My grandfather, James F. Leslie (Class
of 1934), turned 100 years old on March 30, 2013. From him, I
have heard many stories of his time spent at St. John’s, including missing his graduation ceremony, to the deep disappointment of his mother because he was ill (I think he told me he had
the measles). He was a Naval Officer during World War II and a
history teacher and guidance counselor at Towson High School in
Towson, Maryland. He lived many years in Stevensville, Maryland, and is presently fairly healthy and living well for a 100-yearold in Tappahannock, Virginia. He can be reached at P.O. Box
2025, Tappahannock, VA 22560.”
1942
At Homecoming last September,
Ernest Heinmuller, Class of 1942,
had planned to have his new book,
A Different Reading, available
for signings. It did not come from
the publisher on time. The book
is a series of Bible passages, each
followed by a poem that conveys a
different idea about the passage.
1951
Tony Hardy (A) announces the
publication of his new book, Symbol Philosophy and the Opening
into Consciousness and Creativity,
in which he explores the symbol
philosophy of Ernst Cassirer (not
on the St. John’s reading list!).
1961
Richard Freis (A) has released his
debut novel, Confession, an intense
and engrossing thriller of psychological suspense. It was published
by Sartoris Literary Group in May
2013 and will also be available in an
e-book edition. A Mississippi resident for almost 40 years, Freis is a
poet whose work has appeared in
Poetry, The Southern Review, Drastic Measures, and other magazines
and anthologies.
1963
Easing into retirement, Marcia E.
Herman (A) enjoys doing a blend of
scientific and garden writing. She
writes, “A second edition of my first
gardening book, Sipping My Garden, came out in the spring of 2013
and is available at www.seedpodpress.com. I have several more in
mind. I hope to make Homecoming
in Annapolis this fall.”
1966
Ian Harris (A) writes that a third
edition of his book, Peace Education (co-authored with Mary Lee
Morrison), is being published by
McFarland Press.
1971
George Elias (A) and his wife just
sent their youngest daughter off
to Vassar, while their 21-year-old
daughter announced she was
taking a year off after completing
her junior year at Columbia. Their
42 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013
alumni notes
older sister graduated from the
University of California, Berkeley
several years ago. Alas, none of
them wanted to attend his alma
mater. More than five years ago,
George changed careers to become
a financial advisor (and trader)
at Merrill Lynch. He expects to
continue working in this field for
at least another 20 years, perhaps longer. He also finished the
manuscript for his second book,
New Genesis: A Creation Story for
Global Civilization. Championing
monotheism and evolution, it is
a sequel to his first book, Breakout Into Space (William Morrow,
1990). Visit his website at www.
newgenesis-creationstory.com. He
is looking for severe and articulate
critics to review his work.
1973
Susan Martin Dressel (SFGI)
writes, “If I survive my husband,
for whom I am now caregiver, I will
definitely come for some alumni
seminars in a year or two. It will
be nice to see new faculty and
students.”
Barbara Rogan (SF) has a new
novel titled A Dangerous Fiction,
coming out with Viking Penguin
in July 2013. She writes, “I think
that Johnnies, as people who appreciate the power of books, will
get a particular kick out of this
mystery set in the New York City
publishing world. I’m delighted
to announce that my last three
books, Suspicion, Hindsight, and
Rowing in Eden, have been reissued as e-books and paperbacks
by their original publisher, Simon
& Schuster, and two more backlist
titles will follow shortly. On a
personal note, we had the pleasure
of seeing our elder son marry this
year. He and his Israeli wife have
moved from Tel Aviv to New York,
and we couldn’t be happier about
that. Our younger son lives in D.C.
and works for the government. We
could tell you what he does, but
then we’d have to kill you.”
1974
During the last few years, Roberta
Faulhaber (SF) has been developing a new business in visual facilitation. She writes, “It’s a fascinating
field, first developed by David
Sibbet in the 1970s and inspired by
watching designers and architects
work and applying their visual
thinking-based approach to the
business environment. I’m based
in Paris and have been working 15hour days to introduce the French
to using visual facilitation in meetings, especially in collaborative
and creative sessions such as world
cafés, open-space meetings, and
innovation development. During
the process, I find myself calling
on skills I developed at St. John’s,
such as active listening, the ability
to wade through verbiage to the
salient points in record time, and a
complete faith in people’s ability to
solve their issues through dialogue,
if one can call that a skill. As a
side benefit, I’m finding the work
incredibly stimulating for my personal idiom as an artist, and have
taken to creating pieces using the
Surrealist technique of automatic
writing/drawing by doing both at
once while listening to Collège de
France lectures in metaphysics. I
suppose that’s a start!”
1976
Alice Joy Brown (A) writes, “I
spend a great deal of time when
I’m on the Internet learning Torah.
Great sites for learning are www.
chabad.org, www.aish.com, www.
torahanytime.com (try Rabbi Zecharia Wallerstein, among others);
and www.torahlectures.com (try
physician and rabbi, Rabbi Akiva
Tatz, among others). I’d welcome
hearing from anyone who wants to
recommend other speakers, spe-
cific articles, videos or audios, and
other Torah sites. You can contact
me at ajbluv@yahoo.com.”
Christian Burks (SF) and Janet
Moody (SF) had their first grandchild, became dual citizens (Canada
and U.S.A.), and relocated to Seattle. Janet is working in recruiting
on the creative-design front, and
Christian is working in biotech.
Their daughters are in Portland
and the Bay Area. Christian and
Janet write, “Look for us on any
map of seismic, volcanic, or career
hotspots/risk in North America.”
Miriam Marcus-Smith (SF)
writes, “I’ve worked in the fields
of health-care quality improvement and patient safety for about
15 years in the Seattle area, and for
several years have split my work
life between the Foundation for
Health Care Quality, where I’m the
program director of the Washington Patient Safety Coalition, and
the University of Washington,
where I’m a research manager in
the Department of Health Services.
It’s a mix that works well for me. My
boys are growing up: Nathan (25) is
in grad school at UMass Amherst,
working on his masters in biomechanics; Aaron (23) lives in Seattle
and is nearly done with an associate
degree; his plan is to become a
history teacher. When not working,
I play a lot of chamber music, sail
whenever I can find a boat that will
take me, hike, cross-country ski,
read, and weave. I may be the only
person in Seattle who does not
have a computer at home by choice.
(I don’t have a TV or microwave
either, but it’s the lack of computer
that people seem to find odd.)”
1977
Paul Kneisl (A) writes, “Recently
at work I soldered the (top secret)
CPU on the motherboard of
the computer that controls the
look-down-shoot-down-target-
1983
An App for That
Peter McClard (SF)
writes, “I’ve just released a new iPad app
called Biographer, which
helps people organize
the events of their lives
into chapters and then
within those chapters to
sort out the memories,
anecdotes, pictures,
etc. The final result is a
nicely formatted e-book
that can be shared or
not, with no knowledge
of design or layout
required. Love to all my
fellow Johnnies! Send
me your stories.”
acquisition device of the hit-to-kill
kinetic warhead of the SDI Missile
Interceptor, for a program sometimes known as Star Wars.”
Carla Schick (A) won first place in
the 2012 Barbara Mandigo Kelly
Peace Poetry Contest for her poem,
“Their Grandmother’s Palm,”
which is in the style of a Pantoum,
although modified. During most of
her time, she is teaching mathematics at a high school in Hayward, California. She is currently teaching
the AP calculus class. Her St. John’s
background prepared her well to
teach this course that focuses on
critical thinking and problem solving rather than rote memorization.
1979
Lisa Simeone (A) reports that since
being blacklisted by NPR in 2011 for
her involvement with the Occupy
movement, she’s as politically
active as ever. She still hosts two
nationally syndicated public radio
programs, World of Opera and
the Chicago Symphony Orchestra
Broadcast Series, and she continues
to write for Baltimore’s Style Magazine, where she’s the beauty editor.
She keeps in close touch with Bruce
Babij (A) and his family, who live
only half a mile away.
Rosenberg, have issued The Bretton
Woods Transcripts as an e-book
from the Center for Financial
Stability in New York. A hardcover
version will appear in the spring.
Schuler’s discovery of the transcripts was the subject of stories
in the New York Times and foreign
newspapers. The book is available
at www.centerforfinancialstability.
org/brettonwoods.php. Read the
New York Times story here:
www.nytimes.com/2012/10/26/
business/transcript-of-1944-bretton-woods-meeting-found-at-treasury.html?_r=1&.
1983
Ann Walton Sieber (A) and
Coldwell “Khyber” Daniel IV
(A84) married each other twice, in
Quaker meetinghouses in Houston
(July 2011) and Memphis (May
2012). Both are independent writers, and they are living a two-city
life. In addition, Khy continues his
theater work, and Ann cooks for
meditation retreats. After a 25-year
separation, they rediscovered each
other on Facebook in 2008. They
are pretty tickled about this whole
turn of events, and welcome contact and tidings from other Johnnie
friends.
1987
1981
While browsing in the library of
the U.S. Treasury Department
where he works, Kurt Schuler (A)
found the transcripts of the Bretton
Woods financial conference. The
conference, held in Bretton Woods,
New Hampshire, in 1944, established the International Monetary
Fund, the World Bank, and the
world exchange-rate system that
lasted until the early 1970s. The
transcripts, never intended for publication, show previously unknown
details of how it all happened.
Schuler and his co-editor, Andrew
Scott Cuthbert (SF) is pleased
to announce the publication of
two new chiropractic textbooks:
Applied Kinesiology Essentials:
The Missing Link in Health
Care, and Applied Kinesiology:
Clinical Techniques for Lower
Body Dysfunctions, which bring
the outcomes and basic-science
research underlying applied kinesiology chiropractic technique up
to date. Another textbook, Applied
Kinesiology: Clinical Techniques for
Upper Body Dysfunctions, is under
development.
The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 |
43
�alumni notes
alumni notes
1989
1986
Bullies Beware!
Kristen Caven’s (SF) new book, The Bullying Antidote: Superpower Your Kids for Life (Hazelden, 2013), will hit the shelves in
July. Caven, who co-wrote the book with her psychologist mother,
Dr. Louise Hart, says that it provides a “unified field theory” of
bullying. Aiming to help parents teach their children to develop
the communication skills, self-respect, and self-esteem needed
to be confident and resilient when facing a bully, Caven writes,
“The book also includes a pretty thorough presentation of the
best current thought on positive parenting.” In addition, she just
released a new e-book, The Souls of Her Feet, a postmodern,
magical-realism version of Cinderella, and is currently writing a
blog column, “Life in the Fast Brain,” for ADDitude magazine. Her
books can be ordered through the St. John’s bookstores. Visit
www.kristencaven.com for more information.
1988
Tobias Maxwell’s (A) book, Homogium, was published in January.
Jimmy McConnell (SF) is now a
published author. He can be found
on Amazon under Curtis James
McConnell. His other work appears
in a free podcast at drabblecast.org
and two anthologies from thirdflatiron.com. He welcomes contact
from Johnnies at cjmfanbase5@
ymail.com.
Kim Paffenroth (A) edited three
essay collections in 2012: Augustine
and Psychology (Lexington Books,
2012); Augustine and Science
(Lexington Books, 2012), which
includes a back-cover endorsement
by Mr. Kalkavage; and The Undead
and Theology (Pickwick Publications, 2012). The latter was recently
announced as a finalist for the Bram
Stoker Award, which was given
on June 15 at a ceremony in New
Orleans.
44 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013
Burke Gurney (SFGI) was recently
promoted to full professor with
tenure at the University of New
Mexico School of Medicine Physical
Therapy Program, where he is an
active researcher, teacher, and
clinician. In addition, he directs a
yearly trip to Guatemala, where his
students study Spanish and do volunteer work in physical therapy at a
hospital/orphanage in Antigua. He
is married with two children, both
of whom chose small liberal arts
schools (but alas, not St. John’s).
His older daughter just graduated
from Colorado College with a degree in comparative literature and
is studying in Colombia on a Fulbright scholarship, and his younger
daughter is finishing her degree at
Carleton in economics.
Sarita Cargas (A) has just changed
jobs and will be teaching human
rights at the University of New
Mexico in Albuquerque. She is excited to be near a St. John’s campus
and looks forward to catching up
with her dear alma mater.
1990
Kilian Garvey (SF) writes, “My
wife and I welcomed our second
daughter into the world. Margaret
MacEachern Garvey was born on
June 8, 2011. I also just recently
joined the Department of Psychology at the University of Louisiana,
where I teach social cognition and
evolutionary psychology, among
other things, and conduct research
primarily at the intersection of affect, (ir)rationality, and motivated
cognition.”
David Long (A) lives in Baltimore
with his wife, Dr. Liz Selvin, an
associate professor of epidemiology
at Johns Hopkins, and his two boys,
Benjamin (5) and Eli (2). He writes,
“My work is divided between my
management consulting firm that
specializes in pre-K-12 and higher
education, and my film production
company. That and writing puppet
shows for my boys.”
Jon Ying (A) earned a PhD from
Cornell University’s School of
Industrial and Labor Relations. His
dissertation was entitled
“Essays on Translational Bioscience
Entrepreneurship: Evidence from
America, China, and Taiwan.” Currently he is an assistant professor of
global business and society at the
University of Wisconsin-La Crosse,
where he teaches courses on global
corporate social responsibility and
on China.
1993
Rachel E. Blistein (A) has been
meaning to share the news of the
launch of her natural hair-care
company for some time. She writes,
“I went from a graduate degree
and career in landscape design to
formulating, manufacturing, and
selling my own hair-care products.
Everyone always asks me if I have a
degree in chemistry (I do not), but
I do feel that my education at St.
John’s gave me the tools I needed
to educate myself, and the belief
that I can do anything! As far as an
update on the personal front, I am
living in Ypsilanti, Michigan, with
my husband of eight years, Paul
Alexander, who is a senior research
engineer at General Motors, our
two active dogs, and one surly cat.
Life is good!”
James Craig (AGI) has published a
book of his photography, The Moon
has been Eaten—Images from a Year
on Easter Island, in the form of a
signed, limited edition (500) hardbound volume. The book features
98 tritone images, with anecdotes
and extras. More information is
available on his website, www.
jamescraigphotography.com.
1994
1997
William Kowalski (SF) and Alexandra will celebrate 11 years of marriage this March. They have been
living in Nova Scotia for 10 years
now. He writes, “Our girls are aged
7 and 9: beautiful, healthy, smart,
bilingual in French and English.
Alexandra is over a decade deep
into a rich, tantric yoga practice; I
write and teach adults how to read,
find jobs, and use computers. Life is
quiet and good. My fifth novel, The
Hundred Hearts, will be published
by Thomas Allen Publishers in
April of 2013. Please visit my website (www.williamkowalski.com) for
more details, or just to say hello.”
Heidi (Jacot) Hewett (A) writes,
“I’m temporarily taking a break
from my career in data analysis to
be a stay-at-home mom. My daughter, Ariadne (good classical Greek
name!), is almost a year and a half
now, very bright, very curious, very
into everything. We live in Woodstock, Illinois, with my husband,
Bob, a sculptor, teacher, and the
art department chair at a local high
school. I’ve recently started a classics reading blog based on Clifton
Fadiman’s ‘Lifetime Reading Plan’
at http://hjhreader.blogspot.com.”
1995
Janet Sunderland (SFGI) has a new
book of poetry, At the Boundary,
published by Finishing Line Press
and available through the press
and on Amazon. Some of the work
is thanks to studies at St. John’s.
“If I hadn’t read the Iliad again,”
she writes, “I’d never have found a
line like “bronzed green-gold like
Hephaestus forging eternity.’”
1996
Heather Pool (SF) writes, “I
graduated from the University
of Washington with my PhD in
political science in December 2011,
and, after a year and a half on the
academic job market, landed a
tenure-track job at Denison University in Granville, Ohio, starting
in August 2012. Denison, like St.
John’s, is a small liberal arts school
(enrollment is a whopping 2,200),
and I’m thrilled to be on faculty
there. If folks are passing through
Columbus and want to get in touch,
give me a shout at heatherpool@
gmail.com.”
Jill Nienhiser (SFGI) started a blog
last summer to promote sustainable agriculture and food freedom.
Read it at farmfoodblog.com. She
continues to work as a consultant
for Mind & Media in Alexandria,
Virginia, and as the webmaster for
the Weston A. Price Foundation
(westonaprice.org and realmilk.
com). In addition, she is developing
new shows for children as a member
of Kaleidoscope Theatre Company
(ktheatre.org).
1998
Philip Armour (EC) married
Amanda Dumenigo (EC), whom
he actually met in the Eastern
Classics program and eventually married in 2006. He writes,
“We have two boys (7 years and 9
months) and have much to thank
St. John’s for—and Santa Fe and
New Mexico, in general. We still
have many dear friends in the area,
and my graduate degree helped me
kick-start my journalism career at
Outside magazine, where I worked
from 1998-2004. Amanda now does
therapy work using horses (mainly
to help children), and we live on a
five-acre farm/ranch in north Boulder County, Colorado. We thought
a lot about St. John’s recently, with
Baltimore’s run to the 2013 NFL
championship; our elder son is
named Raven, which amused us all.
Max Fink (SF) returned to the
States after living for eight years in
South America. He is raising boisterous 3-year-old Anastasia with
“Porteña” wife Gabriela. He works
in Internet marketing in the finance
industry and resides in Las Vegas,
Nevada. He is happy to meet any
Johnnie who comes through town!
Dawn Star Sarahs-Borchelt (A)
(nee Shuman) and her husband,
Matt, gave birth to Juniper Evening
Sarahs-Borchelt on December 9,
2012. Juniper joins older siblings
Wolfy (8), Robin (6), and Daysi (3).
The family is now living full-time in
Philadelphia, home/unschooling
away, and hoping to sell their house
in Maryland as soon as it’s worth
more than its mortgage.
2000
Doug Howard (SFGI) is one of 10
attorneys who have been named to
the partnership at Duane Morris
law firm, where he is a member
of the firm’s Corporate Practice
Group in Baltimore.
Zach Warzel (SF) and Erika
(Carlson) Warzel (SF) welcomed
the birth of their second child, Rye
Samson Warzel, on November 21,
2012. Rye, Corrina, and parents are
happy and healthy. Erika also took
a new position as the National and
State Register Historian for History
Colorado, the State’s historical and
preservation arm.
Abby Weinberg (SF) has been
working for nine years at the Open
Space Institute directing conservation research. She is currently
doing a deep dive into climate
adaptation, water quality, and
sustainable forestry. Her 3-year-old
son and learning about physics and
meditation are providing great joy
outside of work.
2001
Raife Neuman (SF) graduated from
Lewis and Clark Law School in
2008 with a certificate in environmental and natural resource law.
Two years ago, he founded Intelekia
Law Group (named after his favorite Greek word!) with two other
partners, in Portland, Oregon.
Intelekia focuses on forming and
advising sustainable businesses and
working with entrepreneurs of all
types. Raife also works extensively
with homeowners facing foreclosure. If Johnnies are in the Northwest, he’d love to hear from you at
raife@intelekia-law.com.
2002
Dillon and Justin Naylor (A) write,
“Thomas John was born on August
30, 2012, weighing 8 pounds, 15
ounces. He joins brothers Peter
(5) and James (3). We’re still dorm
parents at Wyoming Seminary, a
college prep school in northeast
Pennsylvania, where Justin teaches
Latin. Our labor of love is Old Tioga
Farm, our four-acre property where
we raise vegetables and run a farmto-table restaurant on weekends.
Staying busy, as always!”
2003
Cassie Sherman (A) and Martin
Marks (A04) married on April 19
in a small ceremony at the Cloisters
in Baltimore. Many thanks to
Aidan O’Flynn (A05) for his design
of invitations and all graphics for
the wedding website, which can be
chuckled at here: mermansharks.
com. Neil Swanson-Chrisman
(A02) officiated, and various Johnnies were in the party, including
Sarah Peters (A02), Katherine Nehring (A), Tori Tyrrell (A), and Remi
Treuer (A00). They write, “We are
very happy that St. John’s gave us
The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 |
45
�alumni notes
In Eloquent Fashion
FASHION WATCH
Mimi Nguyen’s fashion sense was inspired
by a few SJC tutors. Some of the tutors
are fondly remembered for their sartorial
panache—described by the Johnnies who
admired them:
by Chelsea Batten (A07)
With insight, humor and disarming intensity, Mimi Nguyen
(A09) sports the personae of fashionista and bookworm
Like much of literary fiction, Mimi
casey danielson
“� may not entirely enjoy
I
Mies van der Rohe’s
architecture, but I do
subscribe to his
philosophy of less is
more when it comes to
clothes.”
Nguyen (A09)—fashionista, bookworm,
first-generation Vietnamese American
—does not fit neatly into a category. No
matter where you encounter her—in the
main branch of the Washington, D.C.
public library, where she works as an
associate in the Popular Services division, or on her edgy fashion blog—you’re
seeing only one side of a multifaceted
person who has spent as much time
examining her lens on life as looking
through it.
Read her blog, “Mimi+Pravi,” to find
references to Mimi’s favorite literature.
Canonical Russian novels keep company
with pulpy urban fiction: “I learned
English largely because of the Sweet
Valley High series, so just ’cause I’ve
read, like, Kant in college (re: read, not
understood), who am I to get all high
and mighty about tastes?” she writes.
46 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013
“People who read totally rule. High five,
lovely, literate humans.”
Mimi observes that “the way people
present themselves through dress is
literally a snapshot of history.” Her own
history can be graphed through the
evolution of her personal style. Growing
up as the daughter of Vietnamese immigrants made it hard to fit into her high
school in Little Rock, Arkansas. Fashionable clothes helped her to blend in with
her peers. But her deep respect for her
mother kept Mimi from becoming one of
the crowd. Mimi describes her mother as
“really intense, but down-to-earth, kind
of a feminist.” As an original hipster, she
bought her clothes at thrift stores before
it was cool. “Back then, I was really
ashamed,” Mimi says, “because as Nabokov says in Lolita, there’s nothing more
conservative than a child.” Eventually
“the way she carried herself, the way she
dressed really influenced me. She was
always interested in the unique.”
Mimi’s own sense of style was established by the time I met her on the third
floor of Pinkney Hall, when she was a junior and I was a senior. With her striking
appearance counterbalanced by demure
poise, Mimi seemed like Billy Wilder’s
Princess Anne reimagined by Wong Kar
Wai. One day, she knocked at my door,
holding an armful of clothes. She’d been
cleaning out her closet, she said, and
thought I might be interested in some
of her clothes. I caught my breath at the
sight of what must have been the eidos
of trench coat. It was the perfect color
(camel beige), the perfect weight (assertive but flexible), and boasted ideal
proportions between its length and the
spread of the lapels. It was the kind of
garment that advertises nothing but the
wearer’s discerning taste.
Last year, I was elated to learn that
Mimi was launching a fashion blog.
“Mimi+Pravi,” a bicoastal collaboration with her friend Pravisti, is nothing like the what-to-wear guides that
glut the genre. Like Mimi herself, the
blog recombines facets from several
categories to create something novel.
It’s free of label-worship; if a designer
is mentioned, it’s likely to be someone
from another field. “I may not entirely
enjoy Mies van der Rohe’s architecture,
but I do subscribe to his philosophy of
less is more when it comes to clothes,”
she writes. “This dress is very minimal,
structured, and, to me, lovely. Paired
with maroon red heels for a bit of pop,
and a little belt, and this entire outfit
took me from work to after-hours play
with no fuss.”
She includes affectionate tributes to
her upbringing: “Built-in accessories are
an excellent economical choice for those
who want to look fairly fancypants nice
without spending over $7 on any given
clothing item. Hey, I’m a proud product
of immigrant parents, OK? Cut me some
slack.”
And yes, even homages to Program
authors: Feeling “good in this color,”
she says, “is the sartorial equivalent of
Baudelaire’s ‘Enivrez-vous’; on wine, on
poetry, on virtue.”
As a fashion blog must, “Mimi+Pravi”
features headlines both silly and snarky,
such as “The Return of Flower Power”
and “Space, the Final Frontier.” Plenty
of photographs appear, with sources for
each clothing ensemble. Would-be imitators beware: Nearly everything shown on
Mimi’s blog was thrifted or gifted—part
of Mimi’s style ethic. “I don’t believe in
spending a lot of money on clothes,” she
writes. “I really want to stress that. You
can find beautiful, well-made clothes in
thrift stores.” This statement reveals the
blog’s subtle ethnographic slant.
Mimi says she’s “obsessed with
identity as a narrative expressed through
clothes.” As “a first-generation Vietnamese woman who grew up in Arkansas,”
she explains, “sometimes I feel like I
don’t have cultural legitimacy in either
country. Sometimes I don’t know who I
am, beyond my experiences and personal
preferences. Perhaps these experiences
and preferences are precisely what build
identity. I am always concerned about
what sort of narrative I’m projecting
when I pull on a certain sweater, wear a
certain hat, throw on a certain scarf, because, at the age of 26, I haven’t decided
yet what sort of human I am. But clothes
are pretty expressive.”
When Mimi began working in the
library after graduation, her first foray
into the blogosphere, “POP! Street
Fashion,” featured photographs and interviews with library patrons about their
varied, distinctive styles: WASPs dressed
in J. Crew read Tobias Wolff, punkers in
torn jeans and imitation leather checked
out comic books. Like Mimi herself,
most of her profile subjects defied
categorization. Yet the details of dress
offer glimpses into intriguing stories. In
a Raymond Chandler-like spirit, Mimi
charges each scene with visual details,
and leaves you to imagine the rest.
These days Mimi prefers to wear
clothes with “clean, classic lines. I like
red a lot. I like to wear things that fit
me, that are unusual, that punctuate
subtly, that evoke a mood.” Although she
hasn’t yet defined her personal style, her
blog requires her to carefully assemble
interesting outfits that “maintain a sense
of self.”
Mimi often finds books to be better
companions than people. Her life has
more in common with the originality and
unpredictability of a great novel than
with the average Washington twentysomething. She shares that experience
in much the same spirit as she gave me
the trench coat. Feeling as though some
ineffable wisdom had been passed on to
me, I wore the hell out of that coat during life after graduation.
Ms. Kraus always reminded me of Jacqueline
Kennedy with her classic sweater-skirt-andpearls combination.
Mr. Zuckerman had a set of linen suits, and
could rock a corduroy sport coat better than
any man in history.
Ms. Heines’s perfectly styled hair and coordinated jewelry set off her striking eyes. Not
sure if that was a coincidence or a calculated
move.
Mr. Maistrellis was like a pre-hipster prep
poster boy.
Ms. Kronsberg’s pencil skirts, paired with tall
leather boots, made it look as though she
was carrying a riding crop. (It was actually
Cady’s leash.)
Mr. Sageng had a dapper-looking white
mustache and long white hair, and often
wore bow ties or loud ties with clashing
button-down shirts. But with his horn-rimmed
glasses and smile, the effect was charming.
Mr. Badger’s wardrobe appeared to have
been lifted from the set of The Matrix—
trench coat and all—and the gorgeously
greasy hair of a ’90s grunge rocker.
Mr. Milner always wore bow ties with exceptional conviction.
Mr. Page’s tweeds and perfectly laundered
shirts, all in a color spectrum evocative of
the Scottish moors.
Mr. Beall gave a Sean Connery vibe, especially when crossing the field from the
observatory in his leather jacket and aviator
glasses.
Mr. Bell talking with Mr. Simpson—“one glorious shock of white hair nodding to another.”
Brother Robert seemed to possess exactly
two suits, two hats, and two different pairs
of Birkenstocks. He always looked exactly
like Brother Robert, and more than this we
cannot ask.
FASHION STANDOUTS
Ms. Seeger’s chunky folk-art necklaces
Mimi Nguyen’s personal fashion blog is at
mimipravi.com. Find “POP! Street Fashion”
at dclibrary.org.
Mr. Aigla’s magnificent black beard
Mr. Lenkowski’s safari vest
Ms. Delgado De Torres’s urban black chic
The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 |
47
�alumni notes
alumni notes
2005
1997
2004
Award for Exceptional Service
Emma Elliot (A) was married to Lucas Grassi Freire on December 22,
2012 in College Park, Maryland.
A large number of Lucas’s family
in Brazil was able to travel to the
wedding. After their marriage, the
two moved to Exeter in the United
Kingdom, where Lucas works at the
University of Exeter.
Juan G. Villaseñor (A), Assistant U.S. Attorney in the U.S. Attorney’s
Office for the District of Columbia, received the U.S. Department of
Justice’s Assistant Attorney General’s Award for Exceptional Service
for Securing the Extradition of Five Terrorists from the United Kingdom. He writes, “This award was presented to a group of 11 individuals responsible for securing the extradition from the United Kingdom of
five terrorists who now face charges in the United States in connection with, among other things, the 1998 East African Embassy bombings and the taking of 16 hostages in Yemen in 1998. The ceremony
was held on December 10, 2012, in the Great Hall of the Robert F.
Kennedy Department of Justice building in Washington, D.C.”
Pictured from left to right: Deputy Attorney General James M. Cole,
William Nardini, Stephen B. Reynolds, Juan G. Villaseñor, Susan Prose,
Chris Synsvoll, Lystra Blake, Berit Fitzsimmons, Attorney General Eric H.
Holder Jr., Deputy Assistant Attorney General Bruce Swartz, and Assistant
Attorney General Lanny A. Bruer.
so many wonderful friends to stand
by us—not to mention each other.
The date was planned so that the
celebration could continue the next
day at Croquet in Annapolis. We
recently bought a house in the improbable and charming Dickeyville
neighborhood in Baltimore; are
reading about the care and feeding
of its slate roof and how to vanquish
English ivy in our absolutely nonexistent spare time.”
Michael Tereby (A) is moving to
Arizona from China. Michael and
his wife, Yan Ma Tereby, celebrated
their first anniversary at the Grand
Canyon after their marriage in the
Great Hall on August 13, 2011.
48 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013
Annette Prapasiri (SF), after four
children (Sam turned 8 in March,
Rose and Claire turned 5 in February, and Fin will be 3 this August),
is venturing back into the world of
design. She writes, “Keep an eye
out for my interpretation of the
Johnnie Chair in the 2013-2014
Calendar due to be released this
summer. Reserve your copy of this
limited-edition print at aprapasiri@gmail.com.”
Justine Schneider (SF) and her
husband, Jason, have welcomed
their first child into the world.
Gabriel John Schneider was born
on November 14 at 12:06 p.m.,
happy and healthy. They write, “He
was born at our home in southern
Utah (yes, we planned to have him
there).”
Amy E. Taylor (A) finished her
clinical psychology PhD in 2012 at
Duquesne University, in a psychology program that finds its roots in
philosophy and is a good fit with the
St. John’s Program. She writes, “At
that point, I began a postdoctoral
fellowship at the Austen Riggs
Center, a top-ranked psychiatric
hospital using psychodynamic and
systems approaches to treatment.
At Austen Riggs, my primary task
is to engage in intensive fourtimes-weekly psychotherapy with
individual patients. The hospital
offers research internships for
undergraduate students, which may
be of interest to current St. John’s
students or recent grads.”
2006
Allison (Ali) Bastian (AGI) is
graduating from the University of
North Dakota School of Medicine
and Health Science this May. She
is looking forward to residency in
family medicine somewhere in the
Rocky Mountains.
Aran Donovan (SF) received his
masters in Italian from Middlebury
Language School in May 2012. He
is now finishing his MFA in poetry
and translation from the University
of Arkansas.
Christopher Stuart (A) and April
Sharp (A07) welcomed Kallan
Stuart (A35?) into their lives this
past October. They write, “He is
beautiful, fine, noble, and good.”
Emily Terrell (A) (formerly Nisch) is
having a baby due in August!
Hollis Thoms (AGI) has been
invited to submit 11 of his major
musical scores, which include
operas, oratorios, and three
symphonies, for a special collection at the Maryland State Archives
in Annapolis. Thoms has written
more than 125 works for a variety of
ensembles. His Symphony 2 will be
premiered in January 2014 by the
Londontowne Symphony Orchestra
under the direction of Dr. Anna
Binneweg. Visit www.hollisthoms.
com for more information.
2007
Chelsea Batten (A) is a writer and
itinerant journalist. She profiled
Mimi Nguyen (A09) for this issue
of the magazine. You can read more
of her work at www.chelseabatten.
com.
Christopher Benson (SFGI) now
teaches literature at The Cambridge School of Dallas, a classical
Christian school. He continues
to write for Christianity Today,
Books & Culture, and The Weekly
Standard.
Anna Fenton (SFGI) is one of the
founders of a new venture, Sustainable Learning Inc., a nonprofit
incorporated in the state of New
York for the purpose of facilitating
experiential and theoretical learning on the subject of environmental
sustainability. She writes, “Under
the name Sustainable Summer, we
operate summer educational travel
programs for teen student groups
with a curricular focus on sustainability issues, while also providing
an enriching, safe, and exciting
travel experience. My business
partner and I have combined our
expertise in teen travel programs
and environmental education
with the resources and experience
of like-minded organizations in
developing communities that possess dynamic opportunities for the
experiential teaching of sustainability.”
Blair Thompson (A) traveled to
Hong Kong, where she taught for
three months. She writes, “After
my return, I applied to law schools,
and received a full scholarship
to attend law school at Drexel
University. I graduated and passed
the Maryland bar exam in 2011. I
served as law clerk for the Honorable Robert B. Kershaw on the
Circuit Court of Maryland for one
year, and am now an attorney at
the Maryland Office of the Public
Defender in Baltimore City, where I
represent indigent persons charged
with crimes who cannot afford to
hire private attorneys. I wanted
to go to law school so that I could
become a public defender, and I
am living the dream, fighting the
good fight, and always contemplating what justice means. I encourage anyone interested in public
criminal defense to contact me at
bthompson2@opd.state.md.us.”
2008
Ashley Cardiff’s (A) new book of
humorous essays, Night Terrors:
Sex, Dating, Puberty, and Other
Alarming Things (Gotham Books,
2013), will be published in July.
Reid Pierce (EC) writes, “After
St. John’s, I received my JD from
the University of New Mexico. I am
about to start a cool job as manager
of legal affairs for a tech startup in
Kathmandu.”
2009
Sara Luell (A) was recently promoted to the position of Public Affairs
Officer I for the State of Maryland
at the Anne Arundel County Department of Health, where she has
served as Public Affairs Specialist
since August 2009.
João Santa-Rita (A) graduated in
2012 with a JD from the University of Chicago Law School. He is
currently working at a private firm
in Washington, D.C. Students or
alumni considering law school may
contact him at santarita.joao@
gmail.com.
Pauline Stacchini (A) became
the new reference and instruction
librarian for the Bellevue University
Library in Omaha, Nebraska, after
graduating from the University of
Iowa with a masters in library and
information science in 2011.
2010
Kirstie Dodd (A) just received notification that she has been accepted
as a Fulbright Scholar, and will be
teaching English in Luxembourg
starting September 2013-June
2014.
Aldona Dye (SF) is currently working on her masters in musicology
at Brandeis University, from where
she expects to graduate in 2014.
Drew Nucci (SFGI) currently works
at Santa Fe Prep, where a very exciting summer program for teachers
is starting. Information on the
program as a whole can be found
at www.sfprep.org/index.php?/
colloquium/C184, and information
specifically on the course that he
is teaching can be found at www.sfprep.org/index.php?/colloquium/
mathematics_as_the_gateway_to_
western_metaphysical_thought.
Theater
Goes
National
San Francisco playwright
Candice Benge (SFGI) is in
her second year as a founding member of a national
traveling theater cooperative, Transient Theater
(www.transienttheater.com),
a group she started last
year. Following the group’s
first production in summer
2012, they did a tour to 14
cities in nine states across
the country. The group
performed at the New York
International Fringe Festival, where it received great
reviews and won several
awards, including the
Overall Excellence Award for
Directing, as selected by a
panel of 40 theater professionals. This year, Transient
Theater plans to perform
in 20 cities from coast to
coast, and has recently
hired current St. John’s
sophomore, Gabriele Montequin (A15), as Annapolis co-producer. Candice
writes, “Our mission is to
increase empathy in our
culture by producing new
plays from various communities and giving those
plays a national audience.
There’s a short documentary video (about 13
minutes) that summarizes
our process last year.” View
the video at https://vimeo.
com/58157656. The password is “sweetpotato.”
2013 New Year card by Annette Prapasiri (SF04)
The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 |
49
�in memoriam
alumni notes
David Drury (SFGI09): Firefighter Turned Teacher
Inspires Future Johnnies
David Drury (SFGI09) understands what it means
to triumph over adversity. After 20 years as a
New York City firefighter, Drury was looking at
retirement and planning to go to college. Then the
World Trade Center was attacked on September
11. “Certainly it was a crossroads for me,” says
Drury, who was one of the first-responders that
morning. Following his intended plans, he
ultimately pursued his undergraduate degree at
Columbia University. Two years later, his wife
passed away. With school as his solace, he threw
himself into his studies, setting his sights on
graduate school. “Life just changed,” says Drury.
“But I told myself, ‘I can do this.’”
Armed with a bachelor’s in history and a minor in teaching,
Drury came to the Graduate Institute at Santa Fe with the goal of
becoming a teacher. As a firefighter, he taught courses in rescue
and hazmat skills at the New York City Fire Academy on Randall’s
Island. Until recently, Drury taught middle-school history both in
a classroom and on a moving bus. His students were professional
singers at the American Boychoir School in Princeton, N.J., the
country’s only non-sectarian boychoir boarding school. The students, who tour four times a year for up to a month at a time, sing
at churches, schools, and larger venues, including Carnegie Hall.
In 2005, they performed at the Academy Awards.
Drury was drawn to the American Boychoir School because of
its emphasis on discussion-based learning; the head of the school,
Lisa Eckstrom (A84), is a Johnnie. In his regular classroom, Drury
and the students engaged in texts while gathered around a seminar
table in St. John’s style. “In sixth grade, they’re learning how [the
seminar process] works,” says Drury. “By the eighth grade they
handle it really well.” He was recognized at his school for his ability
to motivate his students and instill in them a passion for learning.
“I call our history classes an ongoing historical discussion with a
little bit of philosophy thrown in,” says Drury.
Observing Drury’s classroom, Eckstrom was surprised to find
the boys reading a Supreme Court decision. “To be honest, I was a
little skeptical that middle-school boys would be able to decipher
the text,” says Eckstrom. “But within 15 minutes, I was silently
applauding. David’s teaching style—grounded in the St. John’s approach to discussions—has had a wonderful impact on our students.
Imagine finding your seminar voice as a middle-school boy!”
Curtis A. Wilson
August 24, 2012
Tutor and dean, Annapolis
John Drury
by Jennifer Levin
Drury’s discussion approach was also useful when the students
were on tour, as classes on the bus vary in duration and are often
disrupted. Being able to pick up where the class left off is a way
of keeping the learning engaging as well as flexible. “It’s not a
stationary classroom,” says Drury. “You have to get your sea legs,
which is certainly challenging, but it’s a great experience.”
This summer, Drury returned to New Mexico, where he will be
teaching at the Estancia Valley Classical Academy, a new charter
school in Moriarty. He relished the opportunity to parlay his St.
John’s experience at the American Boychoir School, inspiring
a new generation of future Johnnies. Last school year Drury’s
seventh-grade class read portions of Tocqueville’s Democracy in
America, a book he first encountered at St. John’s. It continues
to resonate with him today, especially ‘The Unlimited Power of
Majority’ chapter. Tocqueville writes, “If these lines are ever read
in America, I am well assured of two things: in the first place, that
all who peruse them will raise their voices to condemn me; and in
the second place, that many of them will acquit me at the bottom of
their conscience.” As a teacher, Drury finds the book an excellent,
if challenging, source of inspiration. “I fought Tocqueville—that
book and that line—tooth and nail,” says Drury. “And then I came
to love it for its accuracy, its impressions, and its philosophy.”
Drawing from his own life experience, Drury looks to his young
students, as they, too, grapple with the text, and tells them the
same thing he told himself several years back: “We can do this.”
“Curtis stood for something, a
kind of moral perceptiveness
and intellectual integrity. He
showed himself genuinely
unselfish and completely
honest. Invariably his words
were deeply considered and
deeply human in the highest
sense.”
—Nancy Buchenauer
“Curtis Wilson was universally
admired and loved by
everyone whose life he
touched as tutor or dean,
friend or colleague, including
those who knew him mainly
as a renowned scholar of the
history of astronomy.”
—Joseph Cohen
Gentle of heart and wise in spirit, Curtis Alan Wilson
(1921-2012), a widely recognized historian of astronomy who twice served as dean of St. John’s College in
Annapolis, died in Petoskey, Michigan, at McLaren
Northern Michigan Hospital. He had been vacationing at nearby Mackinac Island when he sustained a
heart attack. He was 91.
A 1945 graduate of the University of California at
Los Angeles, Wilson received his doctorate in 1952
from Columbia University. He undertook two separate, four-year stints as dean of the Annapolis campus
and, as part of the original faculty, taught for two
years on the Santa Fe campus when it opened in 1964.
Wilson’s association with the college began in 1948
during the formative years of the New Program.
During his first deanship (1958-62), Wilson effected the first major change in the New Program when
the college approved his proposal for preceptorials
for the junior and senior years, the only elective part
of the curriculum. Another change occurred during
his second deanship. In 1976-77, the faculty, under
his guidance, decided that five sophomore classes
were too many, and the sophomore laboratory should
be discontinued, with its components absorbed into
the three other years. An important effect of this
decision was that the college was able to strengthen
the sophomore music tutorial. He also was respon-
sible for planting the seeds of what was to become the
Mitchell Gallery.
Wilson retired in 1988 but continued an active
association with St. John’s. His extensive writings
resulted in an international reputation. He became the
first recipient in 1998 of the LeRoy E. Doggett Prize for
writings in the history of astronomy, awarded by the
American Astronomical Society. Wilson was “the most
highly regarded historian of astronomy of this generation,” wrote the Journal for the History of Astronomy.
Besides Wilson’s final book, The Hill-Brown Theory
of the Moon’s Motion: Its Coming-To-Be and ShortLived Ascendancy (1877-1984), published just before
his 90th year, and many articles and reviews, he edited
the second volume of The General History of Astronomy: Planetary Astronomy from the Renaissance to the
Rise of Astrophysics, published by Cambridge University Press. Wilson belonged to both the International
Academy of the History of Science and Commission 41
of the International Astronomical Union.
He is survived by his wife of 58 years, the former
Rebecca Marston, their two sons, and a number of
nieces and nephews. A memorial service was held on
September 30 in the Great Hall. Gifts in his memory
may be made to St. John’s College, P.O. Box 2800,
Annapolis, Maryland 21404.
At Wilson’s memorial service, he was lauded with
speeches by five tutors—former Dean Thomas Slakey,
Nancy Buchenauer, Joseph Cohen, Thomas May,
and Louis Petrich—by Professor Paolo Palmieri, a
Galileo scholar from the University of Pittsburgh,
and by Wilson’s two sons, John (A81), of Blacksburg,
Virginia, and Topper (Christopher), of Pueblo,
Colorado. Repeatedly, speakers cited three qualities
for which Wilson was known: his gentleness,
kindness, and integrity.
“Curtis was more than a historian and
a philosopher of science. Curtis was a
master of humane scholarship. He was a
rare figure of humanist and scientist. His
rigorous methodology was never divorced
from poetic imagery. He cultivated the
history of astronomy, combining the rigor
of intellectual analysis with the most
sophisticated elegance of exposition.”
—
Paolo Palmieri
50 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013
The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 |
51
�in memoriam
in memoriam
David Hanford
Stephenson
November 29, 2012
Tutor, Annapolis
David Hanford Stephenson (19362012) joined the college as a tutor
50 years ago. An informal gathering in the Great Hall was held on
November 30, 2012, the day after
he died. Students, faculty, and staff
remembered him in speech and
joined in singing Sicut Cervus in his
memory. The community gathered
again for a memorial held on April
14 in the Great Hall.
Over the course of his devoted
service, Stephenson led every one
of the seminars and tutorials that
comprise the curriculum of the
New Program. When asked what his
favorite class was, he replied that it
was usually the one he was teaching
at the moment. Accordingly, his
Elliott C. Carter
November 5, 2012
Tutor, Annapolis
Elliott Cook Carter Jr. (19082012), the Pulitzer Prize-winning
composer and St. John’s tutor, died
at his home in New York City. He
was 103.
From 1940 to 1942, Carter was
a tutor and director of music at the
Annapolis campus during a time
when the college was establishing
the New Program. He approached
music as an art form closely intertwined with the liberal arts. In the
years after St. John’s, Carter wrote
two essays that relate to his tenure
at the college: “Music as a Liberal
Art” (1944) and “The Function of
the Composer in Teaching and the
General College Student” (1952).
Carter received his bachelor’s
in English literature and his
master’s in musical composition
from Harvard. He is best known as
favorite author was Montaigne or
Sophocles or Leibniz or Dante or
Kant, though he confessed that he
was drawn back to Homer every
other year. Stephenson’s very first
seminar, in 1962, had been with
Jacob Klein and John Sarkissian
as co-leaders. His students and
advisees remember him as a leader
rather than an expert, one who met
them from the start as an equal and
then patiently drew them forward
and upward, as curious and delighted as they were in what could
be found and seen together.
This was equally true of the
way Stephenson conducted the
St. John’s Chamber Orchestra for
many years. In his very gestures, he
expressed Schopenhauer’s claim
about the absolute uniqueness and
universality of music. Similarly, in
freshman music he firmly believed
the class capable of the most
difficult and beautifully splendid
things, whether it was the final
chorus of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion or the finale of Mozart’s Magic
Flute. He led his laboratory classes
with a confidence born from his na-
a composer who fused European
and American modernist traditions
in seminal but formidable works.
“As society evolves,” he once said,
“people will have to become much
cleverer and much sharper. And
then they will like my music.”
Igor Stravinsky was credited with
calling Carter’s “Double Concerto
for Harpsichord, Piano, and Two
Chamber Orchestras” (1961) the
first American masterpiece.
In the late 1930s, Carter created neoclassical, approachable,
“American” works such as the
ballet “Pocahontas,” which had
its premiere in 1939. That same
year, he married sculptor Helen
Frost-Jones. She died in 2003. In
the mid-1940s, Carter wrote the
“String Quartet No. 1,” which was
considered his first real breakthrough. The work won him the first
of his two Pulitzer Prizes in 1960;
the second was for “String Quartet
No. 3” in 1973. In addition to his
two Pulitzer Prizes, Carter’s awards
include the National Medal of Arts,
the Edward MacDowell Medal, and
two Guggenheim fellowships.
He is survived by his son, David,
and a grandson.
52 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013
Journet G. Kahn
Class of 1942
October 7, 2012
Tutor, Annapolis and Santa Fe
Journet Gordon Kahn (1921-2012)
dedicated his life to the art of the
Socratic seminar and innovation in
interdisciplinary program design.
A tutor at both the Annapolis and
Santa Fe campuses, he died at 90.
Born in Baltimore, Maryland,
Kahn was the oldest of four children
of Rose and Ellis Kahn. After graduating from the Annapolis campus in
1942, he joined the faculty for the
following year. Kahn received his
Licentiate from Quebec’s Laval University, his doctorate in philosophy
tive interest in all things natural,
as well as from his formal study
of physics and music at Columbia
University. The phenomena
themselves as well as their theoretical illumination interested
him deeply, and he was delighted
by the restoration of the Foucault
pendulum in Mellon Hall.
Stephenson was a poet as well
as a composer, and he hosted a
poetry writing group in his home
on Prince George Street for a number of years. His final lecture this
past November, a meditation on
the Meno, was a typically profound,
wide ranging, and witty exploration
of questions and analogies suggested by this dialogue so central to
the program he loved. It was truly a
poignant ending to a half century of
joyful inquiry and dedicated service
to this community.
from the University of Notre Dame,
and completed 14 post-doctorate
courses in graduate psychology.
He taught at numerous Midwest
universities, including Notre
Dame, Marquette, and St. Xavier in
Chicago. From 1964 to 1965, Kahn
returned to St. John’s, where he
was one of the original tutors at the
Santa Fe campus.
In addition to his passion for
education, Kahn was an accomplished photographer and an avid
supporter of the arts. He lived
in Chicago for 48 years, raising
two families, his first with Peggy
Kahn, and his second with Barbara
Moriarty. Preceded in death by his
parents and one sister, he is survived by his eight children, David,
Carl, Stephen, Judy, Elizabeth, Margaret, Jonathan, and Daniel; two
sisters, Harriet Kessler and Thelma
Richman; 13 grandchildren; a greatgrandchild; and numerous nieces
and nephews.
Carl A. Linden
Tutor, Annapolis
April 2, 2012
In 1965, Carl Arne Linden joined
the faculty in Annapolis, where he
taught for five years and led study
groups with students on 19th- and
20th-century political writings of
Russian authors. Born in Greenwich, Conn., Linden received
a master’s degree in Russian
studies from Harvard in 1956 and
a doctorate in political science and
international affairs from George
Washington University in 1965.
He did intelligence work with the
Air Force during the Korean War
and was a political analyst for the
CIA-affiliated Foreign Broadcast
Information Service from 1956 to
1965. At the time of his death at 82,
Linden was a professor emeritus at
George Washington University’s
Institute for European, Russian and
Eurasian Studies. He taught fulltime at GWU from 1971 to 2001.
Teresa (Engler) Raizen (SF78)
December 13, 2012
Teresa Raizen (1955-2012) of
Cambridge, Mass., died of metastatic breast cancer. She was 57. After
earning a JD from the University of
Chicago, Raizen spent three years
practicing law. She worked for several
years as the director of development
at the Waldorf High School of Massachusetts Bay and volunteered as
a La Leche League leader. She also
enjoyed writing short stories, singing, playing recorder, knitting, and
travelling. Raizen was thrilled to see
both of her sons find their way to St.
John’s. She was a strong supporter
of the college and gave generously to
it. Raizen was loved for her devotion
to her family, strength of character,
steadfast courage, and the loving
kindness she displayed to all. She is
survived by her husband, Dan (SF79),
Carol Lackman, A78
June 9, 2012
John C. “Jake” Smedley
Class of 1944
December 9, 2012
Gloria Lagasse-Page, SF76
February 24, 2013
Born in England, John C. “Jake” Smedley (1921-2012) moved to California to live with his aunt and uncle in 1930, following the death of his
parents. Smedley studied at St. John’s from 1940 until he entered the
Army in 1942. After marrying Georgianna “Georgie” Rogers of Baltimore, he served in General George Patton’s Third Army in Europe. Following Smedley’s discharge in 1945, he returned to Annapolis, where
he graduated from St. John’s in 1948. He pursued a career in social work
and received his MSW from the University of Pennsylvania in 1951. His
career took him from Ruxton, Maryland, to Hastings-on-Hudson, New
York. In 2007, Smedley and his wife moved to Silver Spring, Maryland,
to be closer to family. Smedley is survived by his four children Beth,
Bill, Joe, and Webb; five grandchildren, including Giovanni (A08); and
three great-grandchildren.
and her three children, Nathaniel
(SF10), Ben (SF13), and Claire.
William A. Rohrbach (A85,
SFGI-EC98)
January 15, 2013
William Alan Rohrbach, a Santa Fe
resident for 37 years, died at home
at 50.
Devoted to his family and to his
community, he will be remembered
for his intellect, warmth, and
imagination, and for his fidelity to
St. John’s College. Rohrbach was
a member of the St. John’s Search
and Rescue team from 1995 to 1999.
He became an accomplished artist
over the past decade and enjoyed
playing the piano. Rohrbach also
served on the board of the William H. and Mattie Wattis Harris
Foundation for 20 years. Over the
years, the foundation has been a
champion of the Eastern Classics
program. He is survived by his wife
of 24 years, Elizabeth Rohrbach,
(SF85, SFGI-EC03); son Alan;
mother Louise Heydt, (SFGIEC95); father Charles; and many
other caring family members.
Also Deceased:
Irving Abb, Class of 1947
July 13, 2012
Harvey Alexander, Class of 1961
November 23, 2012
Anne Allen, Class of 1954
May 23, 2012
Dawn Osoff Andrews, SF80
October 2012
H. Richard Bixby, Class of 1951
September 19, 2012
Lorin Blackstad, SF08
November 7, 2008
Louis Brin, Class of 1947
December 23, 1998
George Cochran, AGI82
March 30, 2013
Thomas Eaton, Class of 1965
March 1, 2013
Hallie Leighton, SF92
April 30, 2013
Barry Lexton, Class of 1960
April 28, 1995
Paul Liebow, Class of 1964
April 30, 2012
Kathleen MacDuff, A68
October 20, 2012
Gordon McNamee, Class of 1949
October 16, 2012
Don McQuoid, Class of 1961
February 10, 2013
John Meehan, Class of 1952
January 29, 2013
John Miller, Class of 1948
April 16, 2013
Ernest Piron, Class of 1954
December 23, 2012
John Povejsil, A92
June 26, 2012
Gilbert Renaut, A68
February 27, 2013
Nicolas Richardson, A99
February 8, 2013
Tevell Scott, SFGI69
August 28, 2009
Haven Simmons, Class of 1944
May 15, 2012
Vernon M. Smith, Class of 1945
July 30, 2012
Gerard Sparaco, A90
February 20, 2013
Raymond Starke, Class of 1951
March 22, 2013
Robert T. Everett Jr., Class of 1942
F. Elizabeth Tapia, SFGI94
October 12, 2012
Lawrence Scott Fitzpatrick, A83
April 4, 2013
George Van Sant, Class of 1947
January 20, 2013
Jack Cruz Hopkins, SFGI78
March 30, 2004
Peter Whipple, Class of 1950
January 2, 2013
Robert Hunter, Class of 1943
June 3, 2012
Diane Katz, Class of 1965
September 5, 2012
Samuel Kramer, Class of 1964
November 13, 2012
The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 |
53
�philanthropy
transitions
The Graduate’s Odyssey
By Charlotte Lucy Latham (SF02)
Fund for Health and Wellness
Honors Hallie L. Leighton (SF92)
At the time of her death, she was
working on a documentary on her
father’s career.
Hallie L. Leighton (SF92)
April 30, 2013
Leighton is survived by her
mother, Lynda Myles; her brother
Ross Leighton; her Aunt Wendie
Myles; and a large, loving extended family.
with Bill Fant (A79) in the 1990s.
The board served as a mechanism for alumni diaspora communication about job openings,
rental property availability, and
other short announcements.
Hallie Leland Leighton, who
fought successfully for passage
of New York State’s Breast Density Inform Bill, a bill that would
require doctors to notify patients
if they had dense breast tissue,
which can hide cancer during a
mammography, died while fighting
her own battle with metastatic
breast cancer. She was 42.
Born and raised in New York
City, Leighton attended the High
School of Performing Arts where
she majored in drama. After
St. John’s she worked in writing
and publishing.
At St. John’s, Leighton was
known for her many friendships
as well as her intellectual and
leadership contributions, among
which was the creation of JohnnyXpress, an electronic bulletin
board for alumni that she started
With her late father, the actor/
impersonator Jan Leighton, she
co-authored two books: Rare
Words and Ways to Master Their
Meanings I and II (Levenger
Press, 2003, 2008), a collection
of useful but little known words.
Scholarship Fund in Memory of
Michael A. Chiantella (A97)
Michael A. Chiantella (A97)
May 30, 2012
Michael A. Chiantella was only
16 when he started his freshman
year at the college. We first met
when I showed up looking for a
corkscrew on the second floor of
Randall. We began a conversation
that lasted 18 years.
We sat in his room, smoking
cartons of cigarettes and drinking
cases of Coke, and talked about
everything young Johnnies talk
about. Even early on, he knew
exactly what he wanted from his
life. My greatest memories of him,
selfishly, have to do with how he,
through our interactions, made me
feel about myself and the hope he
gave me for my future. Through
who he was innately and the
generous soul he had cultivated,
he gave me a glimpse of who and
how I wanted to be.
Chiantella was a gallant dreamer.
He married his childhood love,
Karen. They had two children,
Dylan and Morgan, and lived in
Venice, Fla., where Chiantella had
a successful estate law practice.
I saw him build the life that he
had so wanted and so clearly
described as a 16-year-old boy.
Chiantella’s dreams included
not only helping his family and
friends, but also buying a house
across from the college and getting a third master’s degree from
the Graduate Institute.
54 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013
Inspired by her many contributions, fellow alumni, friends,
and family have launched the
Hallie Leighton Fund for Health
and Wellness at St. John’s College. The group hopes to raise
$50,000 to name the student
health office on the Santa Fe
campus after Leighton. It will
serve as a tangible and lasting
memorial to Leighton’s legacy
of advocacy, commitment, and
action. In addition, it will provide
needed health-related services
and support to St. John’s College
students. The goal is to raise
$50,000 by June 30, 2014, in
time to hold a naming ceremony
as part of the Fiftieth Year Celebration of the Santa Fe campus.
To make a gift to the Hallie Leighton
Fund for Health and Wellness, send
a check to the college, or visit www.
stjohnscollege.edu/giving.
The Fund will serve as a tangible and
lasting memorial to Leighton’s legacy of
advocacy, commitment, and action.
It would belittle his memory to
solely state the obvious: that he
was brilliant, beloved, and generous. This man was a catalyst. He
changed people and the course of
their lives. From the charity work he
did with his law practice, helping
thousands of veterans create wills,
to telling me to change my major
in graduate school, he nurtured
and encouraged those he knew.
The last book he gave me was a
volume of Marcus Aurelius. As I
sat in the church while they held
his funeral mass, I found a passage that did not comfort, but did
explain why my dear, dear friend
was now dead.
I have thought so many times
about the Oxford English Dictionary sitting on his bookshelf,
surrounded by books from the authors whose names we all know.
His OED was both the latest and
the last edition. That large collec-
tion of words, with its history and
dedication to helping us more
fully understand the words we
use each day, is married in my
mind to my memory of Michael
A. Chiantella. The OED will not
be printed again; a renewed,
physical version will not enter
new peoples’ lives. Accessing
the OED online is not the same
as pulling one of its volumes off
the shelf, just as the memory of
Chiantella is not the same as him
living in the world with us.
–Vada Mossavat (A00)
To make a gift to the Michael A.
Chiantella Memorial Scholarship
Fund, send a check to the college,
or use the online giving form for
the Annapolis campus. (Select
“other” and designate the Michael
A. Chiantella Memorial Scholarship
Fund.) The online form is available
at http://community.stjohnscollege.
edu/AN-DonationForm-CURRENT
“�I have brought you here with intelligence and art;
Now you must take your pleasure for your guide;
You are out of the steep and narrow way.
[...] No longer wait for words or signs from me.
Your will is free, just and as it should be,
And not to follow it would be a fault:
I leave you master of your body and soul.”
thought, and watched their
little ones become conscious
of the world around them.
And so did I. Working
with children was, I learned
after another year, no longer
for me. From working as an
artist model at an art gallery
and school in Santa Fe, I
—Virgil to Dante, The Divine Comedy: Purgatory Canto 27
became their interim art
director. My organizational
experience (from previous work as a
stage manager and as Polity Chair) got me
planning one-week workshops, helping
visiting students, overseeing the bookkeeper, writing content for the website,
and pretending every day that I knew
what I was doing. I learned most of it after
hours. Unfortunately, I found the owner
careless and stupid, and argued with her
vehemently. Though everyone thought
my work was excellent and expected that I
would be promoted, she fired me.
I was devastated. Not knowing what to
do in Santa Fe, I moved to Vermont where
I don’t remember the day after graduamy boyfriend had family, where we could
tion. I had a job to teach in France, but
live and reassess our options. I went online
halfway through the summer, I refused
to do personality tests. I read horoscopes.
it. Not because something else appealed,
I talked to friends. I think we all felt guilty
but because I didn’t know why I was going
admitting how much we were flounderother than to do the next thing, always the
ing. With no clear goal in mind, I decided
right thing. I remember a lot of fear that
to become a family therapist. When I was
summer while others seemed so relaxed.
rejected from an MSW program, I tried
By August, I found work as a governess,
not to cry. Visiting an aunt in New York, I
tending a six-year-old girl and eightdecided to stay. With a few hundred dollars
year-old boy for a wealthy Texas family. I
to my name, I needed employment, an
spun romantic stories for them about my
apartment, and a new life.
life in Pecos, living in an old, baby-blue
I left messages with everyone I knew
Airstream trailer on top of a hill made of
that I was looking for a job. I would take
rose quartz, though the long drive each
anything. A week later, over a Diet Coke,
way felt lonely. However, their troubles
the owner of a medical publishing compadid not need the addition of mine; in fact,
ny to whom I had been referred asked me
they needed me to help them learn how
many unexpected questions, including
to handle their challenges. The job ended
“Pick: black or white?” I answered red.
after eighteen months, whereupon I deWhat I knew about publishing came from
cided to work with another family. I moved working as an editor at my high school
with the family to a plot of land deep in
paper, but I made it sound good. I had a
Santa Fe National Forest. I got a truck that job. Promotions came regularly, until I
could make the hill out of Tesuque up to
launched the education division, overseethe stone cabin where I lived and read and
ing a half-million-dollar budget in the
“�With a few hundred dollars
to my name, I needed
employment, an apartment, and a new life.”
first six months. The job was grueling but
I learned about work, life, business, and
myself across those four years. I left the
job, despite my success there, because I
realized that I really could learn anything,
and the compelling work I sought would
only come from a new direction.
I’m now in graduate school at the City
University of New York. My dissertation
thesis focuses on how poetry and prose
can help us look at fine art—full circle to
the conversations I had with the artists
in Santa Fe. I have discovered a niche:
helping artists and writers break through
creative and business challenges by offering them readings that shake them out of
mental stupor. This fall I will be on the job
market again because a PhD isn’t the end
of the road.
All is not settled, but my liberal arts
education at St. John’s College helped me
immeasurably in finding my way. I learned
non-linear geometry and the rationality
of freedom in the books, but also the faith
to persist, to keep on discovering. Virgil
spoke to Dante with sincerity, and though
Dante wept, he knew that the stories from
their travels had taught him much. Now in
my conversations with Johnnies, we admit
how complicated the first decade out of
school was. Yet we describe our quests
with pride. We were lost innumerable
times, but learned to incorporate missteps into our journey, to tread paths we
couldn’t have imagined. Life is an odyssey,
and it’s the adventures—and terrors—that
make the story so satisfying in the end.
Charlotte Lucy Latham seeks stories
from liberal arts graduates about how
they have fared in the first decade after
graduation. www.scriptandtype.com
The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 |
55
�alumni news
alumni news
s av e t h e d a t e
Homecoming 2013
Santa Fe
Friday, September 20Sunday, September 22
Annapolis
Friday, September 27Sunday, September 29
Homecoming 2013 is gearing up to be a fantastic weekend for
alumni. Both campuses will offer a wide variety of activities,
including seminars, dancing, and career networking events,
that will make your return to St. John’s fun and memorable.
Early Bird registration opened June 7. A special rate is offered
to recent alumni. Please join us and your classmates as we
celebrate and support St. John’s College.
Sarah Palacios and Leo Pickens,
directors of Alumni Relations
For more information and to register:
http://alumni.stjohnscollege.edu.
Click on “Homecoming.”
Annapolis Alumni Office
410-626-2531
alumni@sjca.edu
Santa Fe Alumni Office
505-984-6103
alumni@sjcsf.edu
56 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013
Inviting Conversations in Texas
Admissions staff and alumni
worked together to host two
“Inviting Conversations”
events in Texas that combined
alumni gatherings with receptions for prospective students
and their families. On April 20,
at the Driskill Hotel in Austin,
and the following day at Hotel
Icon in Houston, alumni played
a key role in recruiting new
students. According to Larry
Clendenin (SF77), director
of Admissions in Santa Fe,
anywhere from 50 to 75 percent
of prospective students who attend these events go on to apply
to or confirm their decision to
enroll at St. John’s.
“We’ve been doing these
joint receptions for a few years
now,” says Clendenin. “Alumni
introduce themselves and talk
about when they graduated and
what they’ve done with their
St. John’s education since then.
We had a wonderful mix of
younger and older alumni, men
and women—scientists, professors, attorneys.” The alumni
introductions in Houston went
especially well, convincing one
applicant’s father of the college’s virtues. He approached
Clendenin at the opening of
the reception to say that he
just wasn’t sure how St. John’s
stacked up against the other
colleges where his daughter had
applied, despite her enthusiasm
for St. John’s over the other
schools. “He didn’t know why
she wanted it so much or how
practical it was going to be,”
says Clendenin. “But at the
end of the event he told me
the alumni had sold him, that
they’d made the case for the
college perfectly.”
In addition to talking to
prospective students and their
families at “Inviting Conversations” events, the Austin/San
Antonio alumni chapter has
found a number of ways to give
back to the college, including
raising scholarship funds for
the Summer Academy at St.
John’s. Each year for the past
five years, Larry Davis (SFGI87)
has also searched all the Half
Price Books locations in Austin
“�We had a wonderful
mix of younger
and older alumni,
men and women—
scientists, professors,
attorneys.”
—Larry Clendenin (SF77)
for complete 54-volume sets of
the Encyclopedia Britannica’s
Great Books of the Western
World to give to an underclassman from the Austin/San
Antonio area. He uses coupons
and sales to further reduce the
cost to as low as $100 per set.
He then asks other chapter
members to help underwrite
the gift. This year, Davis found
two sets. One was given to a
rising sophomore from Austin
and, after the college confirmed
there were no other currently
enrolled underclassmen from
the area at either campus with
financial need, the other set
went to an incoming freshman
from San Antonio.
—Jennifer Levin
Lincoln Comes to Baltimore
The elegant 1847 mansion at 14
Mount Vernon Place in Baltimore’s
historic Mount Vernon neighborhood—one of nine buildings in
that area belonging to Agora Inc.—
was the ideal setting for a seminar
led by Annapolis President Chris
Nelson on Abraham Lincoln’s
second inaugural address and the
Gettysburg Address. “These two
documents, more than any others
since 1790, have provided the
basis for the re-founding of the nation on the ‘proposition’ (requiring
demonstration) that all men are
created equal rather than the ‘selfevident truth’ that this is so,” says
Nelson. “I think this has profound
implications that would be good
to explore. And for those who have
seen the recent film, Lincoln, the
time is fortuitous.”
Baltimore chapter Johnnies
gathered in March for lively conversation. “During the discussion,
an interesting question came from
the Gettysburg Address regarding
political philosophy and the nature
of being tested,” says chapter coleader Nathan Betz (AGI09). “We
talked about whether or not war
is a suitable example for testing
humanity.” Betz and fellow chapter
co-leader Talley Kovacs (A01)
were among the approximately 20
alumni, along with President Nelson and Annapolis Alumni Director
Leo Pickens, who participated
in the seminar—and kept the
conversation lingering afterward
over glasses of wine at a local
watering hole. “This was definitely
one of the best attended seminar
events we’ve had,” says Betz, who
initiated the reading. “At first I
proposed that we read Lincoln’s
and President Obama’s respective
second inaugural addresses. It was
President Nelson who suggested
we read two Lincoln documents
instead, which actually worked
even better.”
As for the chapter’s future
activities, Betz says the members
balance socializing with scholarly
pursuits. They welcome Johnnies
in the Baltimore area to connect with them via their Facebook page: www.facebook.com/
groups/71905982751. “We’ve got
plans to catch an Orioles game
and do a seminar on Euripides’
The Trojan Women. There’s a real
desire for ongoing interaction
among Baltimore Johnnies.”
—Gregory Shook
To read President Nelson’s “Lincoln
and Liberal Education” blog, visit
www.huffingtonpost.com/christopher-nelson/liberal-arts-educationlincoln_b_2966192.html
CONNECT TO THE COLLEGE
Alumni Association Board President
Phelosha Collaros (SF00)
“�The Alumni Association and St. John’s staff
are working together to create meaningful
ways that alumni can volunteer to support
the mission of the college. Together, we can
make sure the life-changing education we
had is available to new students for many
years to come.”
Alumni online community:
http://alumni.stjohnscollege.edu
Agora career mentoring network:
http://alumni.stjohnscollege.edu
Click on “Career Services”
Alumni offices:
alumni@sjca.edu
alumni @sjcsf.edu
Facebook:
facebook.com/stjohnscollege
The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 |
57
�Croquet Mix
Waltz archon Virginia Early (A13) provided a local radio
station deejay with the playlist for dancing during croquet,
including these favorites:
Waldo in Wonderland
“After I Say I’m Sorry”
Throughout the afternoon on April 20,
2013, St. John’s croquet players, decked
out in red-and-white-striped shirts and
hats and round black glasses, peeked
through the crowd of more than 3,000
spectators gathered on campus for the
31st annual St. John’s-U.S. Naval Academy croquet match. This year’s croquet
team, led by Imperial Wicket Drew
Menzer (A13) of Granville, Ohio, sported
uniforms inspired by the globe-trotting
character from the Where’s Waldo? children’s books created by British illustrator
Martin Handford—and rather convincingly at that. Unlike in the books, in which
Waldo is clearly hidden, the team’s outfits
popped against the backdrop of bow ties,
spats, umbrellas, vintage suits, and festive
frocks. “I got the idea for the uniforms
during the summer after my sophomore
year, long before I knew I would become
Imperial Wicket,” says Menzer. “Out of
nowhere, the idea just popped into my
head, and I went with it.”
With new wooden mallets in hand,
courtesy of the Annapolis campus master
craftsman, Gary Dunkelberger, the players burst onto the front lawn with vigor
and gusto. This year’s “Prime Mover”
award recipient, Shaun Callahan, U.S.
Naval Academy Class of 1985 and the
Imperial Wicket that competed against
former St. John’s Imperial Wicket, John
Ertle (A84), struck the opening shot. The
“You Are My Sunshine”
“Bei Mir Bist Du Schein”
“Oh, Lady Be Good”
“C-Jam Blues”
“720 in the Books”
“They All Laughed”
“On a Slow Boat to China”
“I’ve Got the World on a
String”
“Lean Baby”
“Take the ‘A’ Train”
“Jersey Bounce”
“Route 66”
“I’m in the Mood for Love”
“My Blue Heaven”
“I Can’t Give You Anything
But Love”
by Gregory Shook
“Bye Bye Blackbird”
“Crazy Rhythm”
“�When it comes to game time,
we’re not afraid to make the bold
move—and we’re not afraid to
have it go wrong either.”
“Jive at Five”
“Hey, Good Lookin’”
“Sailing Down the
Chesapeake”
“Hallelujah, I Love Her So”
“Tainted Love”
“Hard-Hearted Hannah”
“Ja-Da”
“Oh, When the Saints”
“All God’s Children”
“Bidin’ My Time”
Imperial Wicket Drew Menzer (A13)
“Moon River”
kenneth tom
johnnie traditions
“Honeysuckle Rose”
game was afoot! Geared up for another
St. John’s triumph, the teams tapped and
swung their mallets for more than five
hours, one of the longest matches—if not
the longest—in the event’s colorful 31-year
history. Alas, like Waldo, for the Johnnies
victory was hard to find. Their seven-year
winning streak ended. The Midshipmen
paraded downtown with the Annapolis
Cup after a decisive 4-1 win. Josh Cohen, Annapolis mayor and son of tutor
emeritus Joseph Cohen, Class of 1956,
presented the victors with the trophy. “I
have never even seen the Annapolis Cup
until today,” says Midshipman First Class
Ross Herman, the U.S. Naval Academy’s
Imperial Wicket.
For students on the croquet team, the
sport is not only about having fun; it is an
opportunity to build relationships with
their neighbors on the other side of King
George Street. Menzer was impressed
with the level of camaraderie established
between the two schools during the past
several months. “More than any other
year, the St. John’s and Navy teams really
made an effort to spend time together and
get to know each other as friends,” says
58 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013
Menzer, who plans to start law school in
the fall. “Croquet’s been such a fun part
of my experience at St. John’s. I hope
to keep playing for years to come.” The
match is a centerpiece for the waltz and
swing dancing, a grand lawn party, and
alumni homecoming. “Croquet is a great
second Homecoming, when alumni can
catch up with each other and their friends
at the college,” says Babak Zarin (A10), a
law student at Elon University who hopes
to attend the match each year—and the
alumni-student seminars.
“A Mad Tea-Party” and “The Queen’s
Croquet-Ground,” two chapters from
Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll,
were the readings at the alumni-student
seminars led by President Christopher
Nelson (SF70), and tutors Eva Brann
(H89), Sam Kutler (A54), and Joseph
MacFarland (A87). Gathered in one of the
McDowell Hall classrooms, Brann posed
the opening question, “How can you
achieve depth through pure zaniness?”
Alumni and students explored the value of
silliness and the meaning of Wonderland,
which, it seems, is always close at hand.
Opposite page:
Saul Leiken (A13), master of ceremonies,
introduced the players from both teams.
Clockwise (from top):
Swing dancing all afternoon; spectators
toast the match; Patrick E. McDowell
(A01), his wife, Citali, and their newborn
son in the vintage outfits that Citali
designs for the match each year; former
Imperial Wicket John Ertle (A84) and
Shaun Callahan (U.S. Naval Academy
Class of 1985), former U.S.N.A. Imperial
Wicket (1983-1985); Mandee Glasgo (A14)
prepares a shot; the “Prime Mover”
mallet. Photos by Anyi Guo (A14) unless
otherwise noted.
The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 |
59
�st. john’s forever
eidos
Continuing the
Conversation
anyi guo (a14)
“This photo resonates with Johnnies because
of our fierce, and occasionally irreverent,
pride in the Program,” says Hugh Verrier
(A14). “Johnnies appreciate the freedom of
thought that is encouraged at the college, and
we are glad to see that culture grow and renew itself with each generation of students.”
During Homecoming in Annapolis, Verrier and Noam Freshman (A14), joined by
photographer Anyi Guo (A14), immortalized
their Johnnie pride by recreating the familiar
photograph of Stringfellow Barr and Scott
Buchanan, founders of the New Program, in
conversation on the steps of McDowell Hall.
“We were both trying to stand there and
look as accurate as possible, even standing
on the exact steps they did. As the photo was
being snapped, I couldn’t help but think of
what Barr and Buchanan were thinking when
the original was taken, and what courage it
took to start the college and embark on the
New Program,” says Freshman.
After the image was posted on Facebook,
the trio was surprised by the response from
fellow classmates. “It was this outpouring
of appreciation that really made me feel like
we had tapped into a deep tradition, which
was very fulfilling,” says Verrier, who credits
Freshman for originating the idea. “His
passion for the Program and his good nature
drive him to find new and fun ways to participate in our college traditions.”
“During our summers in Taos, I worked and
talked often with another potter and
St. John’s graduate, Betsy Williams (SF84).
Our conversations ranged widely over many
things besides clay…. We also talked about
printmaking, and one winter day I got a
package from Betsy, enclosing used tea bags
with the opening question, ‘What can you do
with these?’ This series of [collagraphy] prints
is my attempt to answer that.”
—Ebby Malmgren (AGI88), member,
Mitchell Gallery Board of Advisers
Ebby Malmgren (AGI88), a printmaker, potter, and
writer, lives in Annapolis, Maryland. Her work can
be seen at The Harwood Museum of Art in Taos,
The Rift Gallery in Dixon, New Mexico, and The
Eastport Gallery, in Annapolis. Her interest in
printmaking began with a chance invitation to a
monoprint workshop in Taos. After about a year of
monoprinting, Malmgren realized she missed the
three-dimensional aspect of her work in clay; she
has adapted her Bret clay slab roller as a printing
press, and uses polymer clay—“Sculpey”—which
can be run through a press without breaking.
Collagraphy, from the Greek koll or kola, describes
a printmaking process in which materials such as
clay are applied to a rigid surface, inked with
a roller or paintbrush, then printed onto paper or
another material.
From top to bottom: Imaginary Journey, Meditation,
There is Always a Bright Spot.
Photos: Courtesy The Eastport Gallery
60 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013
The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 |
iii
�Non-Profit Org.
U.S. Postage
paid
Communications Office
P.O. Box 2800
Annapolis, Maryland 21404
a d d r e ss se rvi ce r e qu e st ed
Annapolis, md
Permit N0. 120
�
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<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.
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Volume 38, Issue 1 of the <em>The College</em> Magazine. Published in Summer 2013.
The College
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College
The
SUMMER 2012
•
S T. J O H N ’ S C O L L E G E
•
ANNAPOLIS
•
S A N TA F E
Shakespeare
Is All the World a Stage?
�ii | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012
�from the editor
The College
is published 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
Postmaster: Send address
changes to The College
Magazine, Communications
Office, St. John’s College,
Box 2800, Annapolis, MD
21404-2800.
Editor
Patricia Dempsey
patricia.dempsey@sjca.edu
Contributing Editor
Gabe Gomez
Associate Editor
Gregory Shook
Art Director
Jennifer Behrens
Contributors
Genevieve Dufour-Allen (A12)
Chelsea Batten (A07)
Susan Borden (A87)
Jillian Burge (SF12)
Charles Fasanaro
Catherine Fields (A12)
Joseph McFarland (A87)
Laurence Nee
Anna Perleberg (SF02)
Leo Pickens (A78)
Deborah Spiegelman
Babak Zarin (A11)
Design Consultant
Claude Skelton
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
On Shakespeare
“All the world’s a stage,
and all the men and
women merely players;
they have their exits
and their entrances,
and one man in his time
plays many parts. . .”
As You Like It, Act II, Scene 7
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) was born, and
died, in the village of Stratford-upon-Avon. The
man is less known than his works. Shakespeare,
sometimes called “Bard of Avon,” penned some
38 plays and 154 sonnets. It has been more than
400 years since Shakespeare began staging his
works in the late 1580s in Elizabethan England,
but we are compelled to return to them again
and again.
“Shakespeare in our seminar list would be as
inevitable as Plato, or the Bible, or Kant,” says
Annapolis tutor Jonathan Tuck, for a feature
in this issue in which several faculty members
share observations. At St. John’s, notes Santa Fe
Dean J. Walter Sterling, students “inhabit the
poetic form” when they encounter Shakespeare,
the great poet of the English language. As Annapolis Dean Pamela Kraus notes, “We encounter Shakespeare’s work in various ways: through
tutorials, study groups, preceptorials, lectures
and question periods, annual essays, orals, and
dramatic performances. . . . he instructs and
inspires us daily.” In his essay, Santa Fe tutor
Laurence Nee explores how Shakespeare reveals “our dearest and most powerful desire” in
A Midsummer Night’s Dream and King Lear.
At St. John’s and beyond, Shakespeare’s works
remain timeless.
For the alumni profiled in the story, “All the
World’s a Stage,” Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets inspire transformation: these Johnnies
have built careers around the stage. Actress Sara
Barker (A98), describes a modern retelling of
Mary Stuart through her work with the Washington Shakespeare Company. Ilana Kirschbaum (SF07) melds “science, art, and alchemy”
as a set and stage designer in New York City. A
junior-year preceptorial inspired Jack Armstrong
(SF83) to devise plot charts for the Philadelphia
Shakespeare Theatre in which “every scene . . .
advances...like rising and falling notes.” Playwright Damon Rhea Falke (SFGI01) “ listens” to
his characters. Recent graduate Maria Jung (A12)
landed a role in the in Annapolis Shakespeare
Company’s production of The Comedy of Errors.
The College magazine, in a way, is like a stage—
ready to transform your stories. We hope you
enjoy the changed set, the new design for The
College, unveiled in this issue. Thank you to
the more than 400 readers who responded to
the Reader Questionnaire on The College, and
those who joined informal focus groups on campus. Thank you for your many excellent, candid
suggestions and ideas.
As readers, you want The College to be
“distinctive, without gimmicks,” and to “convey
excellence,” brimming with stories about fellow
alumni in their careers, the Program, and the college community. You shared countless insights:
you want to hear from alumni who are beginning
their careers, as well as those who are established;
you like to read historical stories, in-depth essays,
want to see more photos, and are intrigued by
the idea of Johnnie trivia. Although you love the
classic black-and-white design of the past decade,
many of you said “yes” to a mix of color and blackand-white photos and illustrations, and many see
a future that includes electronic formats.
Each issue will have a black-and-white feature
or photo essay. In this issue, A. Aubrey Bodine’s
iconic view up Main Street sets the stage for
Susan Borden’s (A87) story on desegregation
on the Annapolis campus. As in the past, the
magazine connects you to the voices of tutors, students, and fellow alumni. Since you
want to hear from more members of the college
community, new short sections—such as “Mentors,” “Conversation with the Chair,” and
“Briefly Quoted”—have been added, along with
color photos of student and campus life. At the
back of each issue, you will find the familiar
“St. John’s Forever.”
This is your magazine, a work in progress.
As we unveil changes, please let us know what
you think! —P.D.
The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 |
1
�su m me r 2 01 2
volume 37, issue 1
A. AUBREY BODINE
PETR JERABEK
HENLEY MOORE (A13)
Shakespeare’s plays provide an unsurpassed depiction of abiding
human desires. Like mirrors, the plays use characters’ poetic
speeches and deeds to reflect for our consideration the objects of our
desires and the reasons we seek their fulfillment. —Laurence Nee, tutor
F E AT U R E S
page
18
Love and Desire:
“What Fools These
Mortals Be”
Faculty members reflect on
Shakespeare, and modern
and archival images of
the King William Players
provide visual history.
p a ge
25
“All the World’s
a Stage”
Meet five alums whose
repertoire includes acting
and writing “drama so
intense you’d feel it even if
the actors weren’t speaking,”
set design, and plot charts for
cross-dressing comedies.
on the cover:
Shakespeare illustration
by Marc Burckhardt
2 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012
page
34
Rule of
Reason
What can the oral histories of
St. John’s veterans returning
after World War II tell us about
freedom and injustice? For
the first African Americans
who enrolled at St. John’s,
the college was a haven from
discrimination.
�DEREK STENBORG
D E PA R T M E N T S
ALUMNI
From Our Readers
Bibliophile
Profiles
4
6
39
46
Shakespeare Stories
Letters
From the Bell Towers
8
40
Eva Brann (HA89): Tutor, Traveler,
Pendulum Pit: A Gift for Learning and
10
10
11
12
12
13
14
14
15
16
17
Mentors
early activism leads him to Navajo
railroad workers.
Alumni Notes
53
In Memoriam
Alumni News
55 Notes from the
Chancellor Johnson House
Apollonius’s Conics
New Winiarski Student Center
Hodson House Underway
Johnnie Traditions
50
Croquet 2012: A new school song
christens the annual match.
Sarah Morse: Director of Admissions
in Annapolis
Jay Youngdahl’s (SFGI03)
Michael Fried (A82) on the lost book of
A Hunger for Shakespeare
Fulbright Fellow to Teach in Malaysia
51
Fred Bohrer (A78) examines photos of
excavation sites around the world.
New Board Members
Talk of the Towers
crafting furniture by hand.
42
41 Tutor emeritus Charles Fasanaro on
Perry Lerner: New Board Chairman
Conversations with the Chair
Geremy Coy (A06) finds truth
Jorge Aigla’s Intimate Microscopy
Homerathon: An Oral History
Singing
Joshua Parens (A83) and Joseph C.
Macfarland’s (A87) sourcebook on
medieval political philosophy
Thinker, American
9
Andrew Krivak (A86) comes of age as a
writer with The Sojourn, National
Book Award Finalist.
58
56
Homecoming 2012
above: Theatrical set design by
Ilana Kirschbaum (SF07).
St. John’s Forever
The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 |
3
�from our readers
Readers Share
Shakespeare Stories
The Bard as Teacher
When I came to the Annapolis
campus as a prospective student—
croquet weekend of 1992—a King
William Players’ production of
Love’s Labour’s Lost replaced
the Friday night lecture. That
same week, the sophomores were
discussing Hamlet in seminar.
St. John’s did not teach Shakespeare’s plays; it allowed the Bard
to teach me. Shakespeare led me to
Freud in my sophomore year when
I attempted to define Hamlet’s
madness in my enabling essay.
Were it not for his plays, I would
have had little cause to ponder the
nature of madness or the human
condition in such a way. The poor
young scholars of Love’s Labour’s
Lost revealed to me the problem
of the divided will far better than
St. Augustine or St. Paul had been
able to do, although the fault
was entirely mine. After my own
conversion, I found great comfort
in returning to those two saints
because they understood the battle
that I had originally faced alone.
Since then I have had the
chance to share those plays with
my own students, and see them
loved anew. I teach seventh
through twelfth grades at Holy
Rosary Academy, a small, Great
Books-styled Catholic school in
Alaska. My 7th and 8th graders
just finished performing some of
the Bard’s notable monologues as
part of their first acting project;
soon I will be reading Julius
Caesar with the 9th grade and
Hamlet with the 10th. During
the last couple of years, we have
performed Twelfth Night, Love’s
Labour’s Lost, and A Midsummer
Night’s Dream. My students are
clamoring to do The Taming of
the Shrew next year. Shakespeare
teaches them far better than I
could.
—Erin (Hearn) Furby (A96)
Conversational Epiphanies
My seminar experience of
Shakespeare was strangely cold.
Our Shakespeare seminars were
dull soup. For some reason, our
seminar group never got into the
Elizabethan swing of things—never
effervesced around the object under discussion. After graduating,
I earned a PhD on Shakespeare
(along with Homer’s Odyssey,
Hellenistic romances, and medieval romances) and, specifically,
Shakespeare’s last four plays, at the
University of London and with the
assistance of the Royal Shakespeare Company, Stratford-uponAvon. Something at St. John’s must
have helped to get me there.
Two or three off-the-cuff
conversations with key tutors of
my St. John’s generation—
Mr. MacDonald and Mr. McGraw—
led me to click with Shakespeare.
I complained that Shakespeare
wasn’t accessible, wasn’t satisfactory somehow. McGraw quoted
Shakespeare sonorously, really
sang it as lyrics, when we discussed
it while walking up from town to
the Bell Tower. Suddenly I saw
behind the curtains: The text was
illuminated. Later, discussing
Shakespeare with Mr. MacDonald,
I made the same idiotic complaint
about Shakespeare’s inaccessibility. Mr. MacDonald breathed
deeply, looked at me with his
gimlet eyes, and said, “You really
have to dig deeper there. Listen
to the man. His work is packed
with treasure. What are you
looking for?”
They both provoked me with
Socratic techniques. They whet
my hunger. It’s those epiphanylike conversations that spark
interest—sparks that lead to real
bonfires, as it turns out.
—John Dean (A70)
4 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012
Christel Stevens (A72)
as Rosaline and Richard
Ferrier (A69) as Berowne
illuminate the stage in the
King William Players’
production of Love’s
Labour’s Lost circa 1969.
A Prospie’s
Point of View
As You Like It was the
seminar reading during
my prospective visit to the
Santa Fe campus. I had
always been a voracious
reader, but sitting in that
seminar room, I realized
that I hadn’t been much of
a thinker. I could actually
feel my mind come alive
with ideas. This little play,
which I had read as an
historical curiosity on the
flight out, was suddenly the gateway to where I needed to be. By the
end of the evening, I knew that
St. John’s was going to change
my life.
—Steve Hillson (SF86)
On Par with the Pros
I acted in Measure for Measure at
St. John’s in the spring of 1997.
Ably directed by Heidi Jacot (A97),
the show’s fabulous leads were
Sara Barker (A98) and Weldon
(Michael) Goree (A98), who are
both now involved in Washington,
D.C.-area theater. Since leaving
St. John’s and continuing to watch,
read, and act in Shakespearean
plays, I have come to appreciate
the passion that Johnnies brought
to the classic plays mounted by the
KWP. Although we had [sparse]
sets and costumes, the commitment to the acting and the desire to
bring the text to life was amazing.
I had the privilege to be in both
Measure for Measure and Electra.
Later I saw a production of Hamlet
that, in its acting at least, truly
rivaled the Shakespeare Theater
Company’s Free for All production
that same summer in Washington,
D.C., which starred professional
actors. The fencing scene at the
end was truly memorable.
—Jill Nienhiser (A/SFGI97)
A Bravura Performance
This picture (above) of Richard
Ferrier (A69) as Berowne and me
as Rosaline in Love’s Labour’s
Lost is from the King William
Players’ 1969 production. (Others
may chime in with the correct
date.) Directed by Michael Victoroff (A71), it also featured such
luminaries as Patrick D’Addario
(A71) in the role of Dumaine, Patti
Posey (A70) as Katharine, Harry
Koenig (A69) as Holofernes in a
bravura performance, and my own
brother, Richard Stevens (A69), as
Constable Dull.
—Christel Stevens (A72)
A Life-Altering Moment
I had the opportunity to act in two
Shakespeare plays at St. John’s,
and I directed The Winter’s Tale
while writing my senior essay on
it. Our cast was an eclectic mix
of undergraduates, GIs, and tutors. Imam Sawez (A95) stole the
show with his cameo as the bear!
Encouraged by my experiences
at St. John’s, I auditioned for a
classical theater training program
in London and spent the year after
graduation studying with amazing
British actors and directors. I had
a life-changing experience while
playing the patriarch Leonato in
an all-female production of Much
Ado About Nothing in London.
�from our readers
During one of the performances, I found myself fully inhabiting
this character whose worldview
and priorities couldn’t have been
more different from my own. I was
suddenly able to understand this
man at a fundamental level and
feel a deep sense of compassion
for him. I now strive to bring these
same qualities of awareness and
open-mindedness to my work.
My life-altering moment wouldn’t
have been possible without
Shakespeare’s powerful words—
and my time at St. John’s that led
me to them.
—Adee St. Onge Swanson (A95)
Wild for Togas
My favorite Shakespeare memory
from St. John’s was As You Like
It in 1980. When Johnny Moron
appeared as the god Hymen on
his leafy throne, resplendent in
his toga and crown of flowers,
surrounded by fairies, the whole
audience went wild.
—Jack Armstrong (SF83)
“The Player King”
When I was a student at St. John’s,
there was, mysteriously, a record
album of the entire play, Richard
II, on a side table in the seminar
room. Mesmerized, I listened
to it repeatedly. Years later, as a
graduate student at Tulane, the
major dramatic offering was—you
guessed it—Richard II. I auditioned and got the part! I went
on to an illustrious acting career,
including much Shakespeare.
I consider Richard II one of
Shakespeare’s finest plays,
containing some of his best
poetry. The character of Richard
is one of his best portrayals.
By the way, my senior thesis,
“The Player King,” was an
analysis of Richard II.
—John Chase (A56)
Moved by Henry V
The scene in Shakespeare that
has always moved me most is
perhaps a minor part in Henry V,
in the history series beginning
with Richard II and concluding
with Henry VIII. Richard II sets
up the tragic sequence; although
Richard’s kingship is depicted as
mercurial and capricious, Shakespeare cannot morally justify
the usurpation by Bolingbroke,
later Henry IV. Bolingbroke’s
son, Henry V, pleads with God
regarding his offerings of Masses
for the soul of Richard II, who was
murdered. Yet Henry senses that
Masses cannot compensate for the
injustice of Richard’s deposition,
however better Bolingbroke ruled
England than Richard did. The
audience knows that the tragedy
will culminate in the deposition
and murder of Henry’s son, Henry
VI, during the War of the Roses,
which will not end until the triumph of the Tudors at Bosworth
Field and the birth of Henry VII’s
granddaughter, the future Queen
Elizabeth.
—Steven Shore (SF68)
Dramatic Memory
The first time I went to St. John’s,
in the early 1950s, a lecturer from
Harvard University spoke on
Macbeth, listing all the times the
word “blood” appeared in the
play. I never heard anything so
exciting in my life—I had goose
pimples on my arm! A few months
later, I met this man, (whose
name, I believe, was F. O.
Mathiesen), in the Harvard
University Library, and tried
to congratulate him on the
excitement he generated with his
lecture. He refused to talk to me.
A few months later, I read in the
newspaper that he committed
suicide. Now that is drama at
its highest.
—Alvin Aronson (A72)
“As I teach Shakespeare to my students, I
am still in wonder at how well he captured
the transformative qualities of human
beings. Be it an army of Englishmen or an
angry shrew, Shakespeare always left room
for his characters’ capacity to change.”
Tobin Herringshaw (a05)
Recollecting the Shrew
In my sophomore year at Santa
Fe, I had a role in The Taming of
the Shrew. I mainly recall using
the time when I was not needed
onstage in rehearsals memorizing
the opening passage from Book
Three of Paradise Lost, which
remains with me to this day, some
thirty years later. Happily, I have
little recollection of how well
I played the role of the hapless
lover.
—Don Dennis (SF82)
Is Change Possible?
I directed Hamlet in 2002 at
St. John’s. Naturally, I wrote my
junior essay on that paragon of
plays. The real focus of my essay
was on the reversal and recognition moment of Aristotle’s Poetics.
I argued that Hamlet’s moment
In 2002, Joe Hyde (A03), playing
the role of Hamlet with the King
William Players.
occurred on the pirate ship,
when Hamlet, accompanied by
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern,
discovers himself anew. Now, as I
teach Shakespeare to my students,
I am still in wonder at how well
he captured the transformative
qualities of human beings. Be it an
army of Englishmen or an angry
shrew, Shakespeare always left
room for his characters’ capacity
to change. Through his work, I
continue to believe that people
can bring change to their lives.
Aristotle, in his Ethics, would
probably disagree.
In the accompanying
photograph, Joe Hyde (A03)
plays Hamlet in our production.
—Tobin Herringshaw (A05)
A Prancing Mustard Seed
I played the part of Mustard Seed
in A Midsummer Night’s Dream at
St. John’s, which involved prancing around and singing songs that
Mr. Zuckerman composed for the
occasion. It was one of those lighthearted moments in my otherwise
earnest years studying the Great
Books and trying to be wise long
before I was ready.
—Julia Busser du Prey (A66)
To Act or Not to Act
I can’t remember whether I played
Prospero in The Tempest during
my sophomore year or my junior
year. Jack Landau (A44), who
directed it, embarked on a
brilliant career in the theater
upon graduation. (His life was
tragically cut short by a burglary[continued]
The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 |
5
�from our readers
Readers Share Shakespeare Stories (continued)
related murder at the age of 42.)
Rehearsals were great fun at the
digs of Captain Dickinson, the
U.S. Naval Academy quartermaster, who was reputed to have the
Academy’s best liquor supply and
whose daughter Laetitia played
the role of Prospero’s daughter
Miranda. One of Landau’s inventions was to have Ariel appear only
as a disembodied voice emanating
from loudspeakers placed in the
crowns of several tall trees
surrounding the open-air stage.
The day after the single
performance, a Naval Academy
English professor, who had seen
the play, called to ask if I could
spare a few minutes to visit him.
When I found his office, he announced that he wanted to lend
me a book, Stanislavski on Acting.
I have never come to a satisfactory conclusion about the motive
behind this generous gesture.
On good days, I flatter myself by
thinking it must have been due to
my stellar performance. On bad
days, I wonder whether I could
really have been that lousy. At any
rate, my role in The Tempest was
both the beginning and the end of
my thespian career.
—Peter Weiss (Class of 1946)
Liberated
I was exposed to Shakespeare in
high school when I was full of zeal
for a narrow form of Christianity. I had doubts about reading
secular literature, wondering
if God approved. The beauty of
Shakespeare’s language and the
expansiveness of his worldview liberated me. In fear and
trembling, I set out to explore a
world fraught with the poignant
ambiguities of the heart.
—Kevin (Johnson) Thomas (A93)
“The beauty of Shakespeare’s language
and the expansiveness of his worldview
liberated me. In fear and trembling, I set
out to explore a world fraught with the
poignant ambiguities of the heart.”
Kevin (Johnson) Thomas (A93)
The Singing Sonnet
On a sauntering expedition
through the stacks of St. John’s
library, I found a book of sonnets
by Shakespeare. After reading for
quite some time, I took the
volume home. Then I bought
Helen Vendler’s great analysis,
The Art of Shakespeare’s Sonnets,
and later, more books on his
sonnets. Eventually I got serious
about my research, delving into
the magnificent collection at the
Folger Shakespeare Library in
Washington, D.C. As a composer,
I began to think about setting
sonnets to music. As I viewed
others’ musical sonnet manuscripts and publications from the
Folger collection, my creative
muse was awakened. I began
to write a 60-minute work for
soprano, baritone, and string
quartet titled “O, know, sweet
love, I only write of you,” based on
Shakespeare sonnets. Now I am
seeking a premiere performance
of this new work—all a result of
sauntering through St. John’s
College [Greenfield] library.
—Hollis Thoms (AGI06)
Letters
The Real Olympics
The “Real Olympics” were an
annual athletic event (of sorts)
with chariot races, a teeter-totter
weighting the Bible against Aristotle, epicycle races in which a
woman ran around a man who in
turn ran around a large circle . . . .
The event was started by Seth
Bernadette, a tutor pouring a
cup of beer on the ground while
muttering in ancient Greek . . . .
We decided to spice them up
in the spring of 1958 by having
Steve Almy (A60, pictured here)
run through Annapolis carrying a torch! He was arrested for
“parading without a permit” —but
quickly released to the cheers of a
few dozen students; the [story and
photo] appeared later in the New
York Times. The following year, we
got a permit; the police stopped
traffic and allowed Almy to run
from Piraeus (Annapolis harbor)
to campus amid much fanfare.
—Hugh Curtler (Class of 1959)
Thank you for your letters on the
fall Chopin issue. Look for more
letters in the next issue.
6 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012
Thank you
A special thanks to those who
joined a College magazine focus
group or took the time to review
ideas: Matthew Calise (A00);
Thea Chimento (A10); Genevieve
Dufour-Allen (A12); Nadia Al’Taie
(A14); Erin Fitzpatrick (A14); Beth
Martin Gammon (A94); Jessica
Kjellberg (A14); Alexander Kriz
(SF09); Hannah Pasternak (A12);
Alex Plunkett (A14), Babak Zarin
(A13); tutors Nicholas Maistrellis,
Jonathan Tuck, and John Verdi;
Elliott Zuckerman, tutor emeritus;
Annapolis Dean Pamela Kraus
and Santa Fe Dean J. Walter
Sterling; A special thanks to
Barbara Goyette (A78), Annapolis
vice president for Advancement,
for her savvy ideas; and to my
colleagues: Susan Borden (A87);
Jaime Dunn; Susan Kaplan;
Susan Patten; Leo Pickens (A78);
Victoria Smith (AGI09); Melissa
Stevens; Nancie Wingo. Thanks
to Claude Skelton for his elegant
design. For the photos they
provided, thanks to Jen Behrens,
Jennifer Bodine and Lucinda Edinberg, Henley Moore (A14), Cara
Sabolcik, and Melissa Stevens;
thanks to our copyeditor, Cathi
Dunn MacRae. Welcome to Gabe
Gomez, new director of
Communications, Santa Fe.
Finally, a standing ovation to my
staff who kept their sense of
humor during all the deadlines:
Jen Behrens, art director; Gregory
Shook, associate director; and
Katie Matlack, web specialist. It
took a village—a collaboration of
expertise and ideas—to transform
The College magazine.
—Patricia Dempsey, editor
�“The day after the single performance, a
Naval Academy English professor, who
had seen the play, called to ask if I could
spare a few minutes to visit him. When
I found his office, he announced that he
wanted to lend me a book, Stanislavski
on Acting. I have never come to a
satisfactory conclusion about the motive
behind this generous gesture.”
—Peter Weiss (Class of 1946)
The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 |
7
�Eva Brann: Tutor, Traveler,
Thinker, American
by Genevieve Dufour-Allen (A12)
Homage to Americans: Mile-High Meditations, Close Readings, and TimeSpanning Speculations is a collection of essays and talks by Annapolis faculty
member Eva Brann (HA89), published last year. Brann shares her inspirations
and stories spanning the scope of the essays and her own life.
discover—its spirit is large and generous.
At the last faculty meeting we actually
discussed whether it ought to be read as
poetry or prose. Madison’s rhetoric is
elegant and effective; it was a beautiful
speech at a time of difficult decisions.
Both are certainly worth studying.
You mentioned that Madison and Lincoln are heroes of yours. Tell me more.
I’ll start with Madison because he seems
to have the most practical wisdom. He
succeeded in helping to write a Constitution that has stood for over two centuries.
And Lincoln is a model for leaders; he was
a great leader. While I was the Dean for
seven years, I found him to be an inspiring and comforting model. He was firm
but not ignoble or mean. You can always
ask yourself, “What would Lincoln do?”
JEN BEHRENS
Why is it important to examine the
roots of America?
This book pays homage to Americans.
Why is it important to you to address
the people of America, and those who
adopt the demonym?
Every article is a celebration of America,
North to South. The first is about living
with one’s fellow citizens and the last is
remembering the Aztec civilization as
a part of American history, i.e., North
American. The first essay is the most
important to me, concerning tolerance,
which I think is a flabby virtue and should
be replaced with respect, which is active
and humanly engaged. The first essay is
the one in which I tried to summarize my
philosophy; it shows how I thought and
think about living here. It begins in the
airport where I observed an American
couple eating a great deal of gross fast
food—but they were also reading a book on
classic chess moves and practicing with a
travel chessboard.
There are also two central essays, one
on Madison’s Memorial and Remonstrance and one on Lincoln’s Gettysburg
Address. What is the value of Madison’s eloquence? Some think that the
Gettysburg Address is the high point of
American speechmaking. Do you agree?
The essays on Madison and Lincoln are
important to me; they are heroes of mine,
you see. The Gettysburg Address was a
piece of prose that comes very close to
poetry. It is close, precise, fraught with
meaning and full of things, details, to
8 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012
Roots are important. Particularly in a
political world, it is important to look at
foundations, to ensure we are holding true
to them. It is also important in intellectual
matters to go back to ideas that the Civil
War introduced. It’s where our current
country comes from. And that’s what the
[St. John’s] program is about, isn’t it? It’s
about the things we take for granted, the
roots of our assumptions. It’s not possible
to understand what is going on presently if
we don’t know what we embody or what we
are losing with respect to our foundations.
Because it is what we have in common,
our country is built on something we
have together. The beginnings are always
important, in order to have perspective.
The last essay connects the Aztecs of
Central America. How do you see that
history affecting America as a whole?
Well, imagine that the Spanish had not
conquered and the Aztecs influenced
the development of the Americas more
than the West. Imagine a modern Aztec
influence; it would be very different from
what did happen. The god of the West
is vastly different from the god of the
�PENDULUM PIT: A GIFT
FOR LEARNING AND SINGING
the Earth’s rotation, as well as
some of the math and physics
covered in the Program. For
example, the Pendulum is a
handy resource for demonstrating Newton’s “bucket” experiment, arguing the idea that the
Earth is not a true sphere
shape, but rather oblate from
the effect of centrifugal force
due to rotation.
Aztecs. There was a great problem in the
defeat of the Aztecs, such a large civilization brought down in a matter of a few
years. It is important to remember how
we influence our neighbors, and how they
influence us. So imagine what we could
have become if the West had not won. It
gives another perspective; what might
have been is an interesting way to think
about our present condition.
Today the Pendulum’s
mathematical and scientific
applications are studied in the
Program. Demonstrations of its
mechanics are carried out by
Junior Lab classes in their study
of Newton’s Laws of Motion as
well as attempts to replace the
Aristotelian efficient cause with
Descartes’ quantity of motion,
Leibniz’s “living force,” and
other concepts.
The Americas and particularly the United
States are important to look at. For me,
it is partly because I was an immigrant,
a refugee. I moved here from Germany
when I was 12, escaping the Nazis. I
landed in Hoboken first, and then spent
my grade school and high school years
in Brooklyn, eventually landing here at
St. John’s, where I fell in love with the
college. The U.S. is my adopted country;
typically adoptive citizens have stronger
connections to the adopted country. It is
certainly true for me.
What did you fall in love with at
St. John’s?
Well, many things—I’ll tell you a few. I had
just obtained my degree in archaeology
when I visited the college for an interview. I
fell in love with it. I had a room in Campbell,
which was where they would put interviewees up back then. In the closet of the room,
there was a red skeleton painted behind the
closet door with the Greek γνωθι σεαυτόν,
or “know thyself,” above it. I thought it was
charming. That night I was woken up by students singing madrigals in the courtyard.
It was wonderful. The same weekend, I had
breakfast with Jacob Klein at his house,
and Viktor Zuckerkandl. At the time, the
bookstore was in the coffee shop in the
room where the fireplace is now. There
was a big problem with books being stolen,
which came up at breakfast. Zuckerkandl
said, “What a wonderful school at which
we live where students steal books!” I was
enchanted with everything.
JEN BEHRENS
How did you come to America?
On Friday afternoons, Mellon
Hall dwellers—mostly staff and
tutors—cherish the sound of
choral singing that emanates
from the lobby near the Pendulum Pit. The curious mechanism that hangs in one of the
stairwells nearby is a familiar
sight to Annapolis Johnnies.
The nearly 300-pound pendulum and the space it occupies,
affectionately known as the
Pendulum Pit, is like a member
of the college community. The
fact, too, that only a handful
of other institutions have a
pendulum makes it even more
special that Johnnies have one
to call their own.
For most of its existence, the
Pendulum was inoperable.
That changed, however, when
the class of 2011 approached
Annapolis tutor James Beall
to donate funds from their
Senior Class Gift to pay for the
restoration of the Pendulum, a
gesture that complemented the
previous year’s class gift of a
new projector for the McKeldin
Planetarium. The Colorado
School of Mines gave Beall the
design for the Pendulum, which
he describes as “very contemplative . . . the motion of a
whole swing is 7.1 seconds.”
“THE PENDULUM PIT
IS THE CLOSEST OUR
CAMPUS COMES TO
[PRODUCING] THE
SOUND OF A RESONANT STONE CHAPEL
—THE SORT OF PLACE
FOR WHICH 16THCENTURY VOCAL MUSIC
WAS WRITTEN.”
Eric Stoltzfus, tutor
With support from students,
whose help included soldering electrical connections and
putting together circuitry, Beall
embarked on the Pendulum
Project. “The students had a
fun time getting the electronics
running and understanding the
Pendulum’s inner workings,”
says Beall, a physicist who
studied astrophysics at the
NASA Goddard Space Flight
Center and received his
PhD from the University of
Maryland.
Modeled after Léon Foucault’s
Pendulum invented in 1851,
the Pendulum was included
in the building’s original
1958 construction to give
students and tutors a practical
understanding of the effect of
The Pendulum has surprising
artistic merits, too. Due to the
impressive acoustics of the
Pendulum Pit, the space is a
favorite among musicians and
vocalists. The Freshman Chorus
and the Primum Mobile ensemble gather there on Friday
afternoons to belt out wellloved songs such as William
Byrd’s Mass for Five Voices,
Josquin des Prez’s Missa Pange
lingua, and Tomás Luis de
Victoria’s Missa O Magnum
Mysterium.
“I find it moving to sing while
the Pendulum is swinging,
as if reminding us of our
place in the universe as the
heavenly bodies silently sing
out the music of the spheres,”
says tutor Eric Stoltzfus. “The
Pendulum Pit is the closest our
campus comes to [producing]
the sound of a resonant stone
chapel—the sort of place for
which 16th-century vocal music
was written.” Recently students
have been meeting there on
Wednesday afternoons to sing
Palestrina’s “Sicut Cervus” for
fun. In true Johnnie tradition, this gift will continue to
give—and swing—and sing—for
generations to come.
—Catherine Fields (A12)
The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 |
9
�from the bell towers
2011-2012
New Board Members
homerathon
AN ORAL HISTORY
The Board of Visitors and Governors
welcomes these new members:
HENLEY MOORE (A13)
Claiborne B. Booker (A84)
has been active in investment management since
1985, when he joined what is
now known as LGT Group,
a European private bank.
During the past decade, he
has focused on early stage venture capital and
private equity placements and has worked with
investors and their advisors to raise capital for
companies and new investment funds. He is a
1992 graduate of the University of Chicago Booth
School of Business, where he earned his MBA in
finance. He lives in Alexandria, Virginia.
Student voices echoed off
the quad as the third annual
Homerathon paid tribute to the
immortal epic of the Greek oral
tradition: Homer’s Iliad. Gathered under a partially cloudy
sky from 9 a.m. on Saturday,
April 14, to 1 a.m. on Sunday,
Annapolis students dropped by
to read aloud a hundred lines
or a whole chapter of the epic,
giving voice to the gods and
heroes of Homer.
Homerathon began in 2009
when Bradley van Uden (A10)
“just wanted to have someone
read the entire Iliad out loud”
to him. Virginia Early (A13),
one of the participants in the
original Homerathon and
current leader of the event,
decided to continue because
it’s “worthwhile,” she explains.
“It’s beautiful reading the
poetry out loud and hearing it—
it hits you more deeply.” Thus a
new Johnnie tradition was born.
Logan Dwyer (A12), who has
attended all three Homerathons, recalls, “The fancy struck
me to sit and listen to the
entire Iliad when it first started.
It appealed to me to reenact
what Homer and the Ancients
did. It smacks of St. John’s.”
Homer brings Johnnies
together with a nostalgia and
fondness unrivaled, perhaps, by
any other book on the Program.
Part of the appeal lies in returning to the Program’s first book.
“This year,” says Early, “hearing
the Iliad read by a lot of people
“IT’S SO ORGANIC; IT’S
A CREATIVE OUTPUT
EMBRACING THE JOHNNIE NERDINESS. I GOT
TO READ THE BEST
PART IN THE ENTIRE
ILIAD! IT’S ACHILLES’
REPLY TO ODYSSEUS
AFTER AGAMEMNON
TOOK HIS BRIDE.”
Lucy Ferrier (A12), a three-year
Homerathon veteran
and from many translations
brought out different things in
the poetry and story. I get more
out of it—the forgiveness of
Achilles really spoke to me in a
new way. The whole experience brought home the force
of the Iliad and Achilles as a
character.” The participants’
shared enjoyment of the story
deepened as they not only
read aloud but performed
swordfights, voiced Poseidon’s
10 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012
speeches with an underwater
burbling achieved by a finger
on the lips, and carried out a
funeral of Patroklus as it was
read. “Homerathon has a very
communal spirit,” says Early.
“Everyone is involved in the
story together; we all booed
when Hektor died.”
A staunch few triumphantly
lasted all 16 hours with a
gallon of wine in hand for the
necessary libations to Zeus,
Hera, Athena, and Apollo. Lucy
Ferrier (A12), also a three-year
Homerathon veteran, says,
“It’s so organic; it’s a creative
output embracing the Johnnie
nerdiness. I got to read the
best part in the entire Iliad!
It’s Achilles’ reply to Odysseus
after Agamemnon took his
bride: ‘For hateful in my eyes,
even as the gates of Hades, is
that man that hideth one thing
in his mind and sayeth another’
(9.310-315). “I shouted,
declaimed it for Achilles.
This was definitely my top
experience this year; it’s fitting
to hear Homer echoing off the
quad. It’s part naïveté, part
being not so cool—just being
able to listen and love Homer
and embrace what we do here.”
—Genevieve Dufour-Allen (A12)
Lee Katherine Goldstein
(SFGI90) received her
bachelor’s degree in criminology from the University
of Florida in 1988 and her
JD from the University of
Miami in 1993. She has been
an active part of the St. John’s College alumni
community for many years and is the current
president of the Alumni Association. She
currently lives in Denver, Colorado, where she
is an attorney practicing in the areas of civil and
commercial litigation.
Joan M. Haratani (SF79)is
a litigation partner based in
San Francisco, for Morgan
Lewis. In her 27 years of
practice, she has handled
all phases of pretrial and
trial proceedings, with
a particular emphasis on complex products
liability and high stakes commercial disputes.
She has received numerous awards for both her
practice accomplishments and service on behalf
of minority and female practitioners. Among
many, she has been named a Northern California Super Lawyer (2004-2012). She lectures on
topics of diversity and trial work, and is a board
member of several philanthropic organizations.
Harold Hughes (A84) is senior managing director, Alliance Bernstein, head of retail for the
Americas. He is also the CEO of Alliance Bernstein Investments Inc. in New York. Mr. Hughes
joined Alliance Bernstein in 2004 as managing
director of the Washington D.C. Bernstein Private Client office. In 2008 he moved to London,
U.K., to head Bernstein Private Client for the
U.K. and Europe. Previously he was with Legg
Mason in Baltimore as senior vice president and
head of wealth management.
�from the bell towers
New Board Chairman:
A Conduit for Ideas
“Barring asteroids falling on the
Earth, St. John’s will remain strong.
We have a broad base of support. As
long as we do our jobs well, we will
continue to have support. We need
to focus on enrollment, control our
budget, and build our endowment.”
Perry Lerner takes the helm of the Board
of Visitors and Governors (BVG) at a time
when liberal arts colleges are defending
the value of the education they offer, and
families are struggling in an uncertain
economy to pay the high costs of four-year
college programs. “St. John’s is committed
to sustaining its Program and its standing
among liberal arts colleges,” he says.
“St. John’s excels in ensuring that our
students develop the knowledge and skills
which are critical to leading successful and
fulfilling lives.” A graduate of Harvard
Law School and Claremont McKenna
College, Lerner is a former international
lawyer who has also managed several
business ventures. A member of the BVG
since 1999, forward-thinking Lerner has
a visionary, collaborative strategy for St.
John’s future. “The role of the BVG is to
act as stewards of the college, providing
strategic direction and leadership while
avoiding involvement in the college’s
day-to-day operations. Notwithstanding
today’s challenges, we are an extraordinary
institution.” He shares his priorities with
The College.
What is the legacy of Mike Uremovich,
the previous chairman?
He was very effective. He became chair in
2007 when the economy suffered many
shocks. Under Mike’s leadership we
balanced the budget, grew the endowment, and have developed a greater
awareness of issues affecting our sustainability. By streamlining board operations,
he enabled the BVG to be more effective.
Our new structure will have fewer committees and members, which should help
us be more focused on our goals.
What are your priorities for
St. John’s College?
Our first priority is to improve our
admissions program. It is important that
we attract and retain excellent students
during these difficult economic times.
Second, we must look at our branding,
whether we are receiving the kind of
recognition that our unique education
offers to our students. There was a time
when our brand was easily identified in the
market—now there is more competition
for good students, and too many potential
applicants rely on external measures such
as blogs and popular ratings. Accordingly,
we must do more to strengthen our brand
so that we attract students who would
benefit from the St. John’s Program.
A BVG committee chaired by Robert
Bienenfeld (SF80) is charged with the
responsibility to examine our branding
and is hard at work on these issues. As an
exceptional and extraordinary institution,
our brand should not be drowned out by
“noise” in the marketplace.
Third, we must strengthen our financial
resources. In the last few years, our endowment has held steady despite difficult fi-
nancial markets. The BVG has been exceptional in its support for the college, having
increased its giving by 20 percent this last
year. BVG support needs to continue as we
focus on gifts to meet our current needs as
well as our endowment.
Fourth, the BVG must support the
Instruction Committees on both campuses
as they consider broadening the curriculum; they should be free to examine ways
to create opportunities for students to be
exposed to new readings, ideas, languages,
and cultures. I believe that students are
anxious for opportunities to learn and
travel during breaks and vacations, and we
should make this possible.
Finally, we should attract more students
outside the U.S. We do not want to ignore
new markets where the college’s Program
can attract students from other parts of the
world.
What will ensure the sustainability of
the college?
Barring asteroids falling on the Earth,
St. John’s will remain strong. We have a
broad base of support among BVG members, graduates, faculty, staff, friends, and
foundations. As long as we do our jobs well,
we will continue to have their support. We
need to focus on enrollment, control our
budget, and build our endowment.
We need to do better in all these areas.
Describe your leadership style.
Good leadership is enabling others to
do their best work. I will be a conduit for
ideas and a supporter of innovation. I am
primarily an enabler, encouraging others
to do their best. As chair, it is my responsibility to help set priorities and to see that
the important work of the college is done.
I believe that everyone in our community
will work hard to meet our challenges.
What is the importance of St. John’s?
I believe that the education at St. John’s
opens unrivaled opportunities for acquiring the ability and understanding needed
to live a good and balanced life. Very few
have those opportunities.
—P.D.
The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 |
11
�from the bell towers
A Hunger for
Shakespeare
On a Tuesday evening
last fall, Annapolis
students occupied every
seat around the enormous
table in the Barr-Buchanan
Center’s elegant General Hartle
Room. Tutor John Verdi led a discussion on William Shakespeare’s Richard II.
This discussion was one of many voluntary evening seminars—“Shakespeare
in the Fall”—organized by the Student
Committee on Instruction (SCI).
The limited number of Shakespearean
plays and poems that students study at
St. John’s leaves many hungry for more.
Johnnies are particularly interested in
revisiting the plays they may have read or
encountered in high school. Paul Wilford
(A07), who was then a member of the
SCI, began “Shakespeare in the Fall”
nine years ago. Each year the dedicated
following grows. Tutors John Verdi, Louis
Petrich, Daniel Harrel, Michael Grenke,
and Eva Brann led the sessions this year;
Ms. Brann also read some sonnets for the
last meeting. The SCI chose a historical
play theme—Richard II, Henry IV parts
one and two, and Henry V.
“Students ask me to lead a session
and so I help them out,” says Mr. Verdi,
who has participated for many years
in “Shakespeare in the Fall.” He finds
it a “project worth doing. It’s always
enjoyable to get all the different classes
together—like the all-college seminar.
There is always a mix: freshmen,
Graduate Institute students, other
tutors as well.” Last fall, Mr.Verdi led
two sessions on Richard II.
Mr. Verdi enjoys returning to Shakespeare, finding different pieces suitable
to mood or time. This time around, his
favorite quote happens to come from
Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra.
Mentors
“It’s Cleopatra speaking, from Act V, Scene
ii, 279-289. She’s about
to let the poisonous asps
bite her. She and Antony
have shared a passionate, consuming love, a true love, I think.
He is already dead. As she is about to take
her own life, she hears him praising her
deed, which is an act both of love and of
royal autonomy. Their very physical love
gives way in the face of death to one of the
highest spirituality:”
Give me my robe, put on my crown; I have
Immortal longings in me: now no more
The juice of Egypt’s grape shall moist this lip:
Yare, yare, good Iras; quick. Methinks I hear
Antony call; I see him rouse himself
To praise my noble act; I hear him mock
The luck of Caesar, which the gods give men
To excuse their after wrath: husband, I come:
Now to that name my courage prove my title!
I am fire and air; my other elements
I give to baser life.
The hunger for Shakespeare is not
a singular phenomenon; students and
theatergoers around the world have
been devoted to his works for centuries.
Through “Shakespeare in the Fall,” Johnnies can look at Shakespeare’s poetry and
eloquence with a new understanding.
The word “mentor” has its roots in the
Odyssey, in which Pallas Athena’s guise
before Telemachus and Odysseus is
that of Mentor, the elderly advisor and
“shepherd of the people” who rules
in Odysseus’s absence. The goddess of
wisdom’s advice and assistance to those
under her care is a fitting comparison to
the benefits of career mentorship.
A recent mentorship in the field of finance introduced Brian Warczinski (A13)
to Laura Strache (A01), a managing director of operations for a Wall Street hedge
fund, who was profiled in the Fall 2011
issue of The College. Strache mentored
and connected Warczinski with two internships in the competitive and intimidating world of finance in New York.
The benefit is not one-sided: alumni who
mentor, host an Ariel or Hodson internship, or participate in forums or panels
reconnect to the college, often restoring
a link that they have missed. Director of
Career Services in Annapolis Jaime Dunn
recalls, “An alumnus and attorney in Philadelphia, Andrew Schwartz (A91), signed
up to be a mentor last year, and I invited
him to participate in a law panel, which he
did. He hadn’t been back to the college in
10 years but found himself reconnecting in
a meaningful and fulfilling way.”
—Genevieve Dufour-Allen (A12)
“For God’s sake, let us
sit upon the ground
and tell sad stories of
the death of kings.”
Richard II
12 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012
Jaime Dunn, director of Career Services,
Annapolis
HOST AN INTERN OR FORUM
Contact Jaime Dunn (jaime.dunn@sjca.edu)
or Margaret Odell (modell@sjcsf.edu) to host a
forum or panel, and for internship opportunities or tips on hosting an intern. Visit www.
stjohnscollege.edu/admin. Click on Annapolis
or Santa Fe Career Services.
�from the bell towers
MELISSA LATHAM-STEVENS
NEW WINIARSKI
STUDENT CENTER
OPENS IN SANTA FE
Agora: Career
Network
“A virtual mentoring network” is how
Jaime Dunn, director of Career Services
in Annapolis, describes Agora, an initiative launched by the offices of Career
Services in 2011. Agora reflects the
Greek concept of a gathering place and
was named by students in a college-wide
competition. Job seekers, employers, and
mentors register on the website according
to the campus from which they graduated.
Tribute to Laurence
Berns (ha00)
This year, tutors Eva Brann (HA89), Peter
Kalkavage, and Eric Salem (A77) published a translation, with an introduction,
glossary of crucial Greek terms, and an
exploratory essay, of Plato’s Statesman,
dedicated to their friend and colleague
Laurence Berns, who died in March 2011.
In addition, befitting tutor Berns’ love of
music, at a memorial service held during
Annapolis Homecoming 2011, tutors Eric
Stoltzfus and Elliott Zuckerman performed
Beethoven’s moving “Sonata in A Major
for Cello and Piano,” and the Madrigal
Choir sang “Aura Lee,” “Mon Coeur,” and
“The Silver Swan,” a tribute that captured
Says Margaret Odell, director of Career
Services in Santa Fe, “Students no longer
need to wait for on-campus, face-to-face
opportunities for interaction with alumni.
That’s the beauty of the constant availability of mentors through Agora.”
Bill Gregoricus (SFGI01), an Alumni
Association Board member, is also working on the site. “What Agora represents
is a reliable web-based point of access to
the college and to all registered students
and alumni, regardless of where you are,
across the globe,” he says. “Agora will
also help students and alumni seeking
Berns’s warmhearted, spirited nature.
President Christopher Nelson’s (SF70)
remarks touched on Berns’s “boundless
energy and engagement in the life of
learning at the college.” Tutors Harvey
Flaumenhaft, Joseph Cohen (A56), and
Eva Brann (HA89); and former students
Jerrold Caplan (A73), Theodore Blanton
(A75), Sharon Portnoff (A85), and Daryl
Li (AGI10) shared stories about Berns’s
scholarly contributions, storytelling,
and generosity. Berns’s wife, Gisela, read
“L’Envoi,” the final section of “The Seven
Seas,” a long poem by Rudyard Kipling.
An obituary for Laurence Berns (1928-2011)
was published in the Fall 2011 issue of The
College; www.stjohnscollege.edu/news/
memoriam-berns.shtml
Barbara (Class of 1955) and Warren Winiarski
(Class of 1952), and their daughter Julia
(SF92) joined Santa Fe President Mike Peters,
members of the St. John’s Board of Visitors
and Governors, and Santa Fe city leaders and
community members for the dedication on
June 30 of the new Winiarski Student Center.
The Center will accommodate 45 students
and is expected to earn a LEED Silver Certification. Mr. Winiarski is the founder of Stag’s
Leap Wine Cellars in Napa Valley, Calif., and
was inducted into the California Vintners’ Hall
of Fame in 2009.
employment to develop closer ties
with top employers and recruiters by
delivering interview opportunities, hosting great career fairs, connecting with
alumni mentors, and more.”
For Agora’s success, the criteria are
simple: all alumni and students should
register online, which takes less than five
minutes.
www.stjohnscollege.edu/admin/agora
—Genevieve Dufour-Allen (A12)
briefly quoted
“It is meant to integrate the
classroom with the living
experience. Another way to
think about our Program is that
it is interdisciplinary. This is
an effort to try to bring these
things together, both the living
experience and the learning
experience, in one.”
Mike Peters, Santa Fe president,
on the dedication of the new
Winiarski Student Center
Santa Fe New Mexican, June 24, 2012
The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 |
13
�from the bell towers
briefly quoted
CONVERSATIONS
WITH THE CHAIR
“If we play, if we make
ourselves present to the
joy of using the Books to
exercise our will and chose
our life in a daily way, they
will be a fountain
of happiness for the rest
of our lives.”
Salvatore Scibona (sf97),
noted author and novelist,
2012 Commencement speaker,
Annapolis
Hodson House
Underway
Hodson House, a multi-use building that
will hold a seminar/meeting room, faculty
offices, and administrative offices, will be
constructed on the Annapolis campus in
2012. Subsequently, a full renovation of the
18th-century Carroll Barrister House, which
holds the admissions offices for the college,
will be undertaken. The majority of the
funding for the project has been provided by
the Hodson Trust; some funding is also being
provided by the State of Maryland through
the MICUA capital projects program.
We meet at last.
If someone had told me
when I was a small footstool
that one day I would be
given the honor of holding
court in The College magazine, I would have thought
him out of his mind—
πλαγκτός. Yet here I am,
resting on my easy rug at
home, a well-thumbed copy
of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s
Grandfather’s Chair on my
seat, musing on a headline.
Hodson House, east entry elevation
14 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012
Allow me to introduce
myself. My name is Johnnie
Chair, or JC, as my friends
call me. I was born in
Madison, Virginia,
where I spent my
childhood under the
watchful eye of my
maker in the company
of my many, many kin.
Time passed, and like
many other chairs, I
found myself desiring
an adventure. Therefore,
when I reached what you,
our “sitters,” call “legal age,”
I found myself joining the
Class of 1941 at a small
college in Annapolis, Maryland, that was on the cusp
of something new. I doubt
many of my classmates
remember me—I was a
rather quiet chair, one that
tried to embody the Johnniechair trivium of steadiness,
tolerance, and poise.
I have spent the roughly
seventy years since then as
a member of the Polity,
doing my best to lead by
quiet example. I have attended every tutorial, seminar,
lecture, waltz party, and don
rag, albeit as a wallflower
at times. I have also tried to
join every club and student
organization that I can. That
doing so has required my
re-engaging in the Program
every four years, as if I was a
scholastic phoenix, has kept
things interesting.
Much has changed since
1941. When the Internet
found St. John’s, it was only
a matter of finding a few
souls willing to type for me
before I had a Facebook
following. I had no idea
what it would become, that
there would be so many
thoughtful conversations
regarding literature, good
writing, philosophy, or what
role members of the Polity
ought to have. I confess your
conversations tend to be
more interesting than my
own musings!
Nevertheless, I have felt
needed there. I have confronted easy questions (yes,
it is wrong to go white-water
rafting when you should be
in seminar) and challenging
questions (while worthwhile,
starting a conversation
about politics or sexuality is
not always the best idea).
I attempt to write little
notes or answer questions
in the hope of having more
avenues for conversation,
something that Facebook’s
many changes continually
frustrates, though the connections it brings encourage
me on.
However, I digress. My
responsibilities as First Chair
(both in seniority and in rank)
are varied. Beyond aiding my
sitters, I seek—and offer—advice, consolation, curios, even
trivia. So please send your
questions, dear readers, and
let’s have a conversation.
For instance,
Q: Do you have children?
JC: Not yet—finding a spouse
is a bit difficult for a chair. Yet
I suspect watching over
thousands of present and
former sitters—as well as
managing a Facebook page—
makes for good preparation.
Until we speak again,
JC
(www.facebook.com/johnnie.
chair)
�from the bell towers
talk of the tow ers
collegium
At the end of every fall and spring
semester in Annapolis, the Great Hall in
McDowell fills to the brim with students
and tutors attending Collegium, an opportunity for St. John’s students to showcase
their musical talent in a formal performance. (Above), Zachary Wells (A13),
Alex Lankford (A12), Frank Pecoraro
(A15), and tutor Peter Kalkavage sing in
the 2012 Spring Collegium in Annapolis.
briefly quoted
“St. John’s provides
one of the most distinctive
forms of liberal education in
the country.... But for such
an education to be accessible
to all requires a great
commitment of financial
resources,...we have added
more than $4 million to our
financial aid budget in just
the last few years when our
students and families have
needed it most.”
Christopher Nelson,
Annapolis president,
guest blog,
“Yes, You Can Afford
the College of Your Choice,”
Huffington Post,
March 14, 2012
Santa Fe Tutor Arcelia
Rodriguez, who has been at
St. John’s since 2008, was
awarded a Fulbright Fellowship. She will work with
the Department of Political
Theory and Thought at the
University of the Andes in
Mérida, Venezuela, and
develop course materials and
curricula for undergraduate and graduate classes in
American political thought.
Four new tutors have joined
the faculty—two in Annapolis
and two in Santa Fe. In Annapolis, Gregory Freeman
comes to the college from the
University of Chicago, where
he received his PhD, Committee on Social Thought. Tutor
Steven Crockett returns to
Annapolis part-time. He was a
tutor in Annapolis from 1970
to 1977 and at the Graduate
Institute in Santa Fe during
most summers from 1976 to
1981. In Santa Fe, Sarah
Davis and David Levy (A03)
join the faculty. Davis received her PhD in anthropology from Emory University;
Levy received his PhD in
political science from Boston
College. Annapolis tutor
Joseph Cohen (Class
of 1956) retired from the
Annapolis faculty on
December 31 after nearly
50 years with the college.
Santa Fe tutor David Bolotin
has formally retired.
Queens College and at
St. John’s University in New
York. Leo Pickens (A78),
who held that position for
the past 23 years, became
director of Alumni Relations,
replacing Jo Ann Mattson
(A87), who became director
of Individual Giving. Gregory
Shook is the new associate
director of Communications.
In Santa Fe, tutor David Carl
became the new director of
the Graduate Institute. He
has been at St. John’s for 12
years, and in that time he has
also served as assistant dean.
Jim Osterholt retired from
the position after more than
seven years as vice president
for Advancement. Victoria
Mora, tutor on the Santa Fe
campus since 1992 and dean
from 2006 to 2011, will become the new vice president
of Advancement. Susan
Patten is now the director of
Development. Gabriel Gomez
joined the college as the director of Communications in
Santa Fe. He was the director
of External Affairs with the
Southwestern Association for
Indian Arts: Santa Fe Indian
Market, where he directed the
marketing and development
departments. Larry Peppin,
formerly the finance director
of Las Cumbres Community Services, a nonprofit
in northern New Mexico,
became the new controller for
the Santa Fe campus. Susan
Kaplan, formerly director of
Corporate and Foundation
Relations in Santa Fe, became
the associate vice president
for Advancement.
Do you know a student
who belongs at St. John’s?
Let us know.
annapolis :
admissions@sjca.edu
or 410-626-2522
santa fe :
admissions@sjcsf.edu
or 505-984-6060
In Annapolis, Michael
McQuarrie, formerly director
of the Office of Recreation
and Intramural Sports at the
New School in New York,
became the new director
of Athletics on July 2. He
received his MA in sports
management from California
University of Pennsylvania
and taught sociology at
The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 |
15
�from the bell towers
As a recipient of a Fulbright English
Teaching Assistantship, Aparna Ravilochan (SF12) leaves for a year in Malaysia
in January 2013 to teach English in a rural
primary or secondary school in the state
of Terengganu, Pahang, or Johor.
Ravilochan has not yet received her
Malaysia assignment, but she knows that
any town will hold treasures as she takes
her love of teaching and English with her.
Ravilochan’s typical Malaysian workweek will include 20 hours of teaching as
well as theater and choral music. Ravilochan hopes that these activities, along with
her teaching and general community presence, will help foster meaningful relationships. “The relationships are what I’m
most excited about. It’s an opportunity
to connect with people I otherwise would
never be able to meet and to live with
them in a completely different lifestyle,”
she says. “I’ve come to love talking to
people, hearing their stories. I think having an exchange like that across cultural
boundaries will be even more illuminating
and exciting.”
Ravilochan also looks forward to sharing her knowledge of English. As a writing
assistant for two years at St. John’s, she
discovered a passion for English and teaching. Although Ravilochan has much to
bring to her Fulbright teaching position,
Aparna Ravilochan (SF12)
SANTA FE STAGES MAN OF LA MANCHA
CORRIE PHOTOGRAPHY
Fulbright Fellow to
Teach in Malaysia
This spring, the Santa Fe campus community presented the musical Man of La Mancha in three soldout performances. Directed by Artist-in-Residence Roy Rogosin (SFGI08) Man of La Mancha featured
a cast of 15 students, two tutors, and a staff member, as well as a four-piece orchestra of students
and an alumna of the college. Man of La Mancha, with book by Dale Wasserman, lyrics by Joe Darion,
and music by Mitch Leigh, is inspired by Miguel de Cervantes’s 17th-century masterpiece, Don Quixote. It tells the story of the “mad” knight as a musical play-within-a-play, performed by Cervantes and
his fellow prisoners as he awaits a hearing with the Spanish Inquisition. Pictured (l. to r.): Rachel Reid
(SF15) as Antonia; April Cleveland (SF15) as Aldonza; James Irwin (SF14) as Don Quixote/Cervantes;
and Felipe Motta (SF13) as Sancho.
she knows that Malaysia will have much
to teach her as well. Ravilochan will be
living in her village among her students
and their families, learning their culture
and lifestyle from the inside. She is excited
about the illuminating experience, but is a
little nervous as well. “I’ll have to live in a
way I’m not used to, without the creature
comforts here. I’ve been to India for a few
weeks before, but it will take some getting
used to for almost a year,” she says. “I’ll
miss my parents, my brother and sister.”
Family has been a source of constant
encouragement, and Ravilochan is also
grateful to the tutor community at St.
John’s for their support. “The tutors are
interested in who you are in class, and
take that to the next level and are interested in who you are as a person. We have
something special here that you couldn’t
find anywhere else.”
—Jillian Burgie (SF12)
16 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012
briefly quoted
“One of the great things
about our St. John’s
education is that most
people won’t know what
to do with you. You don’t
fit a mold. Make it to your
advantage. Try being a
little over-confident, and a
little bit of a risk-taker.”
Robert Bienenfeld (sf 80),
senior manager, Environment
and Energy Strategy,
American Honda Motor Co.,
Inc.,member, St. John’s College
Board of Visitors and Governors,
2012 Commencement speaker,
Santa Fe.
�from the bell towers
Sarah Morse:
New Director of Admissions
in Annapolis
For Morse, a graduate of Smith College
and a former Annapolis resident, her
new role at St. John’s is a natural, albeit
unexpected, fit. Originally from St. Louis,
she has worked for more than 25 years in
the education field, including 15 years as
an admissions and financial aid director
at two independent schools in the MidAtlantic region—St. Timothy’s School and
Jemicy School—and as eastern regional
director and national director of special
projects for American Field Service (AFS)
Intercultural Programs. Morse is also
committed to volunteer service, including a six-year term on the Commission
on Ministry for the Episcopal Diocese of
Maryland, as regional alumnae admissions coordinator for Smith College, and
mentor to AFS exchange students.
Morse’s role at St. John’s is her first
in higher education; her expertise and
insight are embraced by the college community. “Sarah brings with her a genuine liking for people, especially young
people. She has imagination, resourcefulness, and a collaborative spirit, all of
which are essential to this office,” says
Annapolis Dean Pamela Kraus.
Morse reconnected with the college
when she attended Executive Seminars in
Baltimore last year. Her seminar experience
resonated deeply, as “a terrific example of
what St. John’s is all about. Once a month,
that Tuesday morning was an oasis.
Having discussions about great books
JEN BEHRENS
At a time when the world appears transfixed by technology, Sarah Morse,
the new director of admissions at St. John’s in Annapolis, emphasizes
in-person conversations to help prospective students get to know
St. John’s and understand the Program. “We work very hard to bring
students to campus so they can meet tutors, staff, and students. We
encourage them to spend a night on campus, go to seminars, and sit in
on labs and tutorials,” says Morse. Her reach extends beyond prospective
students; the Admissions Office recruits staff volunteers to have lunch
with parents of prospectives who are visiting campus.
“We link prospective
students who have
particular interests with
alumni who are working
in those career fields.
St. John’s alumni represent
the college so well—their
passion for the college
really shows.”
with interesting people got me excited
about the Program,” she says—and
propelled her to accept the position at
St. John’s. That exposure helps her
articulate to the outside world the heart of
the college’s curriculum. “It’s challenging,
of course, for me coming from the outside,
but I have a love and appreciation for the
college.”
Morse looks forward to enlisting
Johnnies to engage prospectives around
the country. “There is tremendous potential for involving alumni in admissions.
Alumni volunteers have been extremely
helpful at various events for students and
prospectives, including recent receptions
in New York City and Baltimore,” she
says. Those receptions give prospectives
an opportunity to have informal discussions with alumni about the college and
their careers. “We link prospective stu-
dents who have particular interests with
alumni who are working in those career
fields. St. John’s alumni represent the
college so well—their passion for the
college really shows. We value alumni
involvement and are eager to involve
them more in our admissions efforts.”
Morse also reaches out with a robust
virtual presence. “Recruitment has
changed, and using that technological
aspect is crucial. I’ve talked with a lot of
students who watched our videos, read
our materials online, and learned about
the college from the website and our
social media sites.”
Above all, Morse wants prospectives
to know why St. John’s is special. “From
the first class, Johnnies practice and hone
skills in critical thinking, careful listening, and thoughtful analysis,” she says.
“They learn to support contributions to
the discussion with structured reasoning
and become comfortable with trying out a
variety of ideas. Taking intellectual risks
and seeking out other viewpoints is woven
into the Johnnie fabric. Students learn to
be fearless in approaching new and challenging situations. They become skilled at
asking questions to get to the heart of the
matter. And they understand the value of
considering a variety of viewpoints, unimpeded by a fear of ‘getting it right’ the first
time. This is unique to St. John’s.”
—Gregory Shook
The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 |
17
�Love
18 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012
�and
Desire
PHOTOS: HENLEY MOORE (A13)
“What Fools These Mortals Be”
Junior Henley Moore (A14) shows
us Shakespeare through her camera
lens, a counterpoint to decadesold images of the King William
Players from the Greenfield Library
Archives on the following pages.
Shown here, the King Willam
Players perform Titus Andronicus
with Alex Lankford (A12), opposite,
as Aaron and Tessa Nelson (A12),
above, as Lavinia.
How do we encounter Shakespeare at St. John’s? The deans
and several tutors share observations on Shakespeare and his
place in the Program, “as inevitable as Plato, or the Bible,
or Kant,” tutor Jonathan Tuck notes. In his essay, tutor
Laurence Nee considers how Shakespeare holds “mirrors”
that reveal “clear reflections of our dearest and most powerful
desire—love,” in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and King
Lear. Many Johnnies hunger for more than their encounters
with Shakespeare in the Program. Some, such as the King
William Players in Annapolis and the Santa Fe student
theater troupe, inhabit Shakespeare by staging his works.
How do we encounter Shakespeare at St. John’s?
One way is through Shakespeare’s
sonnets. When we turn to English poetry,
we look at Shakespeare—the metric
scheme, poetic form, how it is structured.
In sophomore language, many students
memorize and recite Chaucer and Shakespeare. They are also asked to compose
poems—a sonnet, for example. In this
way, students inhabit the poetic form; it
is a pathway to understanding it. We do
run a risk with poetry. Some critics would
say we turn everything back to philosophy: “What is the thesis of the poem?”
Poems are meant to be read aloud,
recited. Plays, to be performed. Music,
to be performed and heard. The Psalms,
to be prayed. But we certainly don’t
require students to pray. To some degree,
we take these art forms out of their
natural habitat and put them into our
habitat, one of inquiry. However, when we
do turn to poetry in the language tutorial
(and music in the music tutorial), we go
as far as we can in recognizing this and
correcting for it.
—J. Walter Sterling, Santa Fe dean
The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 |
19
�How do we encounter
Shakespeare at St. John’s?
We encounter Shakespeare’s
work in various ways: through
tutorials, study groups, preceptorials, lectures and question
periods, annual essays, orals,
and dramatic performances.
Perhaps the greatest genius in
English literature, he instructs
and inspires us daily.
—Pamela Kraus, Annapolis dean
Why is Shakespeare
on the Program?
Most tutors would agree that
if you are on a sinking ship full
of Program books and they
have to be thrown overboard,
Shakespeare would be one of
the last to go. It has even been
said that Plato, Shakespeare,
and the Bible could be the
whole Program. He is a universally recognized genius. We are
living in a world that Shakespeare helped shape. Some
great writers become parents
and creators of their language.
Homer is the teacher of the
Greeks and of the Greek language; Dante of Italian; Shakespeare of English. Our linguistic
memory and architecture is
saturated with Shakespeare;
he lies behind our consciousness and our living language.
For English speakers, he is our
governing genius, our great,
great poet.
—J. Walter Sterling, Santa Fe dean
Why do we read Shakespeare
at St. John’s?
I would think that Shakespeare
in our seminar list would be
as inevitable as Plato, or the
Bible, or Kant—perhaps more
so, since he writes in English.
A more interesting question
might be which plays to read.
I have long thought that Shakespeare’s comedies are underrepresented in our program, as
comedy is generally. I gave a
lecture a number of years ago
(“Restoring Amends: Philosophy and Forgiveness in Shakespeare’s Comedies”) in which I
argued that the comedies are
a tutor’s view
The Greatness of
Shakespeare’s Plays
by Laurence D.Nee, tutor
Shakespeare’s plays provide an
unsurpassed depiction of abiding human desires. Like mirrors,
the plays use characters’ poetic
speeches and deeds to reflect for
our consideration the objects of
our desires and the reasons we
seek their fulfillment.
Clear reflections of our dearest and most powerful desire—love—can be found in the opening
scenes of two of his most familiar and popular
plays: a comedy, A Midsummer Night’s Dream,
and a tragedy, King Lear.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream begins by vividly depicting the problematic nature of love.
Theseus has “wooed” and “won” the “love” of
his future bride, Hippolyta, with the conquering force of his sword and longs to enjoy her
“[n]ow” (AMND 1.1.1-17). But this conqueror
has also been conquered—he is a slave to the
internal compulsion of satisfying his “desires.”
Wedding harsh images of rape to his servile need
for immediate gratification, Theseus presents
love as the violent satisfaction of bodily lust.
The temptation to assume that this initial presentation provides a complete picture of love is
moderated, however, by Theseus’s subsequent
restraint, which is as strong if not stronger than
his lust. Wishing to “wed [Hippolyta] in another
key,” Theseus willingly delays his gratification
for four days until the new moon appears and
brings his “triumph” (1.1.18).
The speeches of the young Athenian lovers
suggest why a lover might exercise restraint:
“true love” depends upon it. Egeus interrupts
Theseus’s nuptial plans for “merriments” and
“reveling” in order to marry Demetrius—who
previously loved Helena—to his daughter, Hermia, who loves Lysander and would die rather
than resign herself to her father’s “will.” When
20 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012
Hermia and Lysander are alone, they recount the
tales from which they learn that the “course of
true love never did run smooth”—it must bear a
restraining “cross,” which transforms the character of their desires and their beloveds (1.1.199).
The tales depict mere “desires” as “momenta[r]
y,” “swift,” “brief,” and “short as any dream”—
nothing more than the “base and vile” bodily urges or impulses of the “spleen” (1.1.143-145). They
present “true love” in the “form and dignity” of
a religion through which enduring devotion will
replace the inconstant, fleeting rewards of lust.
The “translated” beloved appears to be a “god,”
before whom the lover offers “prayers” (1.1.197,
232; 2.1.203).
HENLEY MOORE (A13)
Q&A
Lysander bestows From l. to r.: Danny Rodrinumerous gifts upon guez (SF15) as Chiron, Alex
Lankford (A12) as Aaron,
Hermia without reand Andrew Hastings (A13)
ceiving any immedi- as Demetrius in the King
ate reward; he ap- William Players’ production
pears not merely to of Titus Andronicus.
restrain his needs but
to possess a godlike freedom from them. Seeking to emulate her divine Lysander, Hermia will
“starve” herself, display “patience,” and endure the “trial” of being deprived of her lover’s
“food” (1.1.134-142, 150-155, 222-223). By enduring pains and restraining her desires, Hermia
imitates the “true love” of her divine beloved and
hopes to transcend her embodied, mortal, and
�the greatness of shakespeare’s plays
Q&A
more “philosophic” than the
tragedies, more interested in
themes and general ideas, less
dependent on our empathetic
identification with individual
characters. I still hold this view.
At the very least, I wish we
could add Twelfth Night, one of
Shakespeare’s greatest plays.
I know they have often had it on
the seminar list in Santa Fe. It
would also be wonderful if we
could find room for the other
two plays in the second English
history tetralogy. We now read,
as we should, both Richard II
and Henry IV, Part I, but Henry
IV, Part II and Henry V are
remarkable works, too. Many
people think that the four plays
were conceived as a single
work…(Naturally, I am violating
the most sacred obligation of
anyone who proposes to tinker
with the seminar list—I have not
said which books I would drop
to make room for these.)
ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE, GREENFIELD LIBRARY
It is good to be reminded that
any of Shakespeare’s plays
will yield extraordinary and
unlimited insights if we can
find the time to read slowly and
carefully. In the sophomore
language tutorial, we can read
scenes dramatically together,
perhaps commit whole speeches to memory, and look at
individual words as we would in
a sonnet. We may be frustrated
that we can’t do all this in the
seminar, but it’s exciting to be
able to think about each play
as a whole. We are free to
treat our seminar reading of
Shakespeare as an invitation
to go deeper, whenever we can
find the time.
needy condition.
The strong temptation to reduce the
lovers’ willingness to
bear these “crosses”
to mere delayed gratification must be moderated by their own
accounts of their love. They experience their
sacrifices as free from future rewards. Despite
their myopic vision, their unrecognized hopes
John D. Oosterhout (Class of
1951), George A. Sperdakas
(Class of 1954), and Richard
T. Congdon (Class of 1950)
onstage during the King
William Players’ rehearsal
of Shakespeare’s King John
(ca.1950-1951).
imply that they endure these restraints or crosses
for the sake of future rewards. They may starve
themselves for an evening, but they expect to
feast on their “lovers’ food” tomorrow. Helena
will deliberately “enrich” her “pain” by telling
Demetrius where Hermia has fled, but she suffers in the hope that his “sight” will turn “back
again” to her (1.1.222-223, 250-251).
The reward received from this “sight” can
be distinguished from that received from other
goods. Helena could relieve her hunger by con-
As Dr. Johnson remarked about
London, I would say that the
man who is tired of Shakespeare is tired of life.
–Jonathan Tuck, tutor
Might we read Shakespeare at
St. John’s in order to experience the joy and sorrow of a
desire like love? We read Romeo and Juliet and long to feel
the love that can make a
“pilgrim” lover view his beloved
The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 |
21
�Q&A
a tutor’s view
ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE, GREENFIELD LIBRARY
as a divine, “holy shrine.”
We suspect, however, that
love may be only a dangerous “dream”—not only “blind,”
“rude,” boist’rous,” and “like
[a] thorn” but also so variable as to transfer Romeo’s
devotion from Rosaline to
Juliet with a momentary gaze.
We persistently hope for the
elevating weight love brings
and, therefore, angrily defend it
against the hedonist and materialist attacks of the Nurse and
Mercutio. And we fear that the
story of these and all lovers is
one of “woe.”
—Laurence D. Nee, tutor
We read eight of Shakespeare’s
plays in sophomore seminar
(four tragedies, two histories,
two comedies) because he
is the best of the playwrights
and these eight are among the
best of his plays. No one writes
equally well in the tragic and
comic modes. No one expands
the possibilities of English
speech more than he does. No
one is as intensely theatrical
and deeply literary as Shakespeare. He contains half the
world. For the other half, there
is the rest of the Program.
—Louis Petrich, tutor
Describe an opening question
on Shakespeare’s works that
still fascinates you.
Are there fairies in the woods
(from A Midsummer Night’s
Dream)? The lovers escape
tragedy, and enjoy the prospect
of happiness, because the fairies intervene. The fairies, however, seem and do not seem
to exist. They are only visible to
one character, under very peculiar circumstances, and yet are
seen by the audience. They are
said to act providentially to care
for particular human beings and
yet appear reducible to natural
phenomena. They may be little
more than “airy nothing” and
yet point to our deepest desires
and hopes.
—Laurence D. Nee, tutor
The lovers’ account of their desire for love reveals that what appeared as a tension between lust and restraint is, in fact, a tension
between their desire for bodily gratification and their desire to
enjoy a godlike freedom from bodily needs. Their account asks
us to consider whether both desires can be satisfied.
suming any “food,” but she cannot overcome
her “starv[ation]” for her lover’s “food” simply
by physically gratifying her lust. The hungry
are indifferent to whether an apple “consents”
to be eaten, but lovers are not satisfied simply
to take, “force,” or consume their beloveds, as
Theseus’s restraint demonstrates (1.1.134-142,
150-155, 222-223). Lovers desire their beloveds’
voluntary reciprocation of their affections, which
shows that they are worthy of being loved by their
divine beloveds—that they are nothing less than
godlike themselves. When these lovers are “well
derived,” “possessed,” or “fair,” have endured
considerable sacrifices for their beloveds, and yet
remain unloved, they are filled with anger, which
destroys the friendship of the women and sets the
men on a course to deadly war (1.1.99-103).
The lovers’ account of their desire for love
reveals that what appeared as a tension between
lust and restraint is, in fact, a tension between
22 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012
Above: Charles Finch,
their desire for bodiformer director of financial
ly gratification and
aid, as King Henry and
their desire to enjoy
Harold O. Koenig (A69)
a godlike freedom
as Prince Hal in the
from bodily needs. King Williams Players’
production of Henry IV,
Their account asks
Part I, Francis Scott Key
us to consider whethAuditorium, November 1970.
er both desires can
be satisfied. The opening scene of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, then, poses the question of
whether the desire for love is inherently tragic.
King Lear begins by drawing our attention to
the difficulty of thinking about the desire for love.
King Lear intends to bestow equal portions of his
kingdom on his sons-in-law, the Dukes of Albany
and Cornwall. His trusted advisors, Kent and
Gloucester, cannot discern “which of the Dukes
he values most.” Kent had previously “thought”
that Lear “affected” the Duke of Albany more
than Cornwall; Gloucester concurs—it “did
�the greatness of shakespeare’s plays
Q&A
ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE, GREENFIELD LIBRARY
There are two works for which
I have asked opening questions that are based on past
performances that altered the
endings in misguided ways. One
was the Don Giovanni (allowed
by Mozart himself) that omitted
the final sextet; the other was
the 18th-century King Lear that
saved Cordelia and married her
to Edgar. I wasn’t “fascinated”
by these questions, but they did
set off good discussion. I couple
Shakespeare with Mozart
because they are poets whose
inclusion in any program needs
no good reason simply because
the question ought never to
come up.
—Elliott Zuckerman, tutor emeritus
always seem so.”
What both had
“thought” does not
accord with what
now “appears” to be
the case (KL 1.1.1-6).
According
to
Lear’s original plan—
designed prior to the proclamations of love by
Goneril, Regan, and Cordelia—his two vicious
daughters, Goneril and Regan, and their husbands, the Dukes, would be relegated to the extremes of the kingdom. The favored daughter,
Cordelia, would receive the most “opulent” portion and the foreign support of her husband-to-be
(1.1.86). Lear would live with Cordelia as King,
attaching his “retainers” to his beloved daughter
so they would remain loyal to her after his death.
Focusing on the Dukes, Lear’s advisors fail
to see that his “division of the kingdom” would
wisely overcome the absence of a son and ensure that the kingdom would pass to his “best”
daughter (1.1.214-216). They also fail to see that
Lear divided the kingdom to reward the merit of
the daughter he “loved . . . most” (1.1.123). The
play’s opening suggests that thinking clearly
about Lear’s plan is intimately linked to thinking about his love for Cordelia.
Lear quickly destroys his own prudently devised plan when he believes that he has been
George A. Sperdakas (Class
of 1954), Richard T. Congdon
(Class of 1950), Jeremy P.
Tarcher (Class of 1953), and
John D. Oosterhout (Class
of 1951) in the King William
Players’ production of King
John [ca. 1950-1954].
unjustly deprived of Cordelia’s public proclamation of her love for him. Goneril and Regan attribute their father’s “poor judgment” in casting
off the daughter he “always lov’d . . . most” to
the fact that “he hath ever but slenderly known
himself” (1.1.322-323). Lear and his trusted
servants corroborate this claim (1.1.120-166;
1.4.148; 1.5.24).
Lear’s failure to know himself is directly attributable to his failure to recognize that he longs to
be loved by Cordelia as much as he longs to love
her. The duality of Lear’s love is encapsulated in
his remark to the soon-to-be banished Kent: “I
lov’d her most, and thought to set my rest on her
kind nursery” (1.1.123-124). Lear loved Cordelia
“most” and sought to reward her through his
division of the kingdom. He also desired to be
rewarded for his service: to receive her “kind
nursery.” Lear does not recognize, however, how
deeply he desires to be rewarded by Cordelia for
what he has allegedly given to her.
The King of France’s subsequent discourse on
love provides a possible explanation for Lear’s
blindness: “Love’s not love when it is mingled
with regards that stand aloof from th’ entire
point” (1.1.239-240). Lovers do not think of or experience their love as self-interested; rather, their
love is kindled or inflamed when they believe that
their beloveds cannot benefit them because they
are “poor,” “forsaken,” and “despis’d.” A lover
There are so many fundamental questions that will always
remain fascinating because
their answers go deep into
what Lear calls “the mystery
of things.” For example: what
causes the death of Cordelia?
Why is Macduff able to kill
Macbeth? Why does Shakespeare bring Falstaff onstage
during the climactic sword
fight between Prince Hal and
Hotspur? And a question of
particular fascination for all
lovers of books and believers in
the liberal arts: why does
Prospero drown his books
before retiring to Milan, where
every third thought is of his
death?
—Louis Petrich, tutor
Describe a defining moment
for you in one of Shakespeare’s plays.
The opening words of a
Shakespeare play explicitly
or implicitly raise a critical
question. Hamlet, for example,
begins “Who’s there?” The
play could be said to ask how
human beings can determine
whether apparitions are “there”
if they live in a hamlet—a land
without a church. The struggle
to confront such an opening
question is a defining moment
in reading a Shakespeare play.
—Laurence D. Nee, tutor
The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 |
23
�Q&A
a tutor’s view
Are Shakespeare’s comedies
and tragedies so very
different?
like the King of France or Lear believes that he
loves only for the sake of his beloved—for “thee
and thy virtues” (1.1.250-255). In the duality of
his love and his blindness to what he truly desires,
Lear especially resembles the young Athenian
lovers in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
The sources of Lear’s blindness emerge if we
consider more carefully the confusion of his two
advisers who open the play. Kent refuses to flatter
Lear with “glib and oily” speech when Cordelia
shows her “love” for her father by being “silent”—
even though she claims to “know” her sisters for
what they “are” and that time “shall unfold”
their “faults” (1.1.61, 94-95, 269-275, 280-281).
He offends the King with “plain”—or non-flattering—speech and refuses to persuade him that his
daughter’s silence reflects her great love for him.
Kent claims to have “loved” Lear as a “father”
but leaves him in the hands of the wicked Goneril
and Regan (1.1.141-153). He believes that his plain
speech arises from selfless love—a devotion to the
King’s life above his own—but later admits that
his allegedly noble, selfless speech is self-inter-
The answer to whether the
comedies (I should say the
Romances) and the tragedies
are (very) different is yes,
except perhaps in the case of
Measure for Measure (and the
two neighboring plays), which
are known as Problem plays,
not so much because they have
plots about moral problems but
because we have a problem
classifying them.
—Elliott Zuckerman, tutor emeritus
All of Shakespeare’s comedies
occur in Christian settings
(including A Midsummer
Night’s Dream). The young men
in these plays seem beset with
a peculiar melancholy and appear remarkably unimpressive
when compared to the women
of the comedies. Thinking
about what changes Christianity brings, particularly to young
men, would be a fruitful place
to begin thinking about how
Shakespeare’s comedies differ
from his tragedies.
—Laurence D. Nee, tutor
Different, yes; so very different,
no. I laugh more during Hamlet
than any of the comedies
makes me, and the lonely
sadness that endures to the
end of Twelfth Night is as
deeply felt as the happiness
of requited love. At the end of
his career, Shakespeare wrote
four comedies (culminating in
The Tempest) that feel different from the earlier comedies
because they take account of
the actions of the preceding
tragedies. A great challenge for
me is to try to understand the
wholeness of Shakespeare’s
career as a writer, with comedy prevailing in the end over
tragedy. I happen to prefer the
tragedies, so I hope to learn
from Shakespeare how to take
comedy as seriously.
—Louis Petrich, tutor
to ask what they are; he assumes that gratifying
passions like lust is good for him. Theseus cautions Hermia against making a similar assumption: she should “question” her “bewitch’d”
desires and “examine well” her “blood” (1.1.27,
67-68). Gloucester does not believe that he
needs to scrutinize his passions because, as his
pun on conceiving suggests, thinking and desire
are indistinguishable for him; reason would not
direct him to goods distinct from those desired
by his immediate bodily impulses. He believes
that his body inherently leads him to what is
good for him and, as a result, enjoying these
good things is as easy as gratifying the motions
of the “spleen” (1.1.143-145).
Just as Kent fails to see what he ought to do
to salvage Lear’s plan because he does not recognize his desire for reward, Gloucester fails to
see the true character of his bastard son because
he assumes that he must be rewarded for gratifying his immediate desires. The opening scene
of King Lear presents obstacles that impede us
from thinking clearly about our desire for love.
By presenting penetrating depictions of the desire for love, Shakespeare’s plays serve as mirrors in which we may see both the desire
for love in ourselves and the obstacles that prevent us from understanding it. Yet like the characters in these plays, we are blind.
ested: he believes that “plainness” brings honor
(1.1.146-148, 155-157, 223-233).
Like the Athenian youths who emulate the
honored lovers of the tales they recite, Kent
blindly assumes that being recognized as honorable is a great good—perhaps the greatest good.
His unwillingness to question this assumption
causes him to bring certain harm to himself,
Lear, and England. Kent fails to see what is good
for Lear or himself and, hence, what the foundation for loving and being loved is.
Gloucester blindly assumes that gratifying
his immediate desires must be good for him.
He holds Edgar, his legal son, “no dearer” than
the perpetually-absent “bastard” Edmund and
longs to believe that the “good” lust which attracted him to Edmund’s “fair” mother must be
rewarded with “good” fruit, just as it rewarded
him with so much “good sport” at the time of the
“making” (1.1.12-18). Gloucester acknowledges
that he seeks good things for himself but fails
24 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012
A Midsummer Night’s Dream and King Lear
provide two examples of the way in which Shakespeare fosters dialogue both within his plays and
among them. By presenting penetrating depictions of the desire for love, Shakespeare’s plays
serve as mirrors in which we may see both the
desire for love in ourselves and the obstacles
that prevent us from understanding it. Yet like
the characters in these plays, we are blind.
Through the conversations cultivated within
St. John’s classrooms, our own desires and the impediments that prevent us from seeing them can
emerge; the fog that impedes us from seeing into
these mirrors may be lifted. Our conversations
promote the discovery of the reflections made
possible by these mirrors and distinguish the
education provided by the college. St. John’s considered reading of great works like Shakespeare’s
plays, when united with openness to learning
from—and not just about—them, fosters our ability to see ourselves with sharpened sight.
�setting the stage
“All the World’s a
STAGE
”
For centuries actors, writers, directors, set designers, and
many others have been drawn to the stage, interpreting
dramatic works and theater. Five Johnnies transform—
and are transformed by—the stage. As a set designer in
New York City with a flair for opera, Ilana Kirschbaum
(SF07) is both scientist and illusionist, tinkering with the
audience’s perception. When actress Sara Barker (A98)
“treads the boards” as Queen Elizabeth, she becomes
larger than life and looks like Hillary Clinton. At the
Philadelphia Shakespeare Theatre, Jack Armstrong’s
(SF83) inventive plot charts reveal hidden notes:
“A well-told story,” he says, “can be graphed like a piece
of music.” Playwright Damon Rhea Falke (SFGI01) lets
his characters lead and morph into themselves on the
page. Shakespeare’s strong female leads inspired actress
Maria Jung (A12) to take the reins of her life, just weeks
after graduation.
The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 |
25
�26 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012
�“all the world’s a stage”
“MacGyvering
Your Way Around”
Set designer Ilana
Kirschbaum (SF07) melds
materials and paint with
“lots of research” into
historic, visual details.
Ilana Kirschbaum (sf07) sets the stage
by Anna Perleberg (SF02)
“This above all:
to thine own
self be true.”
DEREK STENBORG
Hamlet
PHOTO BY PETR JERABEK—LIGHTIMAGINATION.NET
“Science, alchemy, art, practice,
and craft,” is how Ilana Kirschbaum
(SF07) describes her work in the theater as
a scenic artist and designer. One could add
tradition, collaboration, and improvisation.
In September 2011, Kirschbaum
landed an amazing opportunity at the
Juilliard School in New York City, as one
of two technical theater interns in their
scenic painting department. By midMarch of this year, she had worked on 15
productions, and was solving a conundrum for Mozart’s opera, Don Giovanni.
The stage floor, done in faux wood (to
blend with a beautiful half-opaque, halftransparent forest backdrop), needs a
ground cloth to look like moss and dirt,
but will have barefoot people dancing on
it and set pieces coming in and out. “So
it needs to read from far away—have a
pronounced
texture—but be soft, and able to stand
up to having scenery moved onto it.”
Her current idea involves putting foam
in a food processor, mixing the bits
with shreds of plastic grocery bags, and
putting flexible glue on the material in
layers.
There’s a good amount of “MacGyvering your way around” in scenic art,
Kirschbaum says, “a lot of fake wood,
faux finishes, fooling the eye. I’ve done
a lot of fake food.” Some techniques in
the field are traditional painting methods
not used elsewhere; the two-dimensional
creation of a three-dimensional space can
be traced back to van Eyck’s medieval
altarpieces. In that way, she feels she’s
carrying on a long tradition.
With a long background in the visual
arts—“I’ve been drawing and painting forever”—Kirschbaum first dabbled in stage
work when a friend volunteered her to
paint what she now describes as an “awful” backdrop for a St. John’s production
of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way
to the Forum. “I was amazed by how much
time it took,” she says. “I just fell in love
with theater.”
A college-sponsored summer Ariel
internship with Santa Fe artist Paco
Benitez put her in touch with David Olson,
artistic director of theaterwork, a
company that produces plays and perfor-
mances of all stripes, from Shakespeare
to puppetry. They were a perfect fit for a
Johnnie, Kirschbaum found—“They’re
interested in developed visual theater, but
there’s also lots of discussion of the texts,
lots of research, especially in the visual details.” She describes the process as making
SJC text exploration “exist in a physical
way: now move this, now clean this, now
carry this, now paint this.” During several
years with theaterwork, she did a little
bit of everything, becoming increasingly
focused on scenic elements.
Kirschbaum got a kick out of participating in a stage version of Anna Karenina,
having written her senior essay on the
Tolstoy novel. Her favorite theaterwork
production was Jean Anouilh’s Sophoclesby-way-of-the-Nazis retelling of Antigone,
mounted in a most unusual space: an
abandoned swimming pool whose building had moldered unoccupied for years.
After a thorough cleaning, it was turned
into a 150-seat theater. Lighting the
space is a challenge; the electrical system
doesn’t have sufficient wattage and the
ceiling is inaccessible—regular stage lights
can’t be hung. But the atmosphere worked
to their advantage for Antigone. The bare
space of the pool’s floor became a desert
with rivulets of poetry written across
it (and also written on the costumes),
flowing into the murky depths of the deep
end, from which the chorus emerged. The
effect is spooky and woebegone, perfect
for the tragic story of defiance.
This kind of visual storytelling is a huge
part of scenic art, Kirschbaum affirms.
The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 |
27
�DEREK STENBORG
“When you walk in the room, before
you see actors, you see the set, and that
affects where the audience’s focus is.”
Whether scenery is abstract and minimalist or realistic and historically detailed
sends cues to the spectators about how to
respond emotionally to the work in front
of them. “A good set deals in subtle ways
with the complexities of the story, its key
concepts. This could mean a lush set, or
something very stark.”
It always means research, particularly
for older works, and paying close attention. A play set in the 1940s in the home
of aristocracy, for example, wouldn’t have
cutting-edge, then-modern furniture and
decoration, but would show generations
of inherited belongings. Such detail may
not be noticed by the casual observer,
but Kirschbaum believes that element is
always there. At the same time, a balance
must always be struck, because the set can’t
overwhelm the story. “Sometimes you want
to do really cool pieces, but you have to
remember they’re in the background!”
Expanding her repertoire of scenic art
techniques keeps providing Kirschbaum
with new subjects of study. “By the nature
of the work, you learn a lot about art
history and the history of materials,” she
says. “If you’re imitating a fresco, you
have to know how it was done, and then
figure out how to do it in a simpler and
quicker way.” She is currently interested
in the history of ornament; she finds
similarities between a culture’s alphabet
and its styles of ornament in architecture
and illustration, seeing echoes of the
cadences and structures of language in
physical forms. Greek and Roman, for
example, have individual, separate letters
of standard sizes, and one can view the
strict, clean lines of their buildings as
similarly discrete forms. The loops and
mazes of Arabic or Hindi decoration also
resemble their connected scripts.
A scenic art department operates
almost like a medieval guild, with a
“master” designer and apprentices who
carry out the work. Apprentices don’t
have to abandon painting for design, but
can discover what aspect of the field they
enjoy most. The two groups definitely
share a do-or-die emphasis on teamwork. “You don’t know what the word
means until you’re standing on a 50-foot
painting with two other people,” says
Kirschbaum, “and you have to make it
look like it’s been painted by one person.
And there’s wet paint on it!” Any process
must be streamlined so many people can
contribute to one smooth result, tailored
for different skill levels.
“The weirdest thing is how much
it makes sense after St. John’s, all the
random toolmaking, figuring things out,
experimentation—developing methods
around the process and hoping it turns
out in spite of the variables,” she says.
“It reminds me of senior lab.” Although
in some ways she’s “behind” in her line of
work, as almost everybody has an undergraduate degree in theater, Kirschbaum
is happy to be filling in the gaps. She is
amazed by how often a little geometry
comes in handy: “Euclid construction
proofs are a big part of my life right now.”
The Juilliard internship has focused her
eclectic experience. Kirschbaum was also
28 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012
lucky enough to work with the Santa Fe
Opera for two summers. (She can’t even
summon up an articulate adjective for
how much she enjoyed it, simply emitting
a happy “yeah!”) She has also done visual
elements for a project called Lifesongs
(brainchild of Santa Fe collaborative art
ensemble Littleglobe), which creates music based around the lives of the elderly
in nursing homes and hospice care. And
she has done freelance work at La Jolla
Playhouse in San Diego, California.
Not sure if she will spend her entire
career in theater, Kirschbaum will be able
to apply her skills to other endeavors such
as painting murals for natural history
museum displays. She also has a passion
for working in opera. As for so many
artists, the connections she is making in
New York City will take her far. And she
emphasizes that she would be happy to
talk to current students thinking about
pursuing their own theater work, on the
stage or behind the scenes.
�“all the world’s a stage”
FROM SHYNESS TO
ROYAL HIGHNESS
Sara Barker (a98) transforms the stage
“When you do dance,
I wish you a wave
o’ th’ sea, that
you might ever do
nothing but that.”
The Winter’s Tale
Suffering from debilitating
shyness as a child, Sara Barker
(A98) could have never imagined
summoning the courage to
speak in front of her class, let
alone starring onstage as Queen
Elizabeth in the Washington
Shakespeare Company’s production of Mary Stuart. “I was the
shyest kid in elementary school,”
says Barker. “It was so bad that I
developed speech problems and
needed speech therapy.” Even as
a Johnnie in her freshman year,
she recalls her tutors urged her
to speak up more in seminar.
“That whole ‘putting yourself
out there’ has always been
difficult for me,” she says. “But
I counter that with a love of
imagination and creativity.”
Barker began to dabble in
acting during her senior year of
high school. While at St. John’s,
she studied her craft more seriously. On weekends, she regularly commuted to Washington,
D.C., where she took classes
at the Shakespeare Theatre
Company. She also volunteered
as the assistant director for a
community theatre show in Annapolis. With the King William
Players, she starred in Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure.
“After the show,” she says,
“tutor Jon Tuck came up to me
and told me that I should [act].”
She took his advice to heart.
Not long after graduating from St. John’s, Barker
landed in New York City, where
she acted in a wide range of
productions, in roles traditional
to avant garde. By 2005 she
was entrenched in the Brooklyn theater scene, treading
the boards with the Chekhov
Theater Ensemble—she also
played Paulina in the Hipgnosis
Theatre Company’s production
of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s
Tale. Whatever role Barker
takes on, she embraces the
character, giving her full self—
mind, body, and spirit—to make
the emotional transformation
into somebody new.
As an actor, Barker finds that
an important part of making that transformation is the
costumes she wears. “When
you inhabit these characters,
you want to experience what it’s
like to be that character, and
costumes make you move like
they did and give you an idea of
what they felt like.” Costumes
inform both an actor’s and the
audiences’ understanding of
a character. For example, last
year when Barker played the
role of Queen Elizabeth in Mary
Stuart, instead of donning an
elaborate gown, accompanied
with the ruffles and corsets
one would typically expect, she
was dressed as Hillary Clinton
in a rather severe fitted blazer
and skirt. The austere attire
illuminated the Queen’s power
and authority then and now.
In fact, the production underscores the timeless resilience
of Shakespeare’s work; actors
and audiences alike remain fascinated by his plays. “He took
archetypal stories and brought
them to life in such an amazing
way,” says Barker.
Barker has certainly overcome the intense shyness she
experienced as a child. Her work
C. STANLEY PHOTOGRAPHY
By Gregory Shook
“‘PUTTING YOURSELF OUT
THERE’ HAS ALWAYS BEEN
DIFFICULT FOR ME, BUT
I COUNTER THAT WITH A
LOVE OF IMAGINATION
AND CREATIVITY.”
is acclaimed by the Washington Post and the Washington
City Paper and has garnered
multiple awards, including
Best Drama and Best Overall
Production at the Capital Fringe
Festival 2009. This spring
Barker finished up a production
of The Nightmare Dreamer at
Flashpoint in Washington, D.C.
This summer she is juggling her
full-time job at an IT solutions
company with rehearsing the
lead role of Catherine for the
world premiere of The Ice Child
with the new theater collective,
Factory 449, of which she is a
founding member; the Washington, D.C.-based company was
last year’s Helen Hayes Award
Recipient of the John Aniello
Award for Outstanding Emerging
Theatre Company.
Sarah Barker (A98) shines as
Queen Elizabeth in Mary Stuart.
Onstage Barker exudes
confidence, though she admits
having difficulty looking the
audience in the eyes when
performing. Like many actors,
she relies on what’s known
as “the fourth wall,” which in
theater parlance refers to the
invisible “screen” at the front
of the stage in a proscenium
theatre, which separates the
audience from the stage. This
imaginary wall helps Barker
psychologically balance her
need to breathe in the energy
of the audience without being
overly aware of their presence.
And she uses her imagination
to connect with the audience.
During her 2009 performance
in The Cherry Orchard, “instead
of seeing faces I was seeing
cherry trees,” says Barker. “I was
describing the trees and what
the orchard meant to me—the
lines were so beautiful. I could
feel that the audience was right
there with me, and I was bringing them along for the ride.”
The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 |
29
�“all the world’s a stage”
Graphing Shakespeare
Like Music
Jack Armstrong (sf83) plots charts
by Anna Perleberg (SF02)
“If this were played upon a
stage now, I could condemn
it as improbable fiction.”
Twelfth Night
Jack Armstrong’s (SF83) official
title at Philadelphia Shakespeare Theatre
(PST) is vice president of the board of directors—but his roles are many: producer,
fundraiser, dramaturge, and graphic
designer. He is also charter of plots, a title
all his own, with its roots in a junior-year
preceptorial, where Armstrong first encountered Heinrich Schenker’s musical
analysis. “Schenker was the first person
who codified music theory,” he says,
inventing a system of notation to show
“how the composer creates and releases
tension in each of the lines to form a
symbolic whole.” Armstrong sees story
structure the same way: “A well-told story
can be graphed like a piece of music.”
The chart for cross-dressing comedy
Twelfth Night, for instance, unfurls in a
riot of color and a wealth of information.
Columns for each scene run across the
top; below, color-coded bars for each actor show who is present in the scene and
with whom. A row titled simply “Drama”
asks the question the scene poses: “Can
Viola land safely in this strange country?”
“How far do they dare push Malvolio?”
Running down the side, where Schenker
might have kept track of major triads,
are the myriad subplots of the play, again
phrased as questions: “Can Viola keep her
female identity secret?” “Will Sebastian
be reunited with Viola?” Every scene that
advances one of these plots is faithfully
noted, and their progress can be tracked
across the acts, like rising and falling
notes, until they reach their resolutions.
It’s both a beautiful representation of data
and a handy primer for anyone working
with the play—actor, director, or student.
Although he acted in high school—and
developed a lifelong affection for Hamlet
in particular—Armstrong says he would
never have worked in the theater without
his wife, Carmen Khan, an English actress
who credits the Bard with saving her life.
“She grew up in a rough family, a rough
neighborhood. And she came into English
class one day and her teacher recited a
passage from Macbeth. It opened her
eyes. It was the first time she saw life as
more than a trial to be endured, that there
could be joy and fulfillment.” One of their
first dates was to a production of Hamlet
that Armstrong hated so much he had to
leave—“she thought I didn’t like her!”
“Shakespeare’s plays are
full of these passages,
which at first blush seem
to be a pause in the action
for sizzling wordplay.
It’s not a pause at all, but
drama so intense you’d
feel it even if the actors
weren’t speaking.”
In the late 80s, Khan was working
with a classical company called Red Heel
Theatre when circumstances thrust her
into the position of artistic director.
Under her leadership, the company began
exclusively performing Shakespeare,
changing their name to reflect this. Currently, the PST does two repertory plays
every spring—this season Twelfth Night
30 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012
was paired with the blood-soaked tragedy
Titus Andronicus in a unique production
inspired by the Grand Guignol puppet
theater—in a 120-seat theater converted
from a former parish hall. Armstrong
freely admits that their preparation for
being on the board of a theater company
was “nothing.” Then he adds, “It’s like
having a baby—that baby teaches you what
you need to know about being a parent,
whether you like it or not.” He does have
a day job—printing election ballots—but he
says it’s only busy for three months in the
spring and two months in fall, allowing
him to spend as much time on the theater
as he does on his “paying gig.”
Long before the actors tread the
boards, Armstrong and Khan go through
the script line by line, asking three questions of each: What is this person saying?
Why does the character say this—what
is he or she trying to accomplish? Why
is this in the play? Once they know the
answers to these questions for each line,
Armstrong writes up an annotated script
with all their notes, and then generates his Schenkerian plot charts. It’s a
monumental task: He estimates spending
at least 60 hours for the close reading
and the creation of chart and annotated
director’s script. The result of all this
preparation, he says, is that “the actors
get to know the story so well that five
minutes into it you forget you’re listening
to archaic language. Sometimes it’s like
you’re listening to improv comedy.”
The prep work can also bring scenes to
life that seem to be just trading lines on
the page. “Shakespeare’s plays are full of
these passages, which at first blush seem
to be a pause in the action for sizzling
wordplay. It’s not a pause at all, but drama
so intense you’d feel it even if the actors
weren’t speaking.” As an example, he
offers Twelfth Night, where Duke Orsino
�JOHN BANSEMER
presses the disguised Viola about “his”
favored lady, who, Viola says, is Orsino’s
complexion, Orsino’s years. In other
words, she’s mustering up the courage to
tell him she’s really a woman, and that it’s
him she loves. When he keeps not taking
the hint, she backs off—and then tries
again. Played this way, says Armstrong,
“instead of just clever wordplay, you’re on
the edge of your seat.”
Their mission reaches far more than
their main-stage audience. PST has a
dizzying array of educational programs:
Classes in Shakespeare for teenagers
and adults. School matinees. Lectures
by Shakespeare scholars. Workshops
for English and drama instructors on
teaching the Bard. A three-person touring production of Hamlet. An artist-inresidency program in which teams of
actors work with a class of high school
students for an intense week or two; then
the students perform a scene. PST’s plot
charts, in poster form, are up on the walls
of English classrooms across the city. “A
lot of kids are introduced to Shakespeare
through our programs. And we’ve been
doing this long enough that some of the
first generation are now teachers.”
Asked what he thinks about the state
of theater in the U.S., Armstrong answers
with a quote from George Bernard Shaw:
“Our generation is a low ebb in the
history of the theater. Every generation is
a low ebb in the history of the theater.”
In other words, he feels the perennial
proclamation of the death of live theater
is an exaggeration. “I think it’s very
healthy! We envy, of course, companies in
Canada and England and other enlightened countries where the government
supports the theater.” But he admits that
the lack of government funding gives
them more freedom to do their productions exactly how they wish, even if
raising the money to do so is an “endless,
exhausting, terrifying process.”
Philadelphia, with 80 professional
theater companies, has “an extraordinary
pool of actors.” Most of the organizations,
says Armstrong, are working “on an even
more tenuous basis than us. It’s mindblowing what people will give up to be on
stage. But the work is amazing! I think
it’s a golden age of theater in Philly.”
He’s pleased to be able to share it with
playgoers from his alma mater, too. “We
have been hosting a ‘St. John’s Night’ at
the theater for several years. A dozen or so
alumni come early, we have a little party
beforehand, then watch the play. It has
been great to reconnect with old classmates and meet new friends.”
For Armstrong, the struggle to bring
Shakespeare to all is vitally important
work. He recently read an article about
a symposium “justifying teaching the
humanities,” and although some of the
points made by the disciplines’ defenders
were interesting—such as that they
In one of his many roles, Jack Armstrong
(SF83) analyzes each script produced by the
Philadelphia Shakespeare Theatre.
“can help you get through tough situations”—Armstrong thinks they were really
peripheral. “Asking why you teach the
humanities is like asking why you put gas
in a car. If you know what a car is, you
don’t have to ask the question.” Drama,
literature, writing, history: these are
“the science of being human,” he says
passionately. “Through stories we learn
to be human. They’re how we expand our
vocabulary of possible human behavior,
and the bigger our vocabulary is, the
better our chances of making a good
decision. Hell is the accumulated result
of bad decisions. Paradise is the result of
education in the humanities.”
To view one of Armstrong’s plot charts,
visit www.stjohnscollege.edu/news.
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31
�“all the world’s a stage”
“A Difficult Pleasure”
Playwright Damon Rhea Falke (sfgi01) listens to his characters
by Babak Zarin (A11)
“ The course of true love
never did run smooth.”
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Damon Rhea Falke (sfgi01) began
his career as a writer because of a girl who
broke his heart when he was a teenager.
“I thought I could write all that hurt out
of me,” says Falke. He also thought he
could “keep her with words. Pretty soon
I wanted to keep certain places and then
certain people and later still, certain
memories and stories I’d heard.”
Many works Falke encountered at
St. John’s continue to inspire him. Among
the playwrights on the Program, he leans
toward the classics: “Aeschylus reaches
us with a kind of ritualized grandeur.
Sophocles can be wonderfully ambiguous.
Look at Oedipus at Colonus or Philoctetes.
Consider even Antigone. What are we to
feel at the end of that play? There is real
pleasure in this sort of ambiguity,” which
“we can learn from deeply.”
And then, of course, there’s Shakespeare.
“More than once I have opened a play
or a collection of sonnets with a willed
feeling of skepticism, as if to find out
whether Shakespeare is indeed as great
as Shakespeare is supposed to be. And, of
course, he is.”
Falke points out that in The Tempest,
“there is something very human” in
Prospero the magician “when he longs for
his library or his vanquished home. We’re
all vanquished from home. Certainly this
can be the stuff of tragedy, but Prospero
clings to other parts of himself” that
are gifts. “So that’s not tragic,” he says.
“That’s a comfort in this play.”
Falke finds deep satisfaction in
playwriting: “It has its own peculiar
difficulties, to be sure, but in the beginning stages, in that first draft or two, it’s
“Imagine having a Big
Daddy in you or an
Antigone, or an Ahab or
a Sherlock Holmes. I’ve
wept over Anna Karenina.
There’s some kind of
wonder to hold those
characters in you.”
the pleasure that carries me and sustains
the process of the work. I’m glad to start
when I start and glad to listen when I do.”
“In a poem,” Falke notes, “you might
become conscious of the musical qualities
some words carry. A pleasure I find in
writing plays, however, is in listening to
characters for what one is saying or will
say.” Although Falke finds it hard to write
32 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012
a character that stays with him, those who
do stay seldom leave. “Imagine having a
Big Daddy in you or an Antigone, or an
Ahab or a Sherlock Holmes,” he says.
“I’ve wept over Anna Karenina. There’s
some kind of wonder to hold those characters in you. When characters achieve lives
of their own, you experience a gift, and
you go on experiencing it.”
When asked for a play focusing on
characters’ individual stories, Falke wrote
The Sun Is in the West in 2010. The idea
of telling stories became an important
theme. In a graveyard on the storm-ravaged Gulf Coast of Texas, its characters
deal with their family stories and their
relationship with the region. “Inspiration
came when the characters started to talk,
and I started to listen,” he says.
Although Falke spoke with the director
about the play’s set and general look, he
wasn’t heavily involved with the staging.
“Directors come with their own creative
�“all the world’s a stage”
LEADING LADY
Maria Jung (a12) pursues acting
By Gregory Shook
“Say, from
whence
You owe
this strange
intelligence?”
Macbeth
Maria Jung (A12) is trying
hard not to freak out. Hoping
to launch a career in acting,
she just landed the part
of Emelia in the Annapolis
Shakespeare Company’s
summer 2012 production of
The Comedy of Errors. Set
in 1890 in a visually striking
“steampunk” style, the play
signals Jung’s professional
theatrical debut.
Shakespeare’s strong female characters resonated
with Jung as she played
Tamora in Titus Andronicus,
the First Witch in Macbeth,
and Olivia in Twelfth Night
with the King William
Players. “My dream roles
would be Cleopatra or Lady
Macbeth,” she says. “These
women are so nuanced and
possess such fierce power—
it blows my mind that
Shakespeare wrote them.”
Jung’s admiration for such
vital characters inspired her
career path; she’s going for
it with gusto.
She credits her experience performing Shakespeare with the college’s
King William Players. “I
learned so much from
working with my fellow
Johnnies,” says Jung, having “great conversations
about the dialogue and
monologues, as well as the
JEN BEHRENS
processes,” he says. “If a director is willing to be part of a production, then my
hope is he’s already eager about the work
and what it can become. If the writing is
strong and the director has a vision and
can trust his own creative impulses, you
might see something worth saving.”
Falke was unable to be there when
The Sun Is in the West opened in a town
far from his home in Port Arthur, Texas.
“It was a treat to see a production in Santa
Fe,” he says. “I was nervous. I want a
work to be enjoyed or appreciated. I hope
people take something good away from
seeing a show.”
Writing can be a difficult craft. “You
have to work hard to get it right, and
sometimes you might not know when you
do. The hard work and the not knowing
are in part what makes the process rewarding,” says Falke. “They lead to what
you might call a difficult pleasure.”
Falke has long moved on from the girl
who broke his heart. Having become a
prolific writer, Falke has published poems
and short stories in addition to his plays.
Falke’s publications included a 10,000word piece in The Langdon Review, a
poem in The Aurorean, and others. He
also finished writing a couple plays that
he hopes to see in production soon. In
March 2012, a book containing a single
poem, Notes on Paper, was published. But
he isn’t about to rest on his laurels. “I’m
still pleased when a piece is published or
given a stage,” he says. “It means there’s
someone who wants to listen to you and
who believes others should listen also.
You need to accept such an opportunity
with humility; there is plenty of fine work
that only a few souls will ever read.”
various characters.” Club
archon Tessa Nelson (A12)
worked hard to make the
King William Players “reflect
well on the college. She’s
taken theater at St. John’s
to an amazing place.”
During “Dead Week” on
the Annapolis campus—the
calm period each spring
when tutorials are cancelled
for sophomore and junior
Don Rags—Jung sequestered herself in Greenfield Library’s basement,
engrossed in the Bard. With
scribbled notes strewn on
open plays, she spent many
hours memorizing monologues from Titus Andronicus and Twelfth Night to
prepare for her callback
with the Annapolis Shakespeare Company. Sounding
like a seasoned actor, Jung
explains that a callback
is about “getting a sense
of the chemistry between
the actors” and “showing
that you can really get into
the character and have fun
onstage.”
Jung’s only previous
acting credit was playing
the role of Mrs. Gibbs in her
high school’s production of
Our Town. “I got into acting
on a whim,” says Jung. “My
friends [at Hunter College
High School in New York
City] were involved in the
arts, so I thought I’d give
acting a try.” She has also
been inspired by a strong
female lead, her mother,
now retired, who is taking
acting classes –“and getting
lots of work!”
Jung is curious to explore
acting possibilities beyond
the stage. Last year, she
had a Hodson internship
assisting with film shoots
and editing at the Doc Tank,
a Brooklyn-based international creative center for
documentary directors.
“With film, there are so
many subtle, dramatic details that can’t be conveyed
in plays—like zooming in on
the expression on a person’s
face,” she says. “I really like
those possibilities.”
The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 |
33
�St. John’s College was a
haven from the segregation
in Annapolis before Brown
v. Board of Education.
34 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012
�Rule of
Reason
In a Small College Seeking
Enlightenment
SIGNS, WIRES AND CONCRETE. PHOTOGRAPH BY A. AUBREY BODINE, COPYRIGHT © JENNIFER B. BODINE, COURTESY WWW.AAUBREYBODINE.COM
by Susan Borden (A87)
Remembering
Martin A. Dyer
(193o–2011)
Martin Appell Dyer (Class of 1952), was
a dignified, thoughtful, and gracious
pioneer, the first African American
student to attend St. John’s College. He
was admitted in 1948 after the college
community challenged the legitimacy of
segregated education. Throughout his
distinguished career as an attorney in
public and community service, Mr. Dyer
remained devoted to St. John’s.
He recalled how he “was welcomed on
campus, a bastion, and that welcome
made all the difference in the world. . .
St. John’s was just a beacon of freedom
compared to anything in Annapolis.”
It was to St. John’s that Mr. Dyer attributed his “lifelong love of books and
language” and his “passion for music.”
During his time at St. John’s, Mr. Dyer
arranged for W.E.B. Du Bois to give a
lecture—he brought to campus the only
author read in the St. John’s Program to
also visit and speak at the college.
Mr. Dyer was born and raised in East
Baltimore, the son of Martin A. Dyer, a
steelworker, and Margaret Louise Dyer, a
secretary to Lillie Mae Jackson, president
of the Baltimore chapter of the NAACP.
What can the voices of St. John’s
veterans returning after World War II
tell us about freedom, injustice, and
segregation in a small college town?
In the crowded Conversation Room at the 2011 Annapolis
Homecoming, more than 60 alumni, tutors, and other
members of the college community gathered for a first
reading of “So Reason Can Rule: The Necessity of Racial
Integration at St. John’s College.” The script, drawn from
numerous oral histories and written by Charlotta Beavers
(AGI11), tells the story of the conditions, circumstances,
and people that led to the enrollment of Martin Dyer
(Class of 1952), the first African
Martin Dyer (Class of 1952)
American student to attend St. John’s
College. Dyer enrolled in the fall
of 1948, six years before Brown v.
Board of Education established the
unconstitutionality of separate public
schools for black and white students.
The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 |
35
�Remembering
Martin A. Dyer
“I learned about discrimination and segregation
when I was sent to Fort Bragg. It had an impact for
everybody. Whether you were a southerner or urban
or rural—just being in the military and
wondering why [the soldiers] were
separated . . . made you think.”
(continued)
He graduated at the top of his
class in 1948 at Paul Laurence
Dunbar High School but family
circumstances were such that
he expected to attend a state
teachers college. At that time,
students and faculty from
St. John’s actively sought
African Americans to attend
the college and Mr. Dyer was
the first to enroll. Inspired by
the college’s activist stance,
he attended the college after
“a core of students actively
scouted Baltimore’s two black
high schools to recruit students
for a college virtually unknown
in the black community. . . . To
accept [blacks] is one thing,”
he told a reporter from the Baltimore Sun, “but to deliberately
and consciously seek someone
is another.”
Graduating from St. John’s in
1952, he enlisted in the Army
and served in Europe until
1954. Mr. Dyer earned his law
degree from the University
of Maryland School of Law in
1959. In 1962, Mr. Dyer married the former Jane Weeden
and began his family.
In the 1960s, Mr. Dyer worked
as a congressional intern on
Capitol Hill and principal legislative aide and speechwriter for
Alaska Sen. Edward L. “Bob”
Bartlett, architect of Alaskan
statehood. Mr. Dyer then
worked in public service in the
Health Care Finance Administration until retiring in 1990. A
champion for fair housing, after
retiring from federal service he
served as associate director of
Baltimore Neighborhoods, Inc.
In 1997 he was honored at
Homecoming with the Alumni
Association Award of Merit. He
gave a moving talk to those
—Jules Pagano (Class of 1948)
When Beavers started working on “So Reason
Can Rule,” its working title was “The Magnificent Seven,” a name affectionately bestowed on
the first seven African American students to
enroll at St. John’s by Everett Wilson (Class of
1956), the second African American student.
Beavers came to see that her project was about
far more than these seven alumni. It was about
a world seeking enlightenment after the darkness of World War II. It was also about deeply
entrenched prejudice in a small southern city,
and the necessity of racial justice in an institution centered on liberty, open-mindedness, and
the rule of reason.
“So Reason Can Rule” originated as an oral
history project; Beavers conducted 13 oral histories as a collective memory of a pivotal time at the
college. As Beavers reviewed the recordings and
transcripts of these oral histories, she noticed a
theme that seemed essential to the college’s integration: the significant role played by veterans
returning to the college from World War II.
In his essay, “Race, Language, and War in Two
Cultures: World War II in Asia,” author John
W. Dower describes the U.S. soldiers’ need to
remain blind to the “hypocrisy of fighting with
a segregated army and navy under the banner
of freedom, democracy, and justice.” To their
credit, Beavers says, many St. John’s students returned from World War II with their eyes opened.
“I learned about discrimination and segregation when I was sent to Fort Bragg,” says Jules
Pagano (Class of 1948). “It had an impact for
everybody. Whether you were a southerner or
urban or rural—just being in the military and
wondering why [the soldiers] were separated...
made you think.”
George Van Sant (Class of 1948), another
veteran, returned to the college in 1947 as a junior, joining a student body of mostly veterans,
including the dean, who had been “commander
of a company of all black soldiers that had fought
36 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012
in Germany with distinction,” Van Sant recalls.
“By the junior year, you begin to read some of
the 18th-century political stuff. Most Johnnies
develop, I hope, a very enlightened view of our
Founding Fathers and their Constitution and
what it all means.”
Van Sant says that his senior year saw a lot of
ferment and turmoil. “The race issue just came
to a head and there was an open discussion of
it and open encouragement for [integration on
the campus].” A voluntary meeting in the Great
Hall about the issue during the ’47 to ’48 academic year was well attended, he says, by a lot of
students and veterans.
Pagano recalls the sense of political possibility that informed the meeting: “Just the fact that
we were reading the Great Books made us very
concerned with the movements that were taking
place: Will there be something like the Roman
peace? Will there be an American peace? Will
we run the world? Will we be the new empire?
What will the United Nations be and how will
it affect us? Will it change America and will we
have a voice in the world?”
Charged with the possibility of change and the
hope for a better world, the undergraduate students gathered on March 16, 1948, to vote on a
resolution: “The Student Polity hereby resolves
that it would welcome the admission of students
of any race or color to St. John’s College,” it read.
“This resolution is not intended as a petition to
or demand on the administration, but rather is
the result of a student discussion and deliberation about whether an admissions policy which
would enter Negro students would be acceptable
to the student body.”
Gene Thornton (Class of 1945), who served in
the Navy with African American men, reflected
on freedom and segregation: “You get to thinking about things, and you realize you want to do
something about them.” He drew up the petition that circulated among the students before
�“The race issue just came to a head and there was
an open discussion of it and open encouragement
for [integration on the campus]. A voluntary
meeting in the Great Hall about the
issue was ‘well attended.’”
—George Van Sant (Class of 1948)
Remembering
Martin A. Dyer
(continued)
The Board was facing a number of pressures
that seemed to endanger the college’s very
existence, most significantly a recent attempt
by the U.S. Naval Academy to take over the college. Given the high level of segregation in the
city of Annapolis, they also feared that publicity
surrounding a new policy of integration would
turn the town against St. John’s. Following their
discussion, the Board decided unanimously that
no action be taken.
Despite the Board’s reluctance to integrate
the college, the students pressed on. With
the support of New Program founder Scott
Buchanan, Dean Harvey Poe, and tutor Winfree
Smith, they visited guidance offices in black
high schools in Baltimore to recruit an African
American male to attend St. John’s. In his interview, Van Sant made it clear that special credit
should be given to Peter Davis (Class of 1948),
who spurred this recruitment movement.
In 2004, St. John’s honored Mr.
Dyer and six other pioneering
African American students
who followed him at St. John’s
in the 1950s. He served as
a member of the Board of
Visitors and Governors and
chaired an advisory committee
in Annapolis to recruit, enroll,
and retain students of color.
He helped frame the college’s
continuing conversation about
diversity. He drew attention
to the college’s ongoing need
to ensure that its Program is
available to all. He wanted St.
John’s to keep the commitment it had made when he was
recruited and enrolled.
“Doctor Weaver founded a Negro
national scholarship fund. . . .
Their one sentence of St. John’s:
‘St. John’s College is an island of
liberality in a sea of segregation.’
And the next sentence went on to
explain that fortunately everything
you needed was on campus, so
you did not need to depend on offcampus for anything else, except
if you went to church, [a dentist, or
for a haircut].”
Jerry Hynson (Class of 1959) came
from a segregated community where
his only connections to white people
were as employers. Nevertheless,
he found life at the nearly all-white
St. John’s agreeable: “St. John’s was
easy socially. . . I liked to talk and
enjoyed the company of others.”
SHERRI HOSFELD JOSEPH
the meeting, which asked what students thought
of St. John’s enrolling “colored” or “Negro”
students.
Robert Davis (Class of 1945) was the meeting’s moderator. He argued against the idea that
the high tuition ($1,100 in 1948) and the study of
the Classics were deterrents for African American students. Unlike others, who thought that
African Americans would forego St. John’s for
job preparation training, Davis believed that a
St. John’s education was practical and that African American students would come if they were
welcomed.
Ralph Finkel (now known as Raphael BenYosef, Class of 1948), Michael Keane (Class of
1945), and Phillip Camponeschi (Class of 1946)
assisted in organizing the meeting. Finkel told a
reporter, “You can’t go to a place like St. John’s
and learn all about the great ideas of the world
without practicing them.” Keane felt strongly
that the challenge to dismantle segregated
education must originate with the students.
Camponeschi, who led seminars on Greek and
Shakespearean tragedies in the African American communities of Annapolis, was recorded as
saying, “Western civilization has lagged intellectually while developing its material wealth.”
The students concluded that if all men are
free, then a system that denies the right of freedom to certain men is wrong. The resolution
passed by an overwhelming vote: 162 in favor, 33
against, and two indifferent.
Less than a month later, at a faculty meeting
on April 10, a motion was made by tutor Winfree
Smith that “the faculty go on record as favoring
the admission of Negro students as a matter of
college policy.” The motion passed unanimously.
The Board of Visitors and Governors met on
April 17. Richard F. Cleveland, the son of former
President Grover Cleveland, presided as Chairman. President John Kieffer told the Board about
the decisions made by the students and faculty.
assembled. His great care and
concern for each individual
made all who knew him feel
welcome. In his honor St.
John’s initiated the Martin
Dyer Book Fund in 1997, which
helps students meet the expenses of Program books.
The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 |
37
�Remembering
Martin A. Dyer
(continued)
Mr. Dyer included everyone in
the discussion; he could lead a
group around a difficult issue
and never lose sight of the
goal. He led with grace and a
finely tuned ability to listen.
A lover of art, classical music
and opera and a gourmet chef,
Mr. Dyer was a member of
the Peabody Choir, a founding
member of the board of the
James E. Lewis Museum of Art
Foundation at Morgan State
University, and past president
of the board of Young American Audiences of Maryland.
A tribute by a friend and colleague might well serve to sum
up his life: “He had no trepidation about doing what was
right….he made the world not a
little better but a lot better. He
was a perfect gentleman. I have
nothing but fond words and
memories of Martin. He was a
beautiful person.”
—Mark Lindley (A67)
“I had spoken to one or another tutor about my
concern . . . . I was put in touch with somebody
from Baltimore . . . . knowing that there were
the Maryland scholarships that meant someone
recruited in Baltimore could come to
St. John’s without having tuition. I
tried to urge that person, whoever they
were, to come to St. John’s.”
—Peter Davies (Class of 1948)
The students were put in touch with Martin
Dyer, a senior at Paul Laurence Dunbar High
School in Baltimore, Maryland, and an honors
student with the second-highest grade-point average in his class.
At the meeting of St. John’s Board on July 17,
President Kieffer reported that “an application
had been received from Martin Dyer, a Negro,
a graduate of Dunbar High School of Baltimore
City.” In his opinion, Kieffer said, Martin Dyer’s
application should be accepted if he met all
other qualifications; he should not be rejected
because he was a Negro. Kieffer noted that Johns
Hopkins University admitted Negroes in its
undergraduate department, that the Archbishop had instructed all Catholic colleges in
Maryland to admit Negroes, and that there was a
Negro at the Naval Academy. To refuse to admit a
Negro to St. John’s would be inconsistent with the
DAN COOK
“There was so little to do in Annapolis
because of the segregation. I certainly didn’t go socializing off campus with my classmates unless we
were all going to the Little Campus. I
was Catholic. But I was not welcome
at the Catholic church in Annapolis,
St. Mary’s. I certainly didn’t blame it
on St. John’s. St. John’s opens your
eyes…gives you an opportunity to
think about what is the best way to
respond to this kind of travesty.”
Charlotte King (Class of 1959) was one
of the first African American women
to attend St. John’s. She remembers an
admissions officer showing her and
her family a film of the college that
was too good to resist: “I lived in urban
New York and here was this beautiful
movie with beautiful music in the
background, students sitting around at
classes that made it look like a wonderful way to learn.”
38 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012
liberal education offered by the college and
would be bad for student and faculty morale.
Yet the Board’s Executive Committee voted
nine to three against admitting Dyer, who was
sent a letter of rejection.
What happened next, says Beavers, is unclear. She speculates that someone on the Board
rallied support for the Executive Committee
of the Board to reconsider. A letter dated August 26 shows that the majority of the Board
supported such a move. When the Executive
Committee met on September 17, each member
was asked to express his views. Their vote was
six to three—this time in favor of admitting Dyer,
who attended his first class at St. John’s College
on September 27, 1948.
The story doesn’t end with Martin Dyer’s
successful enrollment, says Beavers. Once her
script is turned into an audio-visual presentation—to be narrated by tutor Jon Tuck—she
will return to her research. Her next script will
explore what life was like for the first seven
African American students during their time at
St. John’s and in their lives after graduation.
The first presentation, using the script of “So
Reason Can Rule,” the oral history tapes, and
photographs from the college archives, is planned
for screening during Homecoming 2012. Beavers
is working on a “So Reason Can Rule” web page:
www.stjohnscollege.edu/alumni/AN/so-reasoncan-rule.shtml. Send relevant reminiscences,
photographs, and documents to Beavers, in care
of Susan Borden, P.O. Box 2800, Annapolis,
MD 21404.
�bibliofile
Andrew Krivak (A86):
A Coming of Age
MARZEUA POGORZALY
Following up on his 2007
“I go back to
Aristotle [as a
teacher] for
constructing
a story’s
beginning,
middle, and
end.”
memoir, A Long Retreat: In
Search of a Religious Life,
Andrew Krivak (A86) takes on
a new subject in his latest book,
The Sojourn. This time, the subject is his grandfather—or rather,
an amalgam of traits both real
and imagined, distilled to create
a version of his grandfather,
the protagonist in Krivak’s first
work of fiction.
Having only heard tales about
his grandfather, Krivak envisioned the book as a way to
explore his personal family
history. But an unexpected
discovery happened midway
through writing his novel.
Krivak found that he became
less concerned with documenting history and more focused on
becoming a writer in a bigger
sense. “A Long Retreat is a story
about my personal coming of
age,” says Krivak. “The Sojourn
is my coming of age as a writer.”
As he wrote, blending history
and landscapes, Krivak—who hadn’t previously
thought to cross genres—became excited about
the craft of storytelling without being beholden
to specific times, characters, and places. “I’m
always thinking about plot. A good story moves.
How will a character or place move a story?”
Whether writing memoir or fiction, the writing
process is essentially the same for Krivak, who
says, “No matter what the subject, it’s about
writing a story.”
The story of his latest work centers on the
protagonist Jozef Vinich, who in the wake of
a family tragedy was uprooted from a 19thcentury Colorado mining town to return with
his father to rural Austria-Hungary, where he
lives an impoverished shepherd’s life. At the
outbreak of World War I, Jozef joins his cousin
and brother-in-arms as a sharpshooter on the
southern front, where he must survive a perilous journey across the frozen Italian Alps and
enemy capture.
Krivak draws from the classics for inspiration. As a freshman at St. John’s, reading the
Odyssey had a profound impact—he was taken
with the formal and aural sensibilities of the
language, which seemed to come alive. He also
looks to the Greeks for getting to the root of
good storytelling. “I go back to Aristotle [as a
teacher] for constructing a story’s beginning,
middle, and end.”
Krivak’s storytelling has earned him serious
recognition. The Sojourn was a 2011 National
Book Award Finalist, as well as a Boston Globe
bestseller and the Washington Post’s Notable
Book of the Year. Not bad for a novel that was
turned away by nearly every large publishing
company. Thrilled by the favorable response his
book has received, Krivak says that being nominated for a National Book Award is “psychologically, an experience that can’t be beat.”
Most recently, in April 2012 the Chautauqua
Institution, a not-for-profit educational and
cultural center in southwestern New York state,
selected The Sojourn as the first-ever winner
of The Chautauqua Prize, a new national prize
that celebrates a book of fiction or literary/narrative nonfiction that yields a richly rewarding
reading experience and honors the author for a
significant contribution to the literary arts. The
Chautauqua Prize reviewers, who chose The
Sojourn from a finalist shortlist that includes
five other titles, describe the book as “a novel of
uncommon lyricism and moral ambiguity.”
Given the plentiful accolades, it is clear that
Krivak has come of age as a writer. Still, he
insists that his motivation is not influenced by
reviews and awards. “Reviews teach me nothing.
If it doesn’t get me back to the [writing] desk, I
don’t care about it.” Future plans include a book
that he describes as “sort of a follow-up to The
Sojourn. It’s much bigger and taking more time
to write.” As a husband and father of three based
in Somerville, Massachusetts, finding time is
a challenge. “I used to think, ‘What days can I
write?’ Now I think, ‘What hours can I write?’ ”
—Gregory Shook
The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 |
39
�bibliofile
Medieval Political Philosophy: A Sourcebook, 2nd Edition
Joshua Parens (A83) and Joseph C. Macfarland (A87)
Cornell University Press, 2011
In light of recent events that pose a
The Sourcebook’s
readings provide
the means to
rediscover and
contemplate
the confrontation
between reason
and revelation,
free from
many modern
presuppositions.
secular West against a radicalized Islamic world,
while the West alternates between safeguarding
secularism and questioning it, medieval political philosophers provide a remote viewpoint
from which to reconsider the relationships
between science, religion, and politics. They
consider how philosophy might inform the practice of politics and religion independently of the
modern, western model—the liberal democratic
separation of religion from politics that lowers
the ends of politics for the sake of securing the
conditions of material well-being. This second
edition of Medieval Political Philosophy: A
Sourcebook, brings together in one volume
works from the three monotheistic traditions:
Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. Despite their
different traditions, these authors shared a
greater uniformity of intention than may perhaps be found at any other time, for each studied
classical political philosophy in the works of
Plato and Aristotle and each sought to articulate
the implications of classical teachings for contemporary life in his religious community.
The Sourcebook’s readings provide the means
to rediscover and contemplate the confrontation between reason and revelation, free from
many modern presuppositions. Despite the
authors’ similarity of intention, this confrontation between reason and revelation takes different forms, as Judaism and Islam are religions of
law and Christianity is a religion of faith. Thus
Alfarabi (ca. AD 870-950), along with several
Muslim and Jewish authors after him, took their
bearings from Plato’s Republic and Laws and
identified the lawgiving prophet with the Platonic philosopher-king. By this understanding,
the authoritative religious science, jurisprudence, is guided by political philosophy, which
comprehends the characteristics of divine law
in principle and the nature of the prophetic
legislator. In Christianity, without a lawgiver as
the central figure, the authoritative religious
science was not jurisprudence, but theology.
Many Christian authors, following Aristotle’s
Politics, understood political philosophy as a
branch of practical philosophy, safely segregated from the speculative sciences and implicitly
subordinate to theology. In this context, any
attitude that conversely subordinated theology
40 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012
to philosophy was reviled as “Averroism”; in
a few Christian authors, however, one detects
a similarity of purpose with Averroes and his
predecessor, Alfarabi.
Despite the relative subordination of political
philosophy within Christianity and the relative
independence of political philosophy from
jurisprudence and theology in Islam and
Judaism, it is puzzling that political philosophy
in the medieval Islamic world ended with the
death of Averroes in AD 1198, whereas one may
trace in several doctrines a continuity in
Christian political thought from medieval to
early modern thinkers.
The first edition of the Sourcebook, edited by
Ralph Lerner and Muhsin Mahdi in collaboration with Ernest Fortin, appeared in 1963. The
original editors passed the project on to their
former graduate students, Joshua Parens (A83),
a professor of philosophy at the University of
Dallas, and Joseph Macfarland (A87), a tutor in
Annapolis, whose revised edition includes new
readings. More vividly highlighting the debate
between the philosophers and those defending
the three religious traditions from philosophy,
these readings include selections from Judah
Halevi’s The Kuzari, Alghazali’s The Deliverer
from Error, and Boethius of Dacia’s On the Supreme Good. Additions also highlight particular
themes: for example, selections by Maimonides
(Eight Chapters) and Thomas (Commentary on
the Ethics) enable the reader to consider with
greater precision different opinions regarding
the connection between law and nature. This revision takes advantage of many new translations
(e.g., Alfarabi’s The Book of Religion, William of
Ockham’s Dialogue), and improves old translations on the basis of new critical editions (e.g.,
Thomas’s Commentaries, Dante’s Monarchia).
The Sourcebook has been used frequently in
undergraduate and graduate classrooms; now
Parens and Macfarland make it more inviting to
novice readers in political theory. Each section
includes a new bibliography with additional
primary and secondary sources, and new introductions highlight salient themes and questions
articulated by the thinkers of that religious
tradition.
—Joseph C. Macfarland (A87)
�bibliofile
Photography and Archaeology
By Fred Bohrer (A78)
Reaktion Books (Exposers), 2011
Fred Bohrer’s (A78) Photography and
Archaeology, the first book-length study of
its topic, is the result of nearly a decade of
research on some of history’s most famous
and lesser-known archaeological excavations.
Accompanied by a stunning array of images,
many of which are published for the first time,
Bohrer examines photographic representation
of excavation sites from the Mediterranean,
Edmond Halley’s Reconstruction
of the Lost Book of Apollinius’s
Conics
By Michael N. Fried (A82)
Springer (Sources on the History of Science)
2011
Apollonius’s Conics was one of the greatest
works of advanced mathematics in antiquity.
The work comprised eight books, of which
four have come down to us in their original
Greek and three in Arabic. By the time the
Arabic translations appeared, the eight books
had already been lost. In 1710 Edmond Halley,
Intimate Microscopy
By Jorge H. Aigla
Farolito Press, 2010
In his review of Intimate Microscopy, a book of
poems in English and Spanish by Santa Fe tutor
Jorge Aigla, Charles Fasanaro, tutor emeritus,
Santa Fe, writes, “I had the telling experience
of saying, ‘Yes. That’s right. That’s it.’ It was an
experience such as one has reading Montaigne,
something akin to friendship on a very deep
level. Aigla’s ensouled words take me to places
I had forgotten about, or—ignoring the truth
of our shared humanity—to places I thought
only my memories inhabited.” In Aigla’s
Middle East, Asia, Europe, and the Americas;
he explores how the development of photography has affected the way that people engage
with the past. Spanning the histories of both
fields from the early nineteenth century to the
present, Photography and Archaeology surveys
the thought of archaeologists, historians,
photographers, artists, critics, and theorists, in
describing how its images are situated between
two opposite, and possibly contradictory, inclinations. Bohrer will give a presentation and
book signing at George Washington University
in Washington, D.C., on September 12.
then Savilian Professor of Geometry at Oxford,
published an edition of the Greek text of the
Conics of Books I-IV, and a reconstruction
together with copious notes on the text. It also
contains an introduction discussing aspects of
Apollonius’s Conics and how Halley understood
the nature of his venture into ancient mathematics. In particular, it asks how Halley understood
his project of reconstructing a historic mathematical text: in what sense, in other words, was
Halley a historian of mathematics? The book
also includes appendices giving a brief account
of Apollonius’s approach to conic sections and
his mathematical techniques.
poetry, Fasanaro discovers that “Aigla grapples
with life and especially death, understanding
that there are many deaths—which, handled
intelligently, are gateways to a richer life and
a brighter light. In reaching the very ground
of human experience, Aigla shows us who we
are and what being human ultimately means.”
Aigla’s medical studies at the University of
California lend insight to his observations as
a poet; Fasanaro culls relevant poems, such as
“The Need for Trees,” “Dog Surgery,” and “An
Oasis,” to share with the readers of his review.
To read Charles Fasanaro’s elegant review of
Intimate Microscopy, visit: www.stjohnscollege.
edu/news/main.html.
The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 |
41
�DOUG PLUMMER
“The books have a kind of
restraint. We have to give to
them before they give to us.
We might have to work hard
to get to their riches, but
they are capable of enormous
generosity.”— Pamela Kraus, Annapolis Dean
42 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012
�alumni notes
1952
1949
Allan P. Hoffman (A) writes, “Yes,
I still ski—even at age 83. I avoid
the bumps. I teach my youngest
grandchildren, the twins, how to
ski. I am still active on the Board
of Visitors and Governors—honorary member—and on the Alumni
Board—emeritus. I look forward to
seeing many old friends and classmates at Homecoming this fall, the
celebration of the 75th anniversary
of the founding of the New Program
by Scott & Winkie. We knew them
both. We know what it was like
when they were there. I think we
owe it to them to help the college
recollect.”
1958
On the heels of the publication of
her collection of essays on contemporary Chinese art, Mary Bittner
Goldstein (A) was invited by the
People’s Republic of China to be a
guest speaker at the 30th Anniversary of the founding of the National
Institute of Chinese Painting held
in Beijing, China, at the end of
October 2011.
1959
Marshall Lasky (A) and Mary
left at the end of September for a
three-week trip to Nepal, Bhutan,
Thailand, and Cambodia. Before
leaving, he wrote, “We couldn’t
resist the opportunity to see Bhutan
before it gets spoiled by tourism,
and Mary has long wanted to see
the entire Angkor temple complex,
which includes a fast area in addition
to Angkor Wat. While most people
go to Nepal to go up, up, up into
the Himalayas and maybe trek into
Everest Base Camp—have any of you
done that?—instead, (other than a
few days in Kathmandu) we will be
heading down nearly to sea level
near the India border to a remote
location called Tiger Tops, in the
subtropical jungle of Royal Chitwan
National Park, an area of grasslands
and forests and wetlands. Staying in
a tented safari camp and excursioning by elephant back, river boat,
Land Rover, and jungle walks, we’ll
be hoping to spot hundreds of bird
species, sloth bear, and freshwater
dolphin, as well as the Greater OneHorned Rhinoceros, leopards, and
Bengal tigers (oh, my).”
Barbara Tower (A) has eight charming grandchildren, the eldest 19
and at St. Mary’s College. Barbara
has been doing a bit of traveling,
is enrolled in Executive Seminars
at the college, is studying the New
Testament, and went to Jerusalem
in February. She is still enjoying her
interesting Annapolis real estate
career, “teaming” with her daughter
Alex and her husband Fred.
Study Abroad Program
Celebrated
Walter Schatzberg’s study abroad program was celebrated at the
Embassy of Luxembourg. The event commemorated the ClarkLuxembourg study abroad program that was started by Walter
Schatzberg (Class of 1952) nearly 25 years ago. Clark University
President David Angel spoke, recognizing Walter and Professors
SunHee and Uwe Gertz, who took ownership of the program as
Walter approached retirement. His Excellency, the Honorable JeanPaul Senninger, Ambassador of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg to
the United States, and his wife, Elizabeth, were hosts at the historic
embassy near Dupont Circle in Washington, D.C. The embassy
provided drinks and hors d’oeuvres for Clark graduates from 2011
and many decades before. The Clark University motto, “Fiat Lux,”
was amended for the event to
“Fiat Luxembourg.”
Uwe Gertz, Sarah Zapolsky,
and Walter Schatzberg (Class
of 1952) at the Embassy of
Luxembourg.
2012) in the Providence Journal,
“France Must Heed the Cry of SOS
Paris!” Next stop: Urging UNESCO
to delist Paris as a World Heritage
site if this vandalism goes forward.
1960
1962
Mary Campbell Gallagher’s (A)
new study guide for the bar exam
has garnered exceptional professional reviews and high praise on
Amazon. Called Perform Your Best
on the Bar Exam Performance Test
(MPT): Train to Finish the MPT
in 90 Minutes “Like a Sport™,” it
will be recognized by Johnnies as
lessons in grammar, rhetoric, and
logic. Meanwhile, her campaign
against plans to blight the horizon
of Paris with skyscrapers is gaining
traction. The organization to which
she belongs, SOS Paris, and the
international NGO called the Council for European Urbanism have
worked together. The CEU has produced a white paper and now they
are getting publicity, starting with
David Brussat’s column (March 29,
After serving as the CEO at
Hampton National Historic Site
in Towson, Maryland; Stan Hywet
Hall and Gardens in Akron, Ohio;
and Edsel and Eleanor Ford House
in Grosse Pointe Shores, Michigan;
John Miller (A) retired and expects
to move to Maryland when he sells
his house in Grosse Pointe. He
has been President of the Library
of American Landscape History
and wrote the “Afterword” to The
Gardens of Ellen Biddle Shipman
by Judith B. Tankard. Currently he
is exploring the idea that women
have played a leadership role in the
U.S. preservation movement since
Ann Pamela Cunningham saved Mt.
Vernon in the nineteenth century.
St. Clair Wright did the same for
Annapolis in his time at St. John’s.
1963
Marcia E. Herman-Giddens (A)
writes “I am still trying to retire and
getting close. For a change from
scientific writing, I tried my hand
at describing my love affair with my
herbs and an easy way to make teas
with common garden plants, both
domestic and wild (obviously, must
be edible!). The result is a small publishing company, Seed Pod Press,
and my book, Sipping My Garden
(www.seedpodpress.com and www.
facebook.com/SippingMyGarden).
It has been work, fun, and a lot of
learning. Now I am looking forward
to starting on the second book!”
1964
Cecily Sharp-Whitehill (A) writes,
“contrary to most people’s images of
Florida, life here is not equated with
retirement! My companion [Dr.]
Jürgen Ladendorf and I teach (by
the Harvard case-based interactive
discussion method) and consult with
a number of clients in Australia,
Europe, and Asia Pacific. It is a joy
The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 |
43
�alumni notes
1972
From Words to Wood
not only to travel to work with
clients, but to learn in the process!”
1966
After a 10-year collaboration, Joseph
Anderson and Judy Millspaugh
Anderson, M.D. (A), announce
the birth of . . . a book! Kissing the
Underbelly, a novel published by
Xlibris Press, is available via www.
kissingtheunderbelly.com. The two
do not pretend that it is great literature or a scholarly work, but they
had great fun writing it and hope
that others will enjoy reading it.
1968
Rick Wicks (SF) had radiation and
chemo treatments for HPV-induced
tongue-base cancer in the fall of
2010 and is now cancer-free. He and
the family took a wonderful
“resurrection” trip to Israel for
a week around New Year 2012.
In mid-April, he headed to an
“alumni” retreat at Tassajara, a Zen
Buddhist monastery in California,
where he lived for a year in the
mid-’70s. On May 30, 2012, Rick is
scheduled to defend his PhD thesis
concerning the place of conventional economics in a world with
communities and social goods
(i.e., in the real world!). His daughter Linnéa (21) is working hard and
doing well in her second year of
medical school, and he and his son
Hendrik (17) are planning to spend
the summer in Alaska again, like
last year. He and Ellinor did lots of
day-hikes on a wilderness trail near
Anchorage last spring and fall—soon
it will be warm enough to start them
again. During the winter, they’ve
been watching lots of movies on TV.
below: Les Margulis (A70) pictured standing in front of the largest Buddhist
Temple in the southern hemisphere.
Juan Hovey (SF) spent 15 years in daily journalism, including
stints as city editor of the Santa Fe New Mexican and assistant
city editor of the Oakland Tribune. After that, he spent 10 years
in the insurance industry, gaining an understanding of how
insurers identify, manage, and price risks of all kinds. By happy
coincidence, Hovey then found work as an editor for a Marin
County publisher of high-value newsletters focusing on the
insurance industry. He became that rare bird: the journalist
who actually understands his subject matter—which put him in
position some years later to write a weekly column on finance
and insurance for the business page of the Los Angeles Times.
Those were amazing years: he had a voice in a big-time paper,
and he felt he was doing some good in the world. More recently,
Hovey developed another specialty as a ghostwriter for a number
of partner-level attorneys, accountants, and other professionals
in Los Angeles. He and his wife of 33 years, Elise Cassel, have
two daughters plus Maya, his first child. They are “more or less
retired” and live in Santa Maria, California. Hovey has taken up
woodworking in earnest, building furniture including tables and
chairs, beds, cabinets, and other items. The work is an entirely
new undertaking for him; he spent his life figuring out how to
put language to good, practical use, and now is happiest when
knee-deep in sawdust striving to make something beautiful with
his hands.
1970
Les Margulis (A) writes, “I am
still working, although I must say
I am the oldest man in advertising
anywhere in Australia. I am what’s
called a ‘pitch consultant.’ If clients
want to change advertising agencies, they hire the company that I
work for (www.trinityp3.com) and
we organize the whole thing. In my
spare time, my wife and I explore
the interesting, lesser-known areas
in Australia and nearby countries.”
Connie Shaw (A) is living in Boulder, Colorado, near her 26-year-old
son, Forrest, and is publishing
books at the company she started
11 years ago, Sentient Publications
(www.sentientpublications.com).
She publishes mostly nonfiction,
with an emphasis on transformative
spirituality, alternative education,
and holistic health.
44 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012
Anthony Vitto (A) has sold his
solo private neurology practice in
Morgan Hill, California, and has
recently relocated to the Berkshires
in Western Massachusetts, where
he is now doing teleneurology out
of his house. He is on call at more
than 20 hospitals across the United
States, and carries out video-tovideo HD teleconsultations to
emergency rooms where he is asked
to “see” neurology patients on an
emergent basis. He writes, “This
is very exciting and rewarding and
allows patients to be examined and
treated by a neurologist when and
where none would normally be
available. It is especially cool to be
on the cutting edge of consultative
medical technology while living in a
house built in 1782, one year before
the signing of the Treaty of Paris,
which formally ended the American
Revolutionary War.”
�alumni notes
Barbara Rogan (SF) would like to
let the St. John’s community know
that her latest novel, the mystery
Can You Hear Me Now?, has been
acquired by Viking Penguin for
publication in the spring of 2013.
“In addition,” she says, “five of my
earlier novels will be released by
Simon & Schuster in new editions,
including ebook editions, over the
coming year. Although they are not
great books, they are, I think,
rather good books, and I’m very
happy that they’re getting a new
life. And to think I owe it all to the
St. John’s tutor who, after reading
one of my essays, suggested I
consider fiction instead.”
1973
“What happens to blues fans when
they die? They go to the Reincarnation Blues Club, a way station
where they can listen to great blues
and have interesting conversations
on their way to their next life,”
writes Richard Cohen (SF73), who
published his second novel, The
Reincarnation Blues Club, in 2011.
You can reach him at cohen03@
bellsouth.net.
Jane Spear (A) writes, “In January
I had a nice but sad ride up to
Michigan from my Ohio home to
attend the memorial of my ‘cosmic
twin,’ dear friend, and classmate,
Jon Ferrier, who died of a heart
attack in his sleep on January 6,
2012. He leaves behind his fabulous
wife, Kayne, and their daughter,
Valerie, an attorney with the transit
authority in New York City. His
death came just a week after the
news that we had lost Jeff Sinks on
Christmas Eve—and so soon, too,
after the sad loss of Philo Dibble.
I took the opportunity of being in
Michigan to visit Bill (now ‘Harry’)
PAUL KNIESL
1972
1977
Back on His Bike
Paul Kniesl (A) writes, “Last year about this time, I sent you an e-mail saying I was riding my
motorcycle to Alaska. I had to drive my car instead because my back went out. This year, barring
an act of God, I’m riding the motorcycle.”
Shown above: Rocky Mountain Forest Reserve, west of Calgary, Alberta. E-mail him, if you wish,
at 233@excite.com.
Kelley (A75), who lives in Mt. Pleasant. So wonderful to continue my
long acquaintance with him, each
of us popping up in all sorts of different places throughout the years,
but managing to find each other.
Ferrier’s death was a sad reminder
that we never have as much time as
we think we do—and that we must
‘make hay’ while the sun shines.
Other than an abysmally mild
winter here in northeastern Ohio,
and missing my dear friends, life is
good. I continue to write a daily history column for my local newspaper
and other freelancing, and fill in at
my neighborhood middle-school
cafeteria to keep things real. My
fondest greetings to all classmates
and Johnnie friends out there with
whom I don’t already correspond
through the J List, Facebook, emails, and frequent phone calls.”
1975
1974
Paula Cohen (now Behnken, SFGI)
sends greetings from Western
Massachusetts, where she still
writes for the local newspaper and
several other publications. Contact
her at phcohen@nasw.org.
John H. Rees, MD (A) gave the
Dean’s Lecture at St. John’s College
in Santa Fe on September 9, 2011.
Rees comments: “This lecture,
‘Normal and Abnormal Neuronal
Migration; or, Why Your Brain Is
Wrinkled,’ represents a convergence of ideas and thoughts that
I began to consider as a Johnnie
and continued to study and ponder
after becoming a physician and a
neuroradiologist.”
From Vancouver, Washington,
Dr. Dale Mortimer (A), chairman of
the Clark County Medical Society
Committee for Profit and Joy in
Private Practice, reports that last
year was his most profitable in the
past 22 years. His son, Grant, is
planning to apply to St. John’s in
Annapolis for 2013 or 2014.
Anne Ray (SF) is teaching in
Islamabad, Pakistan, which, she
says, is an interesting place these
days. She will be in Santa Fe for part
of the summer.
“Newsies the Musical,” based on
the film written by Bob Tzudiker
(A) and Noni White, opened at the
Nederlander Theatre on Broadway
on March 29, 2012. The show was
The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 |
45
�alumni notes
The Search for the Perfect Board
By Chelsea Batten (A07)
Geremy Coy (a06) was a perpetual sleeper hit
during his time at St. John’s, always pulling a
new skill out of his pocket. He swept the 2006
production of As You Like It with his emo
portrayal of Jaques. He took the class prize
with an essay on Middlemarch that, according
to rumor, he crumpled up and rewrote two
days before it was due. He could also dance,
when he wanted, and played guitar with the
epochal band Tandoori Jones.
So I was fairly underwhelmed to learn that he now builds furniture—even traveling across state lines in search of the perfect
board. My blasé stance changed when I saw his work. His pieces,
each as balanced and light-bodied as a ballerina, hold a strange
gravity. One can feel the air circulate around them, see the shapes,
as if they were backlit by morning fog. It’s as if he’s coaching the
wood into expressing itself. Which, it seems, he is.
“I’m interested with going inside of a thing, creating something
that reflects an inner life.” Coy’s values have this intuitive ring that
contrasts with the Aristotelian approach I remember from school.
In fact, it was this contrast that attracted him to woodworking.
“Coming out of St. John’s, your head is sort of spinning [from]
46 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012
receiving so much. I needed to
decompress—like an astronaut coming
back to earth,” he says. On Ms. Locke’s
recommendation, he attended a two-year
course at Provence’s Marchutz School
of Art. “In the same way that St. John’s
opened me up to philosophical ideas,
this program opened my eyes to aesthetic
experiences.” Yet several months into it,
he realized, “I didn’t feel like a painter.”
(Coy describes, only half-facetiously,
what being a painter means to him—“I
think of someone who wears all black and
is angsty, sphinx-like, and does things
that are really opaque and obscure”—and
I flash back to my junior/his senior year,
when he played the melancholy Jaques.
He’s describing almost exactly the way he
looked in that role—all he left out is the
Rubik’s cube he carried around onstage.)
Searching for other crafts he could
adopt, he was drawn toward wood as
something immediately accessible.
He found “weird old books” about
woodworking. And an experience from his AmeriCorps days
proved to be an augury.
“One of the volunteers mentioned, ‘You know, people who make
fine furniture, instead of marking with a pencil, they mark with a
razor.’ And I thought that was the coolest thing.” By this time, the
economy had slumped. The job closest to his goal was in carpentry,
which he says “did not help me much toward furniture making.
I had to work toward that in the evenings. I got a small portable
workbench, set up in the kitchen of our one-bedroom apartment,
and started planing away.” Upon moving to Washington, D.C., in
2010, Coy obtained an apprenticeship with William B. Schreitz
(A67), who encouraged him: “You certainly have the skill, the
patience, and the attention to detail to do this for a living.”
Coy knows the pedigree of every tool he uses, including
100-year-old handsaws, and a series of specialized planes whose designs, he tells me, “even go back to Roman times, which is sort of
terrifying.” And the outcome of an entire piece can be determined
by the kind of knife he uses to mark his measurements.
“Then I use chisels and a mallet to make mortises, then different
sizes of handsaws to cut tenons or dovetails,” he explains. Among
Coy’s favorite woods is Alaskan yellow cedar. “It has a beautiful smell. Like if you had a mountain chalet somewhere and you
stepped outside on a wintry day.” He also likes cherry wood for its
“mild figure,” the brush strokes in the grain.
“If you can imagine figure running straight up and down on
two boards, and you set those two next to each other, when they’re
�“Work done by hand is incredibly
meaningful, and leads to truth.”
Geremy Coy (A06)
parallel they’ll appear calm and peaceful; where they intersect,
it might be more dramatic,” he says. “Much of bringing out the
life of a thing is in knowing how to arrange that figure in a way
that doesn’t conflict with the life, but enhances it.”
It’s always a dilemma whether he should start from a concept
and find the wood to match, or construct around the potential of
a given board. “Where you have an idea and try to find material to fit, it’s almost like giving the universe a dare,” says Coy.
“Somewhere in America, 150 years ago, a little tree had to start
growing in just the right way to produce just the right grain. And
that tree had to be selected and cut down, and then sawn in just
the right way to create just the right figure. And then you have
to show up at the right lumberyard at the right time to find this
perfect board. The demand you put on nature is pretty great.”
That demand was answered in what Coy considers his crowning
achievement. Inspired by a Shaker sewing stand and a Japanese
teapot, he conceived of a cabinet devoted to the traditional tea
ceremony. He envisioned “something that was very calm and
quiet, but would nevertheless powerfully occupy the space.”
For the top, he wanted a single piece of wood that would make
“a dramatic sweep, like a breath.” But he also wanted a significant surface flaw. “I didn’t want to put a pristine piece on top of a
cabinet that was supposed to be built in the spirit of tea, which has
something of . . . .” He pauses. “I don’t know how to say this. Has
something of death in it. Something of the wholeness of being.”
In this moment, philosophy’s hand is evident in Coy’s work.
“Heidegger talks about [how] the flow of energy through a
system affects what is revealed. Craft is one way of questioning:
‘What kind of work am I capable of? And how vividly can I bring
into creation an idea that I have?’ It’s interesting to see what
happens when you’ve worked in nothing but thought, and try
to impose order on the world. You start to respect the way that
things grow.”
After searching across three states, Coy found the perfect
board in Pennsylvania. “It was the crotch of a cherry tree; where
the two branches come together, the grain interacts in a really
ripply figure. This board had a wonderful, dark, gnarly crack
right in the middle. I put it into the back of my blue Volkswagen
beetle, which I’m sure was hilarious at the lumberyard.”
But Coy is taking the opposite approach with the linden tree
that recently blew down on St. John’s front campus in Annapolis.
Whatever he makes with it will be inspired by the Program.
“It’s the perfect tree from the perfect location,” he says. “In
the ancient world, linden was a prized source of ‘liber’—this
tough, stringy inner bark. Liber was used for making paper, and
the word eventually came to mean ‘book’ in Latin. That same
‘liber’ is one of the roots that the college’s motto puns so well:
‘Facio liberos ex liberis libris libraque.’”
Geremy Coy’s work is featured at: www.geremycoy.com, and on
DcbyDesign.com and the online edition of Washingtonian Magazine.
nominated for eight Tony Awards,
and won for Best Score and Best
Choreography. Its limited run
is now open-ended. The performance on March 31 was attended
by classmates Patricia Joyce (A),
Jon Church (A), Jim Jarvis (A),
and Ann Peterson (and her children
Andrea and Tyler).
1977
From Thomasina Brown (SFGI):
“Taught for almost fifty years, then
retired and then went back to teaching elementary school. Hoping
to get back to campus sometime
soon—my sons have brought their
families by on visits recently, and
we wish you the best of luck.”
1978
Victor Lee Austin (SF) is the
author of Up with Authority: Why
We Need Authority to Flourish as
Human Beings (T & T Clark, 2010).
He comments, “I was stumped in
trying to write a normal academic
book, when I realized that what I
really wanted to do was to write an
essay, not be an expert. This book
is, it seems to me, just the sort of
thing a Johnnie would write.” He
and his wife, Susan (née Gavahan,
SF76), are now grandparents.
Fred Bohrer (A) has a new book,
Photography and Archaeology,
the result of almost a decade of
research. It was published by Reaktion Books in November 2011. “I’m
quite excited about it,” Bohrer
comments. “It’s already listed
on Amazon. I’m thrilled at how
beautifully it has turned out.” Fred
will be doing a presentation and
book signing at George Washington
University in Washington, D.C., on
September 12.
Laura Maclay (SF) just received
certificates in Music Production
and Advanced Music Production
from the University of New
Mexico’s continuing education
division. She is also studying
African drumming and playing
accompaniment for dance classes
and performances.
Robert Perry (A) writes, “My
wonderful wife and companion for
30 years, Kathy Squillace, lost her
battle with cancer in April. She
loved our class reunions and I want
to thank all of you for making her so
welcome at St. John’s.”
Lucy Tamlyn (A) writes, “I am still
with the State Department, currently stationed at the U.S. Embassy
in Lisbon where I am Deputy Chief
of Mission. It has been a very
interesting career, and I’m pleased
to see that St. John’s continues to
be decently represented at the State
Department (relative to its size, of
course!).”
1980
Tom G. Palmer (A) is the author
of Realizing Freedom: Libertarian
Theory, History, and Practice (Cato
Institute, 2009). His recent writings include “Classical Liberalism,
Poverty, and Morality” in Poverty
and Morality: Religious and Secular
Perspectives, edited by William
A. Galston and Peter Hoffenberg
(Cambridge University Press, 2010)
and The Morality of Capitalism
(Jameson Books, 2011); he was its
editor. After receiving his BA from
St. John’s, he earned his MA from
The Catholic University of America
and his PhD from the University of
Oxford. He is a board member of
several think tanks, the advisor of
Students for Liberty, and is
involved with Mercy Corps and
Mont Pelerin Society.
1981
Elizabeth Affsprung (A), known as
“Buffy,” is currently pastor of First
Presbyterian Church, Sunbury,
Pennsylvania. Her son Joseph is
The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 |
47
�alumni notes
1983
Liberal
Arts Apps
Peter McClard (SF) has
released his 99-cent app
called ‘pixound’ for iPhone
and iPad. This app converts
color into musical information and allows one to play
pictures, which is more
fun than it may sound. He
recommends this app to any
Johnnie who loves music and
art; it shows how liberal arts
can liberate new art forms.
Find out more at www.pixound.com/ios.
Inner Hebrides off Scotland’s
Atlantic coast. His wife is a native
of the island (population 150),
which is called Gigha. She runs
a dairy farm at the north end of
the island, and Don makes flower
essences (like the Bach Flower
Remedies) with orchids that he
grows in a greenhouse (see their
website: www.healingorchids.com).
In October 2011, their son was born
there in the house. Don also has
three wonderful children by his first
marriage, now in their 20s. The
youngest is studying at Stanford,
near where he grew up.
1983
a sophomore at the College of
Charleston, son Daniel is writing
poetry and short stories, and
husband Eric is a psychologist at
Bloomsburg University. Buffy is
taking lessons in relaxation from
Petey the cat.
John Schiavo (A) received his MA
in the Management of Information
Technology in 2010 from the University of Virginia. His and Monika
Schiavo’s (A84) oldest daughter
Hellena is a senior at St. John’s in
Santa Fe, and their son, Anthony, is
starting his second year in the Engineering School at Virginia Tech.
1982
Don Dennis (SF) lives on a wee
island in the southern part of the
Jack Armstrong (SF) writes, “Our
son Michael finished college in
December [studying film at the
University of Southern California] and went straight to Central
America to make a documentary
on shamans. I can’t wait to see what
he comes up with. Daughter Emily
is in ninth grade, still obsessed
with surfing. She has followed her
brother and joined the rowing
team. I look forward to joining
St. John’s classmate Mike Henry
at the river to watch our kids race.
We [also] had a mini-reunion at
Philadelphia Shakespeare Theatre
last month. A dozen Johnnies came
for a party, and then we all watched
Twelfth Night—really fun. We’ll be
doing it again next year, so if you
are in the area, please come.”
1984
Monika Schiavo (A) has just completed her course work and submitted her thesis for a master’s degree
in the Smithsonian-Corcoran
College History of Decorative Arts
program. She has recently joined
the board of the Decorative Arts
Society, where she will be administering the website and helping with
development and program efforts.
48 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012
1986
1988
Carl Buffalo (SF) has changed his
name to better reflect his gratitude
toward his Native American
ancestors.
Shirley Banks (SF88), of Atlanta
writes: “In the fall of 2011, I began
work on a Master of Theological
Studies degree at Candler School of
Theology at Emory University.
I work at Emory as a Health
Educator and AASECT-Certified
Sexuality Counselor in the Office
of Health Promotion at Student
Health & Counseling Services.
I’ll be working on the MTS parttime on a Courtesy Scholarship (a
sweet deal for university staff) while
continuing full-time employment.
I’m planning to investigate how
Jesus and the Buddha understood
the human problem and how
their pedagogies reflected that
understanding. I am not planning
to be ordained. I lead hiking trail
maintenance trips for American
Hiking Society as a volunteer. In
June, Marty Llewallen (SF 87) and I
volunteered together for a week at
Yosemite National Park, working on
a trail maintenance crew at Hetch
Hetchy. After not seeing each other
in 25 years, we had no difficulty
picking up where we left off, and
I’m hoping Marty and his family
will come South to backpack next
spring.”
Douglas A. Gentile (A) was recently selected by The Princeton Review
as one of the top 300 professors in
the U.S. Then The Huffington Post
put him in the number-one position. “Based on what,” he writes,
“I haven’t a clue.”
Elisabeth Long (A) writes, “Since
January 2012, I have a new position
as associate University Librarian
for Digital Services (still at the
University of Chicago), which
means I am now responsible for
shaping our support programs
for our faculty’s increasing use
of digital technologies in their
research.... My St. John’s education
has been invaluable in being able
to work with such a wide variety of
research.... I can always be found in
the University of Chicago directory
and would love to hear from anyone
coming through town.”
Mally C. Strong (née Mechau, SF)
from Carbondale, Colorado, writes,
“I continue to work on my publication, Mountain Medicine Directory,
and am so glad to have this project
to sink myself into now that Homer
(Reed College 2010, mathematics)
and Jemima (SF15) are flown. I’m
pretty peaceful.... My goals are to
get better organized, go back to
Naxos with my sister, Clarissa, for a
solid month in the off-season, and
read all the Palliser novels. Good
wishes to all. This spring, life seems
very sweet as I sketch out the
garden plan and relish sleeping in
late. The really big challenges in my
life have been safely dispatched.
I have no idea what’s next.”
David Blankenbaker (SF) shares
his haiku: “Outside our back door /
A solitary cricket / Calls to the new
moon.”
1989
From William Hickman (SF) and
Stacey Phillips (SF): “Hello to
all our classmates. We have lived
in Portland for 18 years. We have a
daughter, Mirabel (age 12), and we
would love to hear what the rest of
you are doing.”
�alumni notes
Mark Shiffman (A) recently published a translation of De Anima
with Focus Press, and was awarded
tenure at Villanova University,
where he is Associate Professor in
the Humanities Department and
also teaches courses for Classics
and Political Science. He lives in
Philadelphia with his wife Cristina
and sons Bruno (13) and Elio (7),
and occasionally runs into Eliot Duhan at the pool in the summertime.
1992
Alec Berlin (SF) writes, “I’ve
released a new record, Innocent
Explanations, and am currently
spending my time promoting it via
radio and performance. Keep your
eyes open for shows and such, especially on the East coast. Otherwise
I’m still living in Brooklyn and still
playing guitar for various theater
projects. You can find my music
on all the usual social media sites—
check it out, and thanks!”
1994
William Kowalski (SF) wants to
share the news that his first novel,
Eddie’s Bastard, published in 1999,
was referred to as an “overlooked
American classic” in an October
2011 article in The Guardian.
1995
On September 23, 2011,—the Fall
Equinox—Kira Zielinski (SF) and
Nathan Blaesing were wed in a
private ceremony in a stone circle
in Clarkdale, Arizona. Jennifer
Swaim (A) served as Zielinski’s
Rhinemaiden of honor and fellow
Valkyrie. Nathan and Kira plan to
move to Cremona, Italy, in 2012,
where they look forward to luthier
school, period music ensembles,
and many guests.
Edward Scott Michael (AGI) and
his wife, Anya Sammler, a 1998
Sewanee alum, are both Unitarian
Universalist ministers.
It has been a productive few years
for Kersti Tyson (SF). She earned
her PhD in Learning Science from
the University of Washington in
June 2011. She and her partner,
Matthew Sexton, brought their son,
Mateo Pond Sexton, into “this wild
and wonderful world” in October
2011. In 2010, “the stars aligned”
and she returned to her homeland, New Mexico. As an assistant
professor in the department of
Teacher Education at the University
of New Mexico, she’s putting her
education to work. She learns about
learning so she can teach teachers
(elementary mathematics) and does
research on listening and learning. She urges classmates to stay
in touch (kersti@unm.edu), especially if they are in New Mexico.
Kira Zielinski (SF95) and Nathan
Blaesing
1996
John T. Andrews (AGI) has taken a
discussion to a local retirement community in Marin County, California,
using texts from the Touchstones
Discussion Project. Although the
goal is primarily to engage group
members in conversation and
discussion about the text, the Touchstones technique of the small group
helps them to get started and focus,
and aids large-group discussion.
The group’s size ranges from 12 to
20 participants on any given day;
their average age is over 85 and they
are sharp, witty, and engaged. After
five years, John is “moving on” to
pursue other volunteer opportunities. If any Johnnies in the Bay Area,
especially Marin County, would be
interested in continuing with this
challenging and rewarding group
starting in the fall of 2011, please
contact John at stbch@att.net.
1997
Peter Eichstaedt (SFGI) is the
author of four books: If You Poison
Us: Uranium and Native Americans
(Red Crane, 1994); First Kill Your
Family: Child Soldiers of Uganda
and the Lord’s Resistance Army
(Lawrence Hill Books, 2009); Pirate
State: Inside Somalia’s Terrorism at
Sea (Lawrence Hill Books, 2010);
and Consuming the Congo: War
and Conflict Minerals in the World’s
Deadliest Place (Lawrence Hill
Books, 2011). Note the reviews of
Pirate State and First Kill Your Family
in the Fall 2011 issue of The College.
Melanie Kirby (SF) and partner
Mark Spitzig are excited to have expanded their hive. They welcomed
Esai Mateo Aristaeus, who came
as a belated birthday present for
mama Melanie in late September.
Esai has a big sister, Isis Rose Blossom, who is now 3½. This year also
marks Melanie’s 15th anniversary
as a professional apiculturist. She
has been specializing in queen honeybee breeding. High altitude bees
and babies keep buzzing! Email
ziaqueenbees@hotmail.com.
1998
1999
Sarah Fridrich (SF) released her
first full-length album of piano/
drum-based indie-rock, You Call
That Brave, on June 4, 2011. Full
recordings can be heard here:
http://msfridrich.bandcamp.com.
Any alum who wants a complimentary hard copy can email her
directly at sarah@msfridrich.com,
or purchase it from the website.
Sarah makes a living as a private
piano teacher—for more than 10
years now!—in the Washington,
D.C. area. She credits her
St. John’s education with making
her a sought-after, versatile teacher.
Mike and Abby Soejoto (both A)
were happy to welcome their fifth
child, Beatrice Marie, on February
25. Mike, Abby, Lucy (8), John (6),
Cecilia (4), James (2), Beatrice, and
McDuff the dog are still living in
Los Angeles, taking advantage of
the beach, the pool, and year-round
soccer. Mike is an attorney, Abby
homeschools the older kids, and
the kids cheerfully spend all their
free time memorizing passages
from great books.
Mike and Abby Soejoto (both A99)
and family
Juliana Laumakis (née Martonffy,
A), and her husband, John, are very
excited to announce the birth of their
daughter, Thea Lucia Laumakis, in
December 2011. Her big sisters are
pretty smitten with her, too!
The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 |
49
�alumni notes
2000
Mark Shiflett, (SF) left the Active
Duty Navy as a Chief Petty Officer
last month, and has transitioned to
the U.S. Naval Reserve. “I will be
staying here in Yokosuka, Japan,
having taken on a federal civil
service job at the U.S. Navy’s Japan
Regional Maintenance Center. It
was hard to leave active duty—saltwater streams in my veins—but a
more ‘regular’ job (and one that
doesn’t require being away on
deployment for five to seven
months at a time) works better for
me, my wife, Yasuyo, son Ben (5),
and daughter Mia (6 months).”
2001
After graduating from medical school
in 2010, Adriana de Julio (SF) spent
part of 2011 in Las Vegas, Nevada, as
a surgical intern. She decided against
surgery residency and went for
psychiatry. In March 2012, she was
matched to a medical residency at
the University of Illinois in Advocate
Lutheran General Hospital. She
will begin her training in psychiatry
in June 2012 in the Windy City.
Her main interests will be working
with veterans with Traumatic Brain
Injury and doing community psychiatry with Assertive Community
Treatment Teams in the Northwest
Chicago area. Training takes a
minimum of four years, but she will
be there no less than five years to
complete a psych-neuro fellowship.
Dan Weiland (A) is the manager of
a pair of Bikram’s Hot Yoga Studios
in Portland, Oregon. Visit anytime!
2002
Charles Green (AGI) writes,
“I recently added Publishers Weekly
to the list of publications for which
I review books. I’m also very
excited about buying my condo in
Annapolis. Life is wonderful!”
Maria (Goena) Leigh (SF) performs in The Odyssey on Angel
Island State Park in California. This
site-specific, interactive performance unfolds over the course of
five hours. Once on the island,
audience members receive a map,
timecard, and survival “kit bag” to
support them as they navigate the
carefully crafted scenes, interactive
installations, meals, and diverse
pathways through the space. She
urges Johnnies anywhere near the
Bay Area to come experience The
Odyssey as you’ve never seen it
before. Visit www.weplayers.org for
additional information.
After earning a degree in Classics from New York University
and a masters in philosophy, John
Rogove (A) has been living in Paris
for the last six years, finishing his
doctorate in philosophy on the a
priori in Husserl’s phenomenology
at the Université Paris-Sorbonne,
where he teaches philosophy. He
also taught at Boston College.
Lauren Shofer (A) and Baldwyn
Bourgois share their birth announcement: Emile Bourgois, born
on August 29, 2011, joins his sister,
Amelie, and brother, Julian. They
live in Aalst, Belgium.
Michael and Rachel (née Roccia)
Sullivan (both A) will be moving
to Honolulu, Hawaii, in September 2012. Rachel will be pursuing
a two-year child and adolescent
psychiatry fellowship after finishing her adult psychiatry residency
training at Walter Reed Military
Medical Center. Michael will be
teaching and reading philosophy on
the beach, under palm trees, and
by waterfalls. Their two daughters,
Clare (7) and Grace (5), are doing
well and looking forward to seeing
erupting volcanoes.
50 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012
Christopher J. Warnagiris (A) is
deployed to the Mediterranean Sea
and Middle East aboard the USS
Iwo Jima in support of the 24th
Marine Expeditionary Unit.
2003
Alana Chernila (SF) has a new book
titled The Homemade Pantry: 101
Foods You Can Stop Buying and
Start Making. It’s available on
Amazon.com.
On March 9, 2012, Lawrence
(Ler) Nelson (SFGI) successfully
defended his doctoral dissertation
on “Chan Sickness and the Master’s
Role in Its Diagnosis, Treatment,
and Prevention” at the California
Institute of Integral Studies in San
Francisco.
Kate Redding (A) recently
completed her MA in Music with
an Emphasis in Piano Technology
from Florida State University. She
writes, “I look forward to resuming
my career as a professional piano
tuner and rebuilder with the
information and skills that I
learned in graduate school!”
Cassie Sherman (A) and Martin
Marks (A04) are surprised, grateful, and most of all ridiculously
happy to announce that, after more
than ten years of friendship, they
seem to have fallen in love and gotten engaged. The wedding will take
place in the spring of 2013. Given
their mutual love of Spoonerisms,
the joined and hyphenated last
name that will result should provide
amusement for decades to come.
2004
Kristi Durbin (A) returned to school
full-time this fall, studying Sustainable Agriculture at the University
of Kentucky. She dreams of owning
land in the Bluegrass region and
running a Community Supported
Agriculture program in the future.
Rhonda Ortiz (née Franklin, A)
writes that her “husband Jared
(AGI05) successfully defended his
PhD dissertation on Augustine’s
theology of creation in February at
The Catholic University of America
and will graduate in May. He has
also accepted a position as Assistant
Professor of Religion at Hope
College in Holland, Michigan.
Holland is as-cute-as-a-button (our
mothers will love it), located near
the shore of Lake Michigan. We’ve
already purchased snow boots. I am
working on a novel. I haven’t written much fiction and I hardly know
anything about the matter, but I’m
learning as I go. Benedict, our oneyear-old, grows like a weed; he’s one
hundred percent ‘snakes and snails
and puppy dogs’ tails.’ We look forward to seeing any Johnnie friends
passing through Michigan. Email
me at rhondaortiz@gmail.com.”
Lucia Staiano-Daniels (SF) began
her PhD program at UCLA last
year, focusing on the history of
philosophy and modern European
intellectual and cultural history.
Her first publication, “Illuminated Darkness: Hegel’s Brief and
Unexpected Elevation of Indian
Thought in ‘On the Episode of the
Mahabharata known by the name
Bhagavad-Gita,’ by Wilhelm von
Humboldt,” is forthcoming from
the Owl of Minerva, the magazine
of the Hegel Society of America.
“It’ll be out sometime after
Christmas,” she writes. “I’m
enjoying Los Angeles’s excellent
climate and wide variety of
interesting food, although the
thought of my upcoming qualifying exams terrifies me. I am also
pleased to announce my catechumenate in the Orthodox Church.
I miss having Johnnies to talk to;
you all are welcome to write me at
luciasdan@gmail.com.”
�alumni notes
Finding Intellectual Courage
by Gregory Shook and Deborah Spiegelman
Jay Youngdahl (sfgi03) melds a
lawyer’s activism with intellect
Growing up in Little
Rock, Arkansas,
during the height
of the civil rights
movement of the
1950s and 1960s,
Jay Youngdahl
(sfgi03) was keenly
attuned to the social injustices and
unrest experienced
by African Americans living in the Deep
South. Knowing that he wanted a life of
service, he found inspiration in his family of advocates for social welfare and civil
and political rights. His grandfather was
the dean of the School of Social Work at
Washington University in the 1940s—his
department was the first to admit African
American students.
In 1957, nine African American students were denied entrance to
Little Rock Central High School in defiance of the 1954 U.S.
Supreme Court ruling ordering integration of public schools.
This landmark act of the civil rights movement focused the nation’s eyes on Youngdahl’s hometown. Deeply affected by these
events in his own backyard, he became an attorney specializing
in civil rights law, union law, and discrimination law on behalf of
minorities and women.
As a young attorney, “I had an activist’s courage,” says Youngdahl, “but I also wanted an intellectual courage.” That desire led him
to St. John’s in 2001. “It was a way to try to light up those parts of
my brain that I hadn’t used in those last 25 years [practicing law].”
Youngdahl embraced the Program, which he describes as “showing
the arc and commonality of issues and concerns expressed by our
human species. [The fact that] our worries of today have been the
focus of great minds throughout human history is extraordinarily
helpful to consideration and comfort with such issues.” At the
Graduate Institute in Santa Fe, he was excited to explore new
authors and approached familiar works with a fresh perspective—
and “learned to read Shakespeare like never before.”
In 2005, Youngdahl found himself at a crossroads. Believing he
had accomplished all that he could in his chosen field, he was ready
to make way for a new influx of young lawyers, eager to “carry the
torch to do the right thing” for civil and workers’ rights. Although
he continues to practice law today, he was ready to challenge himself in new ways.
An eternal activist who believes in the power of ideas to foster
change, Youngdahl began exploring ways to elevate discourse on
important issues. Having practiced law throughout the South and
Southwest, he had worked on cases regarding claims by injured
Navajo rail workers, who for more than 100 years took on the
arduous work of laying and anchoring tracks. Seeking “to understand the culture, the people, and to try to improve their lives and
situations,” Youngdahl had done archival research and oral history
on the Navajo Reservation.
In his new book, Working on the Railroad, Walking in Beauty:
Navajos, Hózhq, and Track Work, Youngdahl presents a cultural
´
history of how Navajo track workers have modified their traditions,
particularly religious practices, to protect themselves against the
perils of their livelihood. His experience at St. John’s is evident in
his multi-disciplinary approach: the book touches on philosophy,
religion, literature, economics, human rights, and conversation.
Today Youngdahl raises awareness of important social and
political issues through journalism. As the majority owner of the
Oakland, California-based newspaper East Bay Express, he is committed to “producing hard-hitting journalism and fighting to keep
quality journalism alive.” He also contributes a biweekly
column, “Raising the Bar,” in which he addresses ethical and
moral perspectives on current issues and events. In addition,
Youngdahl is an in-demand speaker, traveling to colleges and
universities around the country to talk about matters close to his
heart. At Harvard Divinity School, where he graduated with a
master’s degree in 2007, he recently gave a talk about the
juxtaposition of compassion for others as the basis of moral action
and an ethical life.
Youngdahl continues to examine the world around him and
generate dialogue to find ways to make it a better place.
Concerned with how “the speed of human life today makes
important considerations seem to just zip by the window of our
moving societal train, leaving us without the ability to fruitfully
examine and evaluate them,” he makes a point to carve out time
for personal reflection. As Youngdahl writes in his book, for the
Navajos, to “walk in beauty” requires harmony and order in the
universe. It also takes courage.
The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 |
51
�alumni notes
2005
Samantha Buker (A) writes this
note fresh from filing her most
recent opera review for the City Paper. This year, she also began freelancing for The Washington Post. In
even bigger news, she’s published
her first book: Little Book of the
Shrinking Dollar. She hopes every
single dollar-earner in America will
pick up a copy of this shocking, yet
handy book of currency problems
and solutions that she co-authored
with Addison Wiggin (SFGI96).
She soldiers on as managing editor
at Agora Financial, which sends her
to far-flung corners of the globe. After a stint on a 2,700-acre beachside
ranch in Nicaragua, she had a brief
rest before heading off to Mongolia,
ever on the quest for a new investment opportunity. Feel free to
reach her at sam.buker@gmail.com
(or please leave a nice book review
on Amazon). Best adventures to all!
Note Buker’s article “Tracing the
Phenomenon of the Perfect
Concert” in The College Fall 2011.
Jon Cotner (SFGI) writes, “I’m
co-author of Ten Walks/Two Talks,
which was selected as a Best Book
of 2010 by The Week, The Millions,
Time Out Chicago, and Bookslut.
My new collaboration is called
Conversations over Stolen Food.
I live in Brooklyn, NewYork, where
I teach in Pratt Institute’s Creative
Writing Program.”
2006
Norman Allen’s (AGI) play, On
the Eve of Friday Morning, was
produced by the Oregon Children’s
Theatre in 2011. His other play,
The House Halfway, will be part
of the Source Theatre Festival in
Washington, D.C., this summer.
This May, he’ll be the guest of the
Mladinsko Theatre in Ljubljana,
Slovenia, where he will lead a twoday playwriting workshop and also
will see his play, Nijinsky’s Last
Dance, performed.
Shilo Brooks (A) and Siobhan
Aitchison (A05) were engaged in
January and plan to marry this summer. Shilo expects to complete his
PhD in political theory at Boston College this winter, and Siobhan expects
to complete her Masters in landscape
architecture at Harvard next spring.
Jonathan Freeman-Coppadge (A)
and his husband, Darren, recently
bought their first home in Odenton,
ten miles north of Annapolis. Jonathan continues to teach English and
French at Indian Creek School, and
will finish his MA in English at Bread
Loaf School of English next summer.
Daniel Grimm (SF) has been accepted to Rutgers University School
of Law for the fall term. Enrolled in
the night program, he will continue
working part-time at Hartman &
Winnicki, P.C., a law firm in New
Jersey. Daniel and his wife just had a
baby girl, Parker Bay, last October.
Their restaurant, Fishbar, now in its
fourth season, continues to do well.
The two are hoping their daughter
can start seating tables soon!
Erin Ingham (A) and Mark Ingham
(SF05) joyfully welcomed the
arrival of their first child, Gabriel
Joseph Ingham, at 6:06 a.m. on
March 29. Born at 8.5 pounds, 20.5
inches, Gabriel is doing great!
Emily Terrell, formerly Nisch, (A)
will attend Duke Divinity School in
Durham, North Carolina, this fall.
Hollis Thoms (AGI) will have an
article, “Rolling His Jolly Tub:
Composer Elliott Carter, St. John’s
College Tutor, 1940-1942,” published in the upcoming St. John’s
Review. Thoms did research at the
St. John’s College Library Archives,
the Maryland State Archives, and
the Library of Congress on Elliott
Carter, one of the great living
52 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012
on malaria eradication.
2009
Rowenna (Thorson) (A10) and Nate
Oesch (A09)
American composers, who recently
celebrated his 103rd birthday.
2007
Chelsea Batten (A) is a writer
and itinerant journalist. She profiled
Geremy Coy (A06) for this issue of
the magazine. You can read more of
her work at www.chelseabatten.com.
Jack Langworthy (SF) writes,
“From 2009 to 2011, I served in
the Peace Corps teaching math and
physics in a village in Tanzania.
St. John’s prepared me for that experience more than I expected. I felt
right at home teaching in a physics
laboratory with no modern technology, and learned Kiswahili with
ease. Ancient Greek was way more
difficult. I started helping farmers
preserve and trade their maize when
prices spiked. After Peace Corps, I
was lucky enough to use those skills
to get a job managing a micro venture capitalist firm called Cheetah
Development here in Tanzania. Any
Johnnies are more than welcome
to a place to stay if they are passing
through Iringa, Tanzania.”
2008
John Matthew Griffis (SF) will be
attending Parsons The New School
for Design this fall to pursue his
MFA in Design and Technology.
Jessica Seiler (A) is currently
working for the Peace Corps in
Senegal, West Africa. She finished
her two years in the village and was
given a job in the big city working
Nate Oesch (A) and Rowenna
Thorson Oesch (A10) were married
in the Great Hall on July 23, 2011,
with 16 Johnnies (including seven
National Champion croquet players) and one tutor in attendance.
Following the ceremony, Luke
Russell (A), Sam Porter (A),
and Robbie Shaver (A) provided
excellent jazz music in Randall
Hall. Rowenna completed her MEd
at Loyola University in 2011 and
is now teaching in a Montessori
school in Bowie. Nate does research
for the Insurance Institute for
Highway Safety in Arlington.
2010
Candice Benge (SFGI) and colleagues have recently started a
theater co-op, Transient Theater,
in San Francisco. They’re mounting
their first production this summer
and taking it on tour across the U.S.
for six weeks. Visit their website at
www.transienttheater.com or contact Candice for more information.
Ethan Brooks (A) is a Marine
Officer at The Basic School and
recently was pleased to receive
Ground Intelligence as his occupational specialty. He looks forward
to graduating in October and
attending Infantry Officer’s Course
in January 2013.
Megan Kennedy (A) is currently
taking Russian classes in Washington, D.C., preparing for a PhD
program in Russian literature in
the fall of 2012. She is hoping to
find a full-time, entry-level job in
the metro area that would help
support her while she pursues
further education.
�in memoriam
Luke Harvey Poe Jr.
Scott A. Abbott
march 30, 2012
Tutor and assistant dean,
Annapolis
Class of 1943
august 28, 2011
The college community mourns the
loss of Luke Harvey Poe Jr. and is
deeply grateful for his service as a
tutor and assistant dean.
Born in Richmond, Virginia,
in 1916, Poe received his BS in
mathematics and a JD from the
University of Virginia. As a Rhodes
Scholar, he earned a PhD from
Oxford University, Christ Church.
After serving four years in World
War II as a Lieutenant Commander
with the North Atlantic, he joined
the faculty of St. John’s in 1946.
Poe’s rich legacy to the college
includes his support of the efforts
to open St. John’s to African
American students, especially its
first, Martin Dyer (Class of 1952).
After Poe left St. John’s in 1960,
he lectured for governmental and
academic organizations, including the Foreign Service Institute,
the International Labor Center,
the Aspen Institute, and the U.S.
Air Force War College. Dedicated
to the Annapolis community, Poe
worked to have the city declared a
Historic District and served on local boards and associations. He was
finishing his book, A Study of the
Origins of the Political Philosophy
of the American Republic, at the
time of his death.
He is survived by his wife, Josephine Jastor Poe (Class of 1957). A
memorial service was held on May
19 in the Great Hall.
Scott Alexander Abbott (1921-2011)
lived his life in service to others. As
a teacher known for his generous
heart, Abbott’s favorite subjects
were history, geography, and civics.
He taught elementary through
college students and continued tutoring until he was 83. Abbot never
stopped extolling the merits of the
seminar approach to learning. He
is survived by his daughters Jane,
Becky, and Debby Abbott, and Sue
Schneider.
Philip Camponeschi
Class of 1946
january 4, 2012
Philip Camponeschi of Rattail
Ridge, Conn., was born on May
30, 1923, in New York City. After
serving in the Military Police during World War II, he attended St.
John’s in Annapolis and married
his first wife, Mary Jean Casey. He
obtained his JD from the University
of Maryland in 1957. Camponeschi
was a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, a speechwriter
for vice president Hubert Humphrey, a leader in the Peace Corps,
and a professor of philosophy and
literature at SUNY Old Westbury
in Long Island, where he met his
second wife, Nejla. He loved spending time with his family and friends.
A memorial service was held at
Friends School in Baltimore, Maryland, on January 14, 2012. Philip
is survived by his wife, Nejla; five
children, Scott Camponeschi, Lisa
Mistovich, John Camponeschi, and
Geannnan Camponeschi-Papanicolaou; and nine grandchildren. In
lieu of flowers, his family asks that
contributions be made to UNICEF.
Classmates such as Jules Pagano
(Class of 1948) remember him as
someone who “listened with that
intelligent and respectful care
which earned him the right to be
heard with comparable respect
when he spoke.”
Peter Davies (Class of 1948) saw
him as “a wonderful role model—his
wisdom and probing intellect were
valuable examples for those of us
who had not experienced war as he
and older Johnnies had.”
Allan Hoffman (Class of 1949)
writes, “I remember Phil as being
hilariously acerbic. Phil and Jules
Pagano once saved me from being
beaten up by some “townies” who
crashed one of the cotillions.” In
retirement, “he was happy with his
garden of vegetables and herbs.”
below: Philip Camponeschi (Class of 1946) and Bill Goldsmith (Class of 1946).
Peter Weiss (Class of 1946)
notes, “I always thought of him as
a man of ‘the people,’ in the best
sense of that word, who was as
seriously concerned about the true,
the beautiful, and the difference
between prudence and wisdom as
some of us ‘intellectuals.’”
Philo L. Dibble (A76)
october 1, 2011
Ten days before his death, Philo
Louis Dibble (1951-2011), a Foreign
Service officer, completed his most
notorious assignment—helping to
free two American hikers imprisoned in Iran. The Washington Post
reports that Shane Bauer, Joshua
Fattal, and Sarah E. Shourd had
been hiking in the mountains of
Turkey when Iranian authorities
apprehended them for allegedly crossing the Iranian border.
Shourd was released; the two men
were convicted of espionage by
an Iranian court and sentenced
to eight years in a Tehran prison.
Dibble, who retired in 2006 as one
of the State Department’s leading
authorities on Iran, returned four
years later as the Department’s
deputy assistant secretary for Iran,
coordinating efforts to secure the
hikers’ release. Dibble never met
the freed hikers.
Born in Alexandria, Egypt,
where his father also served in the
Foreign Service, Dibble received
his MA in international affairs from
Johns Hopkins University in 1980,
after attending St. John’s. He died
from a heart attack at his home in
McLean, Virginia. He is survived
by his wife, Elizabeth Link Dibble;
three daughters, Kate, Sarah, and
Caroline; his mother, Cleopatra B.
Dibble; and a brother.
The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 |
53
�in memoriam
Captain Alton L. “Red”
Waldron (HA07),
september 2, 2011
Captain Alton L. “Red” Waldron,
USN RET, died at his Annapolis
home at 93. Waldron had great
affection for the college, having
participated in seminars for 50
years. In 1935, he attended the U.S.
Naval Academy; his numerous tours
of duty included Pearl Harbor and
Guadalcanal. Among his awards
were the Silver Star and the Legion
of Merit. Predeceased by his wife of
60 years, Katherine Joyce Waldron,
he is survived by his daughter,
McShane W. Glover.
Loretta Wasserman (SFGI86) and
Irving Wasserman (SFGI86)
Loretta Wasserman (1924-August 7, 2011) and Irving Wasserman
(1926-August 25, 2011) were honored at a memorial service at Homecoming 2011 in Annapolis. During a sabbatical year (1972-1973) at
St. John’s in Annapolis, and a summer (1974) at the Graduate Institute
in Santa Fe, Irving taught and Loretta took classes. Loretta received her
MA in English from the University of Minnesota and was a professor of
English at Grand Valley State University in Michigan from 1966 until
her retirement in 1991, when she published her book, Willa Cather: A
Study of the Short Fiction. Irving received his MA in philosophy from
the University of Indiana. He worked as an editor and was a professor of
philosophy at Grand Valley State University. They are survived by two
children, Adam and Jessica, and four grandchildren.
March 6, 2012
Patrick New, SFGI08,
August 29, 2011
Also Deceased:
Donna Gavora, A80,
January 5, 2012
Louise Antinori, AGI88,
April 8, 2012
George Graefe, Class of 1941,
December 14, 2011
Richard Ballen, A67,
July 17, 2011
Todd Grier, Class of 1938,
April 26, 2012
Richard Batt, Jr., Class of 1951,
February 3, 2012
Dexter Haven, Class of 1942,
March 12, 2011
Teddy Betts, Class of 1949,
September 18, 2011
Cecilia Holtman, SFGI71,
February 5, 2012
Robert Bonham, Class of 1945,
December 18, 2011
Daniella Hope, SF82,
July 31, 2008
Jonathan Brooks, Class of 1949,
October 31, 2011
Gilbert Hull, Class of 1942,
February 5, 2008
Jeffrey Cynx, A73,
December 24, 2011
Ralph Keeney, Class of 1945,
May 15, 1999
Augusta DeGrazia, A77,
October 20, 2011
David Kerr, A71,
October 10, 2011
Donald Edwards, Class of 1959,
August 15, 2011
Jane Evans, SFGI84,
April 20, 2012
Carl Linden,
April 2, 2012
Annapolis tutor from 1965 to 1970.
College memorial to be announced.
Ruth Farrell, A74,
January 17, 2012
William Lundberg, Class of 1945,
October 15, 2006
Sidney Rosenthal, Class of 1948,
March 5, 2006
Jon Ferrier, A73,
January 6, 2012
Joseph Morray, Class of 1949,
November 27, 2011
Lawrence Saporta, A90,
September 9, 2011
Charles Forbes, Class of 1940,
July 11, 2009
Arthur Myers, Class of 1938,
October 28, 2011
Dr. Donald Saunders, SFGI92,
July 2, 2011
Edna Frye, SFGI71,
Robert Neslund, SFGI80,
October 9, 2011
Henry Shryock, Class of 1932,
February 17, 2012
54 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012
Jon Park O’Donnell, AGI80,
June 13, 2011
John B. “Jack” Owens,
Class of 1937,
February 4, 2012
Marcia Peterson, A70,
March 29, 2012
Phillip A. Pollard, AGI92,
October 29, 2011
Richard Siegle, A65,
September 8, 2011
Alexander Slafkosky, Class of 1943,
July 15, 2011
Everett Smith, Class of 1937,
August 6, 2005
Richard Stevens, A69,
December 8, 2011
Gene Thornton, Class of 1945,
January 10, 2012
Roger Tilton, Class of 1945,
May 22, 2011
Lenke Vietorisz, Class of 1962,
October 27, 2011
Robert Warren, SFGI93,
December 29, 2011
Leroy Webster, Class of 1936,
May 7, 1998
Richard Woodman, Class of 1935,
June 15, 2011
Elizabeth Grant Yolton, A75,
November 10, 2011
Jonathan Zorn, SF72,
April 25, 2011
Dr. Martha Post, SF79,
September 1, 2011
Neil Potash, Class of 1962,
April 16, 2012
David Pugh, Class of 1932,
October 6, 2000
Victor Purdy, Class of 1951,
April 9, 2012
Siobhan Reynolds, SFGI94,
December 24, 2011
Barbara Rigall, A84,
January 17, 2012
Correction to a Fall 2011 obituary:
The work of Sydney Wynne
Porter—not Wayne—(Class
of 1954) at Three Mile Island
demonstrated that there was a
release of fewer than 20 curies of
iodine 131 into the environment.
In press interviews, he stated
that the U.S. was receiving many
times that amount of fallout
from Chinese nuclear tests. Porter was a professor of radiation
physics at Drexel University and
a benefactor of St. John’s. Apologies and thanks to Temple Porter
(A62) for this clarification.
�alumni news
Notes from the
chancellor johnson house
By Leo Pickens (A78)
“Why in heaven’s name would you ever want to leave your
private little duchy in the Temple, where, for all intents
and purposes, you’re paid to play with the students, to
take on the thankless and nearly impossible job of trying
to keep our perpetually restive alumni happy? Have you
taken leave of your senses?”
JEN BEHRENS
“I like that idea,” she responded. “It
seems to be a kind of excellence.”
She referred me to Book IV, Chapter 1
of the Nicomachean Ethics. The last time I
encountered this passage was my freshman
year at St. John’s 37 years ago, and it had
slipped from my memory, but upon reading, the words seemed fresh with insight:
“It is not unclear that acting well and doing
beautiful things go with giving . . . and
This from a rather plain-speaking
generous people are loved practically
colleague of mine (who happens, by the
the most of those who are recognized
way, to be an alum) upon hearing that
for virtue, since they confer benefit and
I was interested in succeeding Jo Ann
this consists in giving.”
Mattson as director of Alumni Relations
Then later in this examination Aristoin Annapolis. This co-worker’s amazed
tle states—and this to my mind is the real
puzzlement, I believe, mirrors that of
gist: “But generosity is meant in relamany in our community, so allow me to
tion to one’s means, for the generosity is
share my reasons for making the move.
not in the amount of what is given, but
First, after nearly 23 years in the same
in the active condition of the giver and
role, I feel ready for something fresh.
this depends on one’s means. So nothIt’s really that simple. I pride myself on
ing prevents someone who gives less
being, first and foremost, a fairly able
from being the more generous if one is
administrator—in the traditional sense
giving out of a smaller supply.”
of the word: a minister or servant—and
Aristotle’s “active condition” of givam eager to serve the college in a new
ing at a level appropriate to our means
capacity. And for someone like me, who
applies as well, I believe, to our most
is constantly encouraging the students
important supply of riches—our own
to step out of their comfort zone and
time and energy.
have a go at something strange and difThis leads to the question I want to
ficult, it’s high time that I practice what
ask of all my fellow alumni: how can we,
I preach.
the permanent members of the college,
In addition, I am grateful to have
stay actively engaged with each other—
been able to participate for so long in
Leo Pickens (A78), director, Alumni Relations, Annapolis
doing beautiful things—and help keep
the work of the Program (if you believe,
the wheel of the Program turning?
as some old-time jocks like me do, that
Let me conclude with this conversaathletics are an integral part of the ProThe importance of the alumni’s role in
tion with the dean, Pamela Kraus. In
gram), and now I feel led to do my part to
the college was brought home to me recent- discussing my meditation on generosity, I
try to help with the challenges of sustaining ly in a conversation I had with a longtime
asked, “Is there an element of generosity in
the Program at this critical period in the
tutor and alumnus. “The long-term health
the classroom?”
history of the college. What better prepaof the college,” he said, “depends upon our
“All good teaching,” she said, “involves
ration could I have possibly had to take
alumni.”
a kind of open giving—a willingness to share
on the work of alumni relations—in which
This has led me to reflect quite a bit on
with others freely.”
participation is the sine qua non—than such generosity—for cultivating and practicing
“Do you think,” I asked, “that the books
long seasoning in a job for which one of
generosity appears to be at the heart of a
we read are generous in some way?”
the main goals was that of getting out the
vibrant alumni program. In a conversa“The books have a kind of restraint,” she
players? Helping nurture the spirit of one
tion with tutor and alumna Katie Heines, I
said. “We have to give to them before they
community was another of my major efforts expressed my thought that generosity must
give to us. We might have to work hard to
as athletic director. I look forward to taking be some kind of a habit.
get to their riches, but they are capable of
this same effort outward into our alumni
“Maybe giving,” I said, “is something
enormous generosity.”
diaspora.
that we can practice on a regular basis.”
The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 |
55
�alumni news
s av e t h e d a t e
Homecoming 2012
Annapolis
Friday, September 28–
Sunday, September 30
Paintings
and Proust in
California
Southern California alumni gathered from June through October
at the homes of Los Angeles
alumni chapter president Tom
Melgun (SFGI08) and K.C. Victor
(A75) to tackle Marcel Proust’s
Swann’s Way. “It’s a literary and
psychological work [that is] an act
of genius,” says Victor. Approximately seven determined alumni
met for five sessions and used
a creative approach to exploring this first of seven works in
Proust’s magnum opus. Deirdre
Sloyan (A67) arrived at the initial
session with a book that surveys
the numerous Western paintings referenced in Swann’s Way,
which Victor described as “an
invaluable resource.” With lively
discussions over French-inspired
potluck fare and madeleines, the
seminars were so successful that
the Southern California alumni
chapter scheduled additional
seminars on the remaining texts
in Proust’s monumental series, In
Search of Lost Time.
—Gregory Shook
Dear Alumni,
At Homecoming 2012 we will celebrate the 75th anniversary
of the New Program. There will be numerous activities
throughout the weekend—including a panel discussion
on Saturday afternoon among former and current deans,
tutors, and alumni—that will recognize the history of the New
Program and the college. Please join us and your classmates
as we celebrate St. John’s College.
Alumni Association
President Lee Katherine
Goldstein (SFGI90)
For more information and
to register: http://alumni.
stjohnscollege.edu. Click
on “Homecoming.”
Annapolis Alumni Office
410-626-2531
alumni@sjca.edu
Santa Fe Alumni Office
505-984-6103
alumni@sjcsf.edu
56 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012
KATIE MATLACK
Presidents Christopher Nelson and Mike Peters
Alumni Leadership
Forum 2012
KATIE MATLACK
Santa Fe
Friday, September 14–
Sunday, September 16
More than 100 alumni attended
ALF 2012. Shown here, alumni
re-live a Galileo-inspired junior
lab experiment—one of several
sessions that engaged alumni
in leadership and the life of the
college—at the Alumni Leadership
Forum on June 8-10 in Annapolis.
AFL 2013 will be held on
June 7–9 in Santa Fe.
“ This is a very exciting
time to be involved in the
leadership of the Alumni
Association and to be
working with the college.
Together, we are creating
more ways in which
alumni can engage with
and contribute to the
well-being of the college,
the students, and other
alumni.”
�alumni news
Art and
Conversation
in Denver
Nestled in the heart of the Mile
High City’s cultural district,
nearly a dozen Denver/Boulder alumni chapter members
challenged their minds—and
awakened their senses—in a
rather unlikely setting for a
seminar. Last September, the
group gathered together in a
coffee shop on the second floor
of the Denver Art Museum for
a conversation on the existential perspectives of Simone de
Beauvoir; in particular, her
1947 work of nonfiction, The
Ethics of Ambiguity. Encouraged by chapter leader Beth
Kuper (SF69), alumna from
the pioneer class at Santa Fe,
Elizabeth Jenny (SF80) was
inspired by the Washington,
D.C., alumni chapter’s recent
seminar on de Beauvoir. “I was
looking to integrate the senses
with the intellect,” says Jenny,
a commercial artist who taught
graphic design for several
years at Montgomery College
in Rockville, Maryland. “And
ALL ABOUT SHAKESPEARE IN PHILLY
Last spring, in keeping with an annual tradition begun several years ago by Jack Armstrong (SF83), several
Johnnies gathered at the theater for a party and mini-reunion, then watched a performance of Twelfth Night.
From left: Steve Zartarian, Peggy Kozierachi, Helen Zartarian (AGI86), Sigmund Kozierachi, Adam Thimmig
(A07), Matt Horst (A07), Cynthia Tobias (AGI05), Leslie (Laszlo) Ujj (A07), and Carmen Khan.
the museum turned out to be
a great community partner,”
adds Jenny. “The institutional
and the personal played together so nicely.”
Seeking an innovative twist
on the traditional seminar
format, Jenny arranged a postseminar tour of the museum’s
impressive collection of contemporary Western art, which
combines the literary arts with
the visual arts. The collection
features work by artists Clyde
Aspevig, Len Chmiel, Daniel
Morper, Leon Loughridge,
and T. Allen Lawson, including
images depicting landscapes
completely dominated by man,
as well as more idyllic views of
man and nature in harmony.
Alumni from the Denver Chapter mingle over cocktails and conversation
at Robin Riddel Lima’s (SF77) Native American Trading Company after a
seminar and art tour at the Denver Art Museum.
“The tour provided a powerful,
thought-provoking juxtaposition to the de Beauvoir seminar
reading,” says Jenny.
After this full day of intellectual stimulation, the Colorado
alumni chapter members and
friends mingled over hors
d’oeuvres and signature cocktails—the Apollonian (vodka
and apple martini) and the
Dionysian (martini with a sugar
and Absinthe-dipped rim)—at
the Native American Trading
Company, across the street
from the Denver Art Museum.
The gallery’s founders and
owners, Jack and Robin Riddel
Lima (SF77), hosted the event.
There, among the vibrant
displays of antique weavings,
pottery, baskets, jewelry,
artifacts, and vintage photographs, alumni reawakened
their senses and kept the relaxed conversation flowing well
into the evening. The Colorado
alumni credited the party-like
atmosphere to the generous
hospitality of the Limas, whose
gallery is “a work of art itself,”
says Jenny. “They brought
us into their world, which
was great for facilitating
conversation.”
—Gregory Shook
Piraeus
In Santa Fe, Piraeus 2012 kicked
off on January 13-15 with seminars
on selected stories from Chaucer’s
Canterbury Tales, led by tutors Jay
Smith (SF77) and Alan Zetilin. In
June, alumni in Annapolis explored
Misha Berlinski’s Fieldwork and
Clifford Geertz’s Local Knowledge:
Further Essays in Interpretive
Anthropology, led by Eva Brann
and David Carl, and Flannery
O’Connor’s Wise Blood and several
of her short stories, led by Tom May
and David Townsend. Attendee Gil
Roth (AGI95) returned to campus
after 17 years and was inspired to
interview May and Townsend for his
blog, “Virtual Memories.” (Podcast:
http://chimeraobscura.com/vm/
podcast-here-at-the-western-world).
Mark your calendar for Annapolis
Piraeus 2013 May 30-June 2.
Piraeus is offered several times
each year on each campus.
CONNECT TO THE COLLEGE
Alumni online community:
http://alumni.stjohnscollege.edu/
Agora career mentoring network:
http://alumni.stjohnscollege.edu
click on “Career Services”
Alumni offices:
alumni@sjca.edu
alumni @sjcsf.edu
Facebook:
facebook.com/stjohnscollege
The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 |
57
�johnnie traditions
Rite of Spring
by Gregory Shook
Grey skies and chilly temperatures couldn’t dampen
the Johnnies’ spirits as they gathered on April 28 in
and around the Great Hall to celebrate the 30th annual
St. John’s-U.S. Naval Academy Croquet Match—nor
did the event’s new ground rules quash the convivial
atmosphere. In fact, for many alumni, the highly
cherished rite of spring signaled a return to form. The
class of 1984 led the charge, providing quintessential
Johnnie enthusiasm throughout the day.
Per tradition, honored member(s) of the
St. John’s community struck the opening
shot. This year, Claiborne Booker (A84)
and Adrian Trevisan (A84)—who received
the new “Prime Mover” award—swung the
mallet in unison. The Johnnies swept the
Mids 5-0, racking up 25 victories out of 30
matches. Spectators donned outrageous,
vintage-inspired attire, with a few new
twists. Ornate, wide-brimmed hats like
those seen topping the Duchess of Cambridge were en vogue. And young alumni
donned fancy footwear and filled the air
with the robust aroma of cigars. The St.
John’s school song, “St. John’s Forever,”
even got a makeover. However, the most
conspicuous bend on tradition was the
sighting of an Elvis impersonator—by all
counts, a first.
Unchanged was the fact that, for
alumni, the annual match is as much
about catching up with old friends and
reconnecting to the college as it is about
the competition. “Croquet has evolved
into our annual spring reunion,” says
Leo Pickens (A78), director of Alumni
Relations on the Annapolis campus. This
is certainly true for a devoted group of
more than a dozen alumni from the class
of 1984. “I’ve attended 27 of the last 30
58 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012
matches,” says John Ertle (A84), the
pioneer croquet team’s Imperial Wicket.
Sporting a neon Hawaiian-print hat and
ubiquitous “Beat Navy” button, Ertle says
that all year he looks forward to attending
the event along with his wife, Kathy Ertle
(A84), and their two sons. An admirer
of tradition, Ertle points out, “This is
the same hat that I wore during the first
croquet match.” He adds, “Even today’s
weather is just like it was then.”
Huddled around the front steps of the
Barr-Buchanan Center, spectators anticipated one of the match’s most revered
traditions—the unveiling of the Johnnie
team’s uniforms. And the Johnnies did
not disappoint. Bursting through the
doors to a cheering crowd, the players
donned replica St. John’s Public Safety
Officer’s uniforms, complete with functioning walkie-talkies, mirrored shades,
and novelty mustaches. It was a playful
spoof on the new ground rules, for which
the Imperial Wicket and team showed
tremendous support. “It’s important
to keep it fun,” says Johnnie Fleming
(A12), the team’s Imperial Wicket and
the fifth in his family to graduate from
St. John’s.
Fleming refers to both the competition
and the fact that the croquet match has
grown from a purely St. John’s event to
one that includes the wider community;
hence the college’s new policies restricting outside alcohol and other changes.
“We want croquet to be something that
we can all enjoy and that reflects well on
our community,” says Pickens. Fleming
echoes this desire; he penned an editorial
in The Gadfly weeks before the match to
make his point. “We’ve opened our campus to the public and it certainly would
be a bummer if the [wider community
members] who come were to ruin it for
the people already here.”
After 30 years of croquet in Annapolis,
the pageantry and spirit remain strong,
if somewhat evolved. As Fleming notes,
“[Johnnies] have built it, and people just
keep coming, and it is excellent.”
�Ornate, wide-brimmed hats like those seen topping
the Duchess of Cambridge were en vogue. And
young alumni donned fancy footwear and filled the
air with the robust aroma of cigars.
St. John’s
Forever
New lyrics by Charles Branan (A13)
Arranged by John Bonn
True love of wisdom
is sheltered in her halls.
Seekers of virtue
will answer to her call.
Books and a balance
are all the tools we need.
St. John’s forever!
She will make us free.
Clockwise (from top):
Spectator Susanna Herrick shows off her
wide-brimmed hat; Patrick E. McDowell
(A01) and his wife, Citlali, in festive
attire; Imperial Wickets Johnnie Fleming
(A12) and John Ertle (A84, the original
Imperial Wicket); Annapolis President
Chris Nelson (SF70), Claiborne Booker
(A84), Adrian Trevisan (A84); Longtime attendees Carolyn Smith, William
Henley, and Jane Taylor.
View video by Domenic D’Andrea (A15)
and more photos at facebook.com/
stjohnscollege.
Charles David Branan (A13)
won the Trevisan-Booker
Prize for penning new lyrics to
the school song, “St. John’s
Forever.” In a nod to the
college’s origins as the King
William’s School, founded
in 1696, he was awarded a
cash prize of $1,696. A music
aficionado from Sandersville,
Georgia, Branan is a member of
the St. John’s Madrigal Choir, a
group inspired by Renaissance
polyphony. “Music is absolutely
crucial to the Program,” says
Branan. “It has influenced
everything we study as well
as the authors we read.” John
Bonn, father of Tommy Bonn
(A13) and winner for the song’s
new four-part a cappella vocal
arrangement, values music in a
liberal arts education and says,
“Music pushes the mind and
encourages abstract thought.”
Long-time friends Adrian
Trevisan (A84) and Claiborne
Booker (A84) created the
contest to update the college’s
original anthem, “St. John’s
March.” The new song will be
sung each year at croquet.
The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 |
59
�st. john’s forever
Classic Cellar
Nestled in the basement of Humphreys Hall, the
College Bookstore, with its centuries-old brick
walls, eight-foot ceilings, and walls of books,
remains as much a haven for Annapolis Johnnies today as it was in this circa-1974 photo. But
where have those couches gone? As part of the
first building added to the college, the Bookstore has endured myriad changes, including
from dormitory to military hospital and morgue
for Union soldiers during the Civil War. Even
the couches, ashtrays, and chess boards for
60 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012
Johnnies who play games changed; they found
their way into the Coffee Shop in McDowell,
to make way for expanded shelf space. When
this photo was taken, the Bookstore housed
approximately 12,000 titles. In 1998, Robin
Dunn, manager for the past 15 years, ushered in
one of the Bookstore’s most significant changes
to date: a computerized system to track inventory, which has grown to include nearly 45,000
books and more than 21,000 different titles.
�eidos
DOUG PLUMMER
Eidos is a section of the magazine that showcases alumni
who are accomplished in the visual arts. Please send
us a link to your portfolio and an artist’s statement for
consideration in future issues of The College.
�Non-Profit Org.
U.S. Postage
PAID
Communications Office
P.O. Box 2800
Annapolis, Maryland 21404
a d d r e ss se rvi ce r e qu e st ed
Annapolis, md
Permit N0. 120
�
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Volume 37, Issue 1 of the <em>The College</em> Magazine. Published in Summer 2012.
The College
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College
The
St. John’s College • Annapolis • Santa Fe
Frederick Douglass
Considering Freedom
S u m m e r
2 0 0 9
�“It is only by the practice of the liberal arts that the human animal becomes a free man.
It is only by discipline in these arts that spiritual, moral, and civil liberties can be achieved
and preserved. It is in such obvious propositions as these that the founding fathers of 1784
and 1789 gave reasons for the institutions they set up.”
Scott Buchanan, Bulletin of St. John’s College, 1937-38.
On Freedom
T
he roughly chronological structure of the St. John’s Program puts readings
such as Marbury v. Madison and Abraham Lincoln’s speeches in senior year.
These readings allow students to think deeply about governing and being
governed just as they are about to emerge from a college created, in part, to
render them educated citizens, guardians of democracy.
Assembled together in one spiral-bound book are the Marbury and Dred
Scott readings, along with works by Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, and Booker T. Washington. While the selections vary, Johnnies have been reading Douglass’ “The Constitution of the United States: Is it Pro-slavery or Anti-slavery” and “Oration in Memory of
Abraham Lincoln.”
Douglass’ speech on the Constitution was delivered in Glasgow in 1860. Along with his
eloquent argument that the Constitution is anti-slavery, the speech includes his acknowledgement that he has examined and revised many of his opinions. He no longer seeks revolution—as he had as a follower of William Lloyd Garrison—but reform: “When I escaped
from slavery, and was introduced to the Garrisonians, I adopted very many of their opinions, and defended them just as long as I deemed them true. I was young, had read but
little, and naturally took some things on trust. Subsequent experience and reading have led
me to examine for myself.”
Douglass’ “Oration” is a moving speech, but one that acknowledges the political realities that faced Lincoln. He calls Lincoln “the white man’s President, entirely devoted to
the welfare of white men.” He recounts the many decisions that “taxed and strained” the
faith of those who sought emancipation. As Douglass was shaped by his youth in bondage,
he points out that Lincoln was shaped by a hardscrabble youth: “He calmly and bravely
heard the voice of doubt and fear all around him; but he had an oath in heaven, and there
was not power enough on earth to make this honest boatman, backwoodsman, and broadhanded splitter of rails evade or violate that sacred oath. He had not been schooled in the
ethics of slavery; his plain life had favored his love of truth.”
When the two men came together, their respect for each other grew, writes James Oakes
in The Radical and the Republican: “Both were uncommonly intelligent. Each was a
brilliant orator whose greatest speeches fused razor-sharp logic to soaring idealism. . . .
They respected self-made men and so they respected each other.”
A few blocks away from the Annapolis campus the life and legacy of Frederick Douglass
is commemorated in the Banneker-Douglass museum. On the grounds of the Maryland
State House sits an imposing statue of Roger Brooke Taney, most remembered for
presiding in the Dred Scott case. And Lincoln himself walked through campus in February
1865 during a brief stop on his way to the Hampton Roads Conference in February 1865.
For her essay in this issue, Laurel Pappas (A09), senior seminar readings fresh in her
mind, read Frederick Douglass’ autobiography and explored his life through visits to his
homes in Anacostia and Anne Arundel County. She found in Douglass’ quest for freedom
striking parallels to her own education.
Some changes to The College in this issue: You’ll find the alumni calendar in an
expanded Alumni section, featuring Alumni Association news and what’s happening in the
chapters. In its place, on the inside back cover (in the magazine trade, supposedly the way
most readers enter the magazine), you’ll find Eidos, a new section created to highlight the
work of Johnnies in the fine arts.
—RH
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
postmaster: Send address
changes to The College
Magazine, Communications
Office, St. John’s College,
Box 2800, Annapolis, MD
21404-2800.
Rosemary Harty (AGI09), editor
443-716-4011
rosemary.harty@sjca.edu
Patricia Dempsey,
managing 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
Sophia Koltavary
Sara Luell (A09)
Laurel Pappas (A09)
Nathaniel Roe (SF08)
Deborah Spiegelman
Curtis Wilson (HA93)
Magazine design by
Claude Skelton Design
�College
Summer 2009
The
The Magazine for Alumni of St. John’s College
Annapolis
•
Santa Fe
{Contents}
10
Commencement
d e p a r t m e n t s
page
2
At Commencement in Annapolis and
Santa Fe, the theme was courage.
•
Norman Levan: a portrait of philanthropy
Launching the Jeff Bishop
The man in the basement
St. John’s new BVG chair
Celebrating 20 years of Summer Classics
What Caritas means to St. John’s
News and announcements
New board members
Still obsessed with the white whale
Letters
30
bibliofile
•
•
•
14
A Freedom Through
Education
•
page
A brand-new St. John’s graduate
discovers why education and freedom
were synonymous to Frederick Douglass.
from the bell towers
•
•
•
•
•
page 14
16
On Freedom
page
•
We gave three tutors free reign to talk
about freedom, and they roamed far and
wide with their topic.
32
J.B. Shank’s The Newton Wars details
how French thinkers viewed Newton’s
theories; plus, celebrating Johnnie poets.
alumni
P RO F I L E S
32 Michelle Vest (SF90) explores the lives of
22
Resilience in a Recession
page
page 16
Few American lives remain unaltered by
the economic crisis. Four Johnnies detail
how their lives have changed.
immigrants in her one-woman play.
36 Jazz producer A.T. Michael MacDonald
(SF76) seeks a balance.
41 St. John’s provides an educational model
for school founder Melanie Hiner (A81).
48
46
Croquet
52
page
This year, it was East vs. West as Santa Fe
fielded its first croquet team, and Vikings
vanquished their foes.
page 22
on the cover
Frederick Douglass
Illustration by David Johnson
alumni association news
st. john’s forever
�2
{From the Bell Towers}
A Life Changed by Giving
By Diane Hardisty
Bakersfield Californian
His first donation went to Bakersfield College, where it is being
Carmen Schaad sat quietly in a room at Bakersfield’s Heart Hospital.
used to develop the Norman Levan Center for the Humanities.
In the bed slept her 88-year-old boss. To pass the time on that long
His $5.6 million donation is the largest the college has ever
night in 2004, she watched the Bakersfield Beautiful Awards cerereceived and is funding the renovation of an existing building to
mony on television.
Dr. Norman Levan, a Bakersfield dermatologist, her employer and house the center and its programs. A portion of the money also
supports the Levan Institute that offers lifelong learning classes to
friend for four decades, faced surgery the next morning to clear a
area residents 55 years of age and older.
blockage from his heart. As Carmen watched people being honored,
At the University of Southern California, where he earned his
she chewed on an idea.
medical degree and later headed the school’s Dermatology DepartHours later, when Levan awoke from surgery, his office manager
ment, a similar donation funds the Norman Levan Institute for
lectured him. “If he thought he had nine lives, he had already gone
Humanities and Ethics, encourthrough seven of them,” she
aging students to explore new
recalls telling him.
ways of thinking.
Her message was clear: His
At Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek
time was running out. Instead of
Medical Center, another nearly
just doling out his money to
$6 million donation opened the
worthy causes in his will, as he
Dr. Norman Levan Center for
planned to do, he should give the
Humanistic Medicine to foster
millions of dollars he amassed
compassionate care at the
through his lifelong investing
105-year-old hospital.
while he was still alive.
St. John’s College in Santa
“I wanted to see the smile on
Fe, N.M., is using a fourth
his face. I wanted him to see the
$5 million gift to build the
buildings that would be built
Norman and Betty Levan Hall
with his money and the
[for] its Graduate Institute of
programs that would be started.
Liberal Education. . . . Levan
And I wanted to nominate him
says the advanced degree he
for an award,” she explained.
earned from St. John’s College
She was convincing. Levan
“changed my life.”
soon began giving away his
Levan’s medical career and
money. He also began smiling a
his passion for studying the
lot. Both Carmen and his longPrompted by a friend, Dr. Norman Levan (SFGI74) began giving
back to St. John’s College and other causes instead of preparing
humanities are as remarkable as
time friend, former Bakersfield
bequests. His $5 million gift to the college makes possible a new
the millions of dollars he has
College President John Collins,
graduate center on the Santa Fe campus.
given away.
agree: The giving campaign
Levan was born in a Clevecame at the right time.
land suburb, where his father,
Levan’s wife, Betty, had just
Joseph, worked as a toolmaker and his mother, Rose, stayed home
died. The childless couple, who met on a tennis court more than a
to raise Levan, the youngest, and his three sisters. His parents
half century ago, were the centers of each other’s lives. Levan
profoundly missed his wife. Her death narrowed his world to his one- divorced and his mother moved with her teenage son to Detroit,
where his sister, Goldie, landed a teaching job. It was during the
day-a-week medical practice and reading books.
Depression, when jobs were scarce. Levan and his mother later
His decision to start giving away his money “changed his life,”
followed Goldie to the West Coast.
said Collins, who also is Levan’s patient. “He is now having a lot
A good student whose education was jump-started at home by his
of fun.”
teacher sister, Levan skipped grades and graduated from high
So far, Levan has made four massive donations—each nearly
school at 16. He then entered USC as an English major. Teased by a
$6 million—to three colleges and a Jerusalem hospital. With each
brother-in-law that he would end up teaching like his sisters, or
donation he gets accolades, invitations to events and encourageselling newspaper ads, Levan took the USC medical school
ment to watch buildings and programs started in his name.
entrance exam, passing it with a top score. This was remarkable,
Although coy about the size of his wealth, it appears the now
since Levan had shunned “boring” science classes and thought
93-year-old plans to give even more.
pre-med students were “quite dull.”
Each donation is structured to reinforce his lifelong belief that no
He acquiesced to the school’s demand that he complete at least a
matter what your career is, you must study the humanities to be truly
course in organic chemistry and went on to earn a medical degree
educated. He is an outspoken critic of his medical profession, which
from USC. He served as a medical officer during World War II,
he considers dominated by people too focused on science and the
with assignments in the Pacific.
commercial rewards of healing.
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 }
�3
{From the Bell Towers}
Launching the Jeff Bishop
years served as vice president
of the college. Bishop died in
July 2007 after a long battle
with cancer.
Athletic Director Leo
Pickens (A78) gave a brief
patricia dempsey
College board member Ray
Cave (class of 1948) was on
hand April 22 to christen the
racing shell he donated to the
college in memory of Jeff
Bishop (HA96), who for 20
Ray Cave (A48) christens the Jeff Bishop as Johnnies welcome a
new eight to the fleet, (l. to r.): Rachel Ulrich (A11), Brook
Pendergast (A11), Margaret Ansell (A10), and Virginia Harness
(A11).
A teenage bout with acne exposed him to dermatology. That,
combined with his wartime experience treating soldiers’ skin
diseases, led to his medical specialty. He joined a private practice
after the war and volunteered to teach in USC’s fledgling Dermatology Department. When the department expanded, he became
its first chairman and full-time faculty member.
In 1961, a group of Bakersfield doctors asked Levan to travel to
Bakersfield once a week to treat difficult cases. When he retired
from USC a few years later, he and Betty, a champion bridge
player, moved to Bakersfield.
Levan credits his fortune to luck. He said he was required to
invest 8 percent of his faculty salary into a university account,
which USC matched. He invested another 8 percent privately.
“That was when the Dow was 400,” he recalled. By the time he
began giving his fortune away, the Dow Jones Industrial Average
had climbed to more than 14,000.
Levan is similarly humble in explaining his decision to give
away his money.
With a twinkle in his eyes and a smile on his lips, he quotes
19th-century American industrialist Andrew Carnegie: “The man
who dies rich dies disgraced.”
Levan won’t be disgraced. x
Copyright 2009, the Bakersfield Californian. Reprinted with
permission.
speech, praising Bishop’s dedication to supporting the
college and its students.
Pickens noted Bishop’s willingness to tow the college’s first
eight-person shell to the
campus. Bishop also helped
cultivate a relationship with
The Hodson Trust, which
funded an extensive renovation
of the college boathouse and
helped support the crew
program. Bishop also
embodied “many of the virtues
that rowers admire,” Pickens
said—particularly by showing
courage in the face of overwhelming challenges.
“Jeff loved to compete,”
Pickens said. “And perhaps
even more than the competition itself, Jeff relished the
training and preparation that
goes into any successful
performance. He was also the
most mentally tough
competitor I have ever known.
Rowers here often refer to that
dreaded no-man’s land in a
2,000-meter race, somewhere
between the 1,000-meter mark
and the 1,500-meter mark, as
‘the house of pain.’ Jeff showed
no qualms about willingly
pushing himself across that
threshold into the ‘house of
pain.’ And even though it
seemed that in his last years he,
without choosing, lived in that
house of pain, he never was
discouraged or lost heart.
He kept his chin up and eyes
always looking forward. This is
the type of courage rowers
admire.”
As he poured champagne
over the bow of the college’s
newest eight, Cave remarked
that the tribute was a fitting
one, given Bishop’s extraordinary success in raising money
for the college. Bishop was the
driving force behind
St. John’s most recent capital
campaign, which raised
$134 million. “He kept the
place afloat,” Cave said. x
Breaking Ground
Construction began this summer on the Norman and Betty
Levan Hall, the new home of the Graduate Institute of
Liberal Education in Santa Fe. A LEED silver-certified
building, Levan Hall will be located between the Fine Arts
Building and Weigle Hall and will house seminar rooms,
offices, and common rooms. Dr. Levan’s gift provided the
means for a long-needed home for Santa Fe’s two graduate
programs, Master of Arts in Liberal Arts and Master of
Eastern Classics.
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 }
�4
{From the Bell Towers}
You can’t go to the Internet to
find the kind of laboratory
equipment required for the
classic, sometimes obscure,
experiments conducted at
St. John’s. Try finding
Hauksbee’s globe or Faraday’s
rotating rectangles in a catalog.
That’s why the college needs
Gary Dunkelberger to make a
wide variety of wood and metal
apparatus for the college’s laboratory program. Before he
joined the college as laboratory
craftsman, Dunkelberger
worked in Annapolis’ boating
industry as a yacht carpenter.
He built classic wooden boats
from scratch and crafted the
interiors of mega-yachts
(100 feet or bigger) for
clients including the late
Walter Cronkite.
Laboring in a stressful
industry gradually took its toll,
and after suffering a heart
attack, Dunkelberger pursued a
career change. He answered an
ad for the lab position at
St. John’s, and right from the
start, impressed Laboratory
Director Mark Daly and tutor
Chester Burke (A74) with his
craftsmanship and ingenuity.
“Gary began making laboratory equipment beyond our
wildest dreams,” says Burke.
“He listens intently to our
requests and then goes quietly
into his gigantic basement to
work his magic.”
Dunkelberger moved into a
position held for years by Al Toft
(H02), John Cook, and Otto
Friedrich. His special talent for
woodwork has “raised the bar”
for the laboratory program.
“He really loves beautiful wood,
so we’re going from equipment
made of plywood and 2 x 4s to
pieces made of cherry, oak, and
walnut. If he makes something
in brass or steel, he polishes it
until it gleams. They’re works
of art,” says Daly.
Precision is essential to the
instruments, Daly says, and
Dunkelberger is a perfectionist.
“We’re talking about scales of a
thousandth of an inch range.
Everything has to be precise or
the experiment may not work.”
A graduate of York College,
Dunkelberger worked in the
steel industry before moving to
Annapolis, and as a self-taught
carpenter and machinist, found
steady work in the city’s boating
industry.
One of Dunkelberger’s first
tasks was to create a set of
Faraday rotating rectangles.
These rectangles, of varying
perimeters, are wrapped with
copper wire. It was Faraday
who noticed that when the
rectangles rotate in a
magnetic field, electric
current is induced in them,
the amount of which
depends upon the speed of
rotation and the area of the
rectangles. “This is one of
the most important principles which we study in the
second semester of the
junior laboratory and Gary
has given life to the
phenomena,” says Burke.
Making the Faraday
rectangle involved looping
a length of copper wire
around a wooden frame
500 times—three to four
hours of work for each one.
rosemary harty
The Man in the Basement
above, Gary Dunkelberger has taken over the job of crafting the
unusual apparatus required for St. John’s laboratory program.
Left, Hauksbee’s globe, just one example of Dunkelberger’s
handiwork, demonstrates principles of electricity.
(Dunkelberger made four.) “It
was a bit tedious,” he admits.
At one point in his life,
Dunkelberger harbored “vague
dreams” of a life in academe;
now that he’s part of a college
environment, he takes pleasure
in talking with tutors and
students about the laboratory
program and making their
investigations possible through
wood, metal, and a lot of
patience.
As an Annapolitan, Dunkelberger was familiar with St.
John’s, he says. “But I was
rather amazed at the high
quality of the students.”
When students in junior
laboratory take up Maxwell this
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 }
coming year, they’ll explore
electromotive force and electromagnetic momentum using a
model Maxwell devised in his
Cavendish laboratory. Dunkelberger used cherry, white oak,
and a brass rod to make a beautiful and functional instrument
for students to see for themselves what Maxwell hoped
to show.
Even if—mired in Lagrangian
analysis—students don’t notice
the fine beveled edges and
polished wood, Dunkelberger
can’t resist. “Why not add a bit
of beauty?” he asks. x
—Rosemary Harty
�5
{From the Bell Towers}
An Exciting Time to Lead a College
transaction complete,
Uremovich moved to Santa Fe
with plans to retire.
Early in his business career,
Uremovich acquired the 55volume set of Britannica’s
Great Books of the Western
World, which gave him his first
introduction to St. John’s.
He enrolled in the Summer
Classics, where his first
seminar was on Galileo. It
didn’t take long for him to
become deeply connected with
the college. He got to know
then-president John Agresto (a
fellow fly fisherman) and
Robert Glick, then serving as
vice president for advancement. Uremovich went from
fan to supporter, making a
pledge to support construction
of the Student Activities
Center. He enrolled in the
Graduate Institute and joined
the college’s Board of Visitors
and Governors in 2003.
Enrolling in the GI provided
a much fuller experience than
he could have
found reading
great books
at home.
“It was very
enlightening
for me,” he
said. “I had
the typical
rough spots,
as a business
person
coming out of
the real world
to the very
isolated and
insulated
world of the
seminar. I
was more
used to
telling people
things, rather
than
listening.”
Uremovich
took a special
interest in the
history segment. “I took a
preceptorial that examined the
Greek plays of the time and
juxtaposed them against
Thucydides,” he recalls.
“We went through the war and
being a Vietnam vet myself,
I found that really insightful.”
Uremovich chaired the
committee that led the search
to name John Balkcom’s
successor after Balkcom
(SFGI00) stepped down in
2003. At the time, Uremovich
was back in the business world,
running his own consulting
firm, Manalytics. A president
was named, but the search was
relaunched after the appointee
resigned before taking the position. The second search was
immensely successful,
Uremovich says, putting
Michael Peters in place in
Santa Fe in 2005.
It’s a “pretty exciting time”
to lead a college governing
board, Uremovich says. “We’re
facing significant challenges at
dimitri fotos
Michael Uremovich (SFGI05)
lives in Virginia, heads a
business based in Ohio and
California, and is on the road at
least three days a week. But the
newly named chair of the
college’s Board of Visitors and
Governors—who tried earnestly
to retire a decade ago—isn’t too
concerned about taking on the
role on top of his business
responsibilities. After all, his
predecessor, Sharon Bishop
(class of 1965), led a successful
and growing company during
her seven years as board chair.
“There’s an old saw that says
if you want something done,
give it to a busy person,”
says Uremovich.
Uremovich is chairman of
the board and CEO of Pacer
International, an intermodal
and logistics freight transportation services provider.
According to the journal Smart
Business, he’s widely recognized as a “logistics industry
guru, who helped revolutionize
the business.” For example,
Uremovich served as part of a
team that invented the doublestack train, an innovation that
doubled a train’s capacity for
transporting goods while
reducing costs.
Reared in Tucson,
Uremovich earned a bachelor’s
degree in logistics transportation management from the
University of Arizona and an
MBA from City University of
New York, Baruch College.
Over the years, he’s been a
principal at the consulting
giant Booz Allen Hamilton and
held key strategic planning and
marketing positions at companies including Pepsi and American President Lines. In the
1990s, he served as vice president of marketing for Southern
Pacific Transportation and
president of TSSI (its logistics
operating company), where he
helped negotiate the company’s
sale to Union Pacific. With the
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 }
the college in terms of
balancing the things we value
about our community with the
brutal realities of the outside
world,” he says.
Even if the economy
rebounds in the coming year,
some difficult decisions may be
in order, Uremovich says.
“There’s a great saying in
the business world these days
that you don’t want to waste a
good crisis,” he says. “This is
a good time to examine the
institutional infrastructure
that supports the Program.
We can go down this path
carefully, and begin with a
recognition that some compromise may be required to get the
best solution.”
St. John’s is in a better position to meet today’s challenges
than it would have been when
Uremovich first joined the
board. The college has strong,
stable leadership; the Management Committee effectively
guides collegewide decisions;
and there’s momentum from
a successful capital campaign
in which alumni demonstrated
a strong commitment to the
college.
The board itself is one of
the college’s best resources.
“I’ve been affiliated with many
not-for-profit boards, and I
don’t think I’ve ever worked
with a group of people so
singularly dedicated to the idea
of the institution and its underpinnings,” he says.
Uremovich has another
reason for his fondness for the
college; he met his wife, Susan,
in a seminar on Emerson at the
campus. “She ran the crime
labs for the State of New
Mexico and was periodically
intrigued by the college up on
the hill,” he says. “Ours was a
Coffee Shop romance.”x
—Rosemary Harty
Rooted in the Program,
St. John’s can weather
turbulent times, says BVG
Chair Michael Uremovich.
�6
{From the Bell Towers}
Summer Classics Program Draws Devotees
The Dueling
Gluckmans
Santa Fe’s popular Summer
Classics program marked its
20th year this summer with
three weeks of seminars on
topics ranging from the poetry
of T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound to
The Godfather.
The program was launched in
1990 with a single seminar on
Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War. The following
summer, the college offered
three consecutive weeks of
seminars. Now including both
morning and afternoon
sessions, the Summer Classics
has enjoyed nearly sell-out
popularity. Lively, in-depth
conversations—in a captivating
city—inspire many Summer
Classics participants to return
year after year.
Such is the case with Jon and
Stephen Gluckman, father and
son, who returned this summer
for their second Summer
Classics. Stephen discovered
the program while exploring
colleges in his junior year, and
Jon has a colleague and friend
who attended the Graduate
Institute.
For their first summer experience (in 2008), Jon, a high
school English teacher in New
Jersey, and his son, about to
embark on his senior year in
high school, decided on two
consecutive weeklong seminars:
Dostoevsky’s The Idiot and the
Mahabharata. They originally
planned to fly to New Mexico,
but then Tom Waits tickets went
on sale. “We’re big fans,”
explains Stephen.
The plane trip became a
music-themed road trip that
ultimately took five weeks,
with the Waits concert in
Birmingham, Ala., and the
Santa Fe Opera’s production of
Billy Budd among the highlights. Their blog (www.gluckmanvroom.blogspot.com),
chronicles their cross-country
adventure.
At St. John’s, Jon and
Stephen shared a suite with two
other men, both long-time
participants, who shared their
seminar discussions on the
Aeneid and the Iliad. “[Our]
tutors were great … [asking]
probing questions that brought
the most out of the texts,” Jon
writes on their blog, adding:
“We made a bit of an impression being dueling Gluckmans
in our two seminars.”
“Somewhere between a
monastery and mountain
resort” is how Gluckman Senior
describes the Santa Fe campus.
“These were truly two of the
most inspiring and renewing
weeks of the summer.”
When they returned home,
both felt the lingering benefits
of their experience. “I’d always
taught somewhat like St. John’s
does, but this solidified what I
do and honed the way I questioned my students,” Jon notes.
“It definitely made me more
confident in my classes,”
Stephen says.
The two hoped to renew their
friendships with some of their
fellow Classics participants
when they returned this July, to
read Thomas Mann’s Joseph
and His Brothers. After their
summer in Santa Fe, Stephen is
off to Sarah Lawrence. And
while Stephen’s unsure of his
plans for next summer, his
father plans to be back in Santa
Fe, he says. “This will become
my summer camp.” x
—Deborah Spiegelman
A Summer’s
Journey with
Suffering Souls
I arrived at St. John’s on a blustery April afternoon to visit the
college with my daughter
during her junior year in high
school. I was immediately taken
with the natural beauty
surrounding the college,
but it was the brief stop at
the bookstore that took
my breath away. Plato,
Aristotle, Dante and
Montaigne—these were
the books I had longed to
read in college. I returned
home with my daughter
wondering how I could redo my college education.
A few years later I
happened upon an advertisement for Summer Classics in The Atlantic and
immediately signed up for
the mailing list.
A Santa Fe’s Summer Classics seminar was a bonding experience for Jon
The following spring
(l.) and Stephen Gluckman of New Jersey.
the brochure arrived in
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 }
the mail. After discovering my
first choices were filled, I
settled instead on The Letters of
Vincent van Gogh and the
Brothers Karamazov. Soon my
books arrived, and I happily
plunged into the mysterious
world of Aloysha and his
brothers.
On the shuttle from Albuquerque to Santa Fe, the driver
noticed my Brothers K on my
lap. He inquired about the book
and St. John’s. As we turned
onto Camino Cruz Blanca he
asked, “Why are you studying
about suffering souls?” Why
indeed, I asked myself, as I
wrestled with my book-laden
suitcase up the stairs at
St. John’s. I mused, “Aren’t
we all suffering souls?”
The lunches at St. John’s
became an extension of the
classroom discussions.
Munching on tuna salads, we
wondered about Dostoevsky’s
own faith as we explored his
exquisite discourse on free will
and religion in the Grand
Inquisitor’s speech. A doctor
wondered why many of Dostoevsky’s characters suffered
from “brain fever.” Classmates
became friends as we delighted
in the process of joint intellectual exploration. The refrain
was similar: “We do not have
anyone to discuss books with
back home.”
Last summer I had the good
fortune to study Plato’s Symposium and the Phaedrus. On the
last day of the class a classmate
asked our tutor, Eva Brann,
whether it is possible to reach
transcendence other than
through love. Miss Brann
smiled. “Ah, you will just have
to read Plato’s other dialogues
to find out.” With those words
in our hearts, most of us will
return for another summer of
intellectual delights. x
—Sophia Koltavary
�{From the Bell Towers}
7
A Life-Changing Year
It was the summer of 1973, and
Jim Jarvis (A75) was getting
ready to take a job waiting
tables at a Colorado resort
instead of embarking on his
junior year at St. John’s. After
adding up his grants, loans,
and personal savings, he came
up $500 short for tuition and
room and board. “I know it
doesn’t sound like a lot now,
but it was more than anyone in
my family could scrape up,” he
recalls. He wrote a letter to
Barbara Leonard (H55), then
assistant dean, to tell her he
was taking a year off.
Jarvis had been visiting
friends in New York City at the
end of the summer, and he
stopped at a phone booth in
Grand Central Station to call
his mother, who had an urgent
message for him: “Barbara
Leonard wants you to call her
immediately.”
He reached in his pocket for
more change, but didn’t have
another quarter. “So, there
were my friends and I scrambling around Grand Central,
panhandling for spare
change.” When he reached
Leonard, she was characteristically direct. “What’s this
about you not coming back?”
When Jarvis said he couldn’t
find the money, Leonard
replied: “Just get on the train,
come down here, and don’t
worry about the money.”
About two weeks after the
semester started, Jarvis
learned that the grant to keep
him in school came from the
Caritas Society. By way of
thanks, he picked up his guitar
and with Janet Hellner (SF77)
on flute, gave a recital for a
Caritas luncheon.
For more than 40 years,
Caritas has been helping Johnnies with emergency financial
needs, and over the past year,
their support has made a great
difference in the lives of
students whose families are
suffering in the
economic downturn.
In thank-you letters to
the society, students
wrote of health crises
in their families, foreclosures, and job
losses. One student
was grateful for the
money that allowed
her to go to the
dentist—her family
had no insurance and
could not afford the
$2,000 bill.
“Caritas has always
helped students who
still come up short
when all the financial
Dr. Jim Jarvis (A75, third from left and shown with students in his lab)
aid has been doled
almost missed a year at St. John’s, until Caritas stepped in.
out,” says Lynn
Yarbro, the organization’s president.
Steps in March. What motihe decided on the course for
“When we read these letters,
we know their burden has been vates the group, says Yarbro, is the rest of his life: a career in
a deep admiration for the
medicine and research.
softened somewhat.”
college, its academic program,
“The research I’m doing
Working with the college’s
and especially, the students.
now is the research I predicted
financial aid office during the
“If we can make a difference I would be doing in my junior
2008-09 academic year,
essay: studying biological
Caritas made $34,650 in emer- for even a handful of students
who might not be able to stay
complexity,” he says. “It was
gency grants to 13 students.
at St. John’s in this economy,
literally a life-changing year.”
Another $2,000 from the
then all our efforts are worth
Today, Jarvis is a professor
society’s Weigle Great Books
it,” Yarbro says.
of pediatrics at the University
Fund helped five students buy
More than 30 years later,
of Oklahoma Health Sciences
Program books. During the
Jarvis looks back on the
Center, where he specializes
capital campaign, the society
support he received from
in pediatric rheumatology.
established an endowed
Caritas with enduring gratiAmong his research projects
Caritas scholarship to support
tude. Instead of waiting tables
is a study to determine why
need-based financial aid for a
at a luxury resort, he settled
juvenile arthritis afflicts
student.
into a wonderful corner room
Native Americans at a higher
All this is supported by the
in Pinkney. He had French
rate than other populations, as
membership of about 200 and
with Brother Robert, who led
well as an ongoing investigaby the group’s fundraising
his advanced class through
tion into the role the innate
events: a November Book and
Remembrance of Things Past.
immune system plays in
Author event (this year’s star
He studied Darwin with Leon
chronic arthritis in children.
attraction is novelist Alice
Kass and discovered scientific
Who knows what might have
McDermott), and a benefit
ideas that intrigued him. And
happened if he’d gone to
performance by the Capitol
Colorado, Jarvis muses. But
because one life touches many
others, “there is a room full of
medical students right next to
me” conducting important
research because Caritas
stepped in. “It reverberates
from 1973 right to the
present,” he says. x
In thank-you letters to the Caritas
Society, Annapolis students wrote
of health crises in their families,
foreclosures, and job losses.
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 }
�8
{From the Bell Towers}
News & Announcements
BARBARA GOYETTE (A73),
vice president for Advancement
in Annapolis, was among
26 women selected to receive
the YWCA’s Tribute to Women
in Industry (TWIN) Award for
2009. The award recognizes
extraordinary women who are
leaders in their corporations,
organizations, and communities. Goyette has been vice
president since 2002, overseeing fundraising, alumni
relations, and communications
at the college. She joined the
college in 1994 as director of
public relations.
Alumna Appointed to
DOT Post
ANNE FERRO (A80) has been
nominated to lead the Department of Transportation’s
Federal Motor Carrier Safety
Administration, charged with
reducing crashes, injuries, and
fatalities involving large trucks
and buses. A former Peace Corps
volunteer in Cote d’Ivoire, Ferro
was most recently President of
the Maryland Motor Truck
Association. Between 1997 and
2003, she directed Maryland’s
Motor Vehicle Administration,
where she established a strong
record in highway safety, regulatory compliance, and agency
leadership.
SF Alumni Win
Fulbright Awards
Annapolis VP Barbara Goyette
was honored by the YWCA.
Two recent St. John’s graduates
will be heading overseas thanks
to the Fulbright Program.
THADDEUS THALER (SFGI09)
received a Fulbright grant to
study in Russia. Thaler will
examine how Russia’s image of
Latin America was shaped by
film and telenovelas (soap
operas) between 1959 and 2009.
AUSTIN XAVIER VOLZ (SF09)
received a Fulbright English
new board members
The Board of Visitors and
Governors welcomes these new
and returning members:
KEITH HARRISON (SF77) is
professor of law and the chair of
the International Criminal Law
and Justice Graduate Programs
at Franklin Pierce Law Center
in Concord, N. H. He has
served on the Board of Trustees
for Capitol Center for the Arts
in Concord, the Planning
Committee for the Emerging
Leaders of Color Conference,
and the American Bar Association. He previously served on
the board from 2001-2007. He
received his JD from the
University of Chicago.
MIKE MILLER is principal of
The Arundel Group, as well as a
financial consultant at a Washington, D.C., area public utility.
Previously, he worked for
Florida Memorial College,
Africare, IBM, and PepsiCo.
Miller earned a bachelor’s
degree in history from Yale
University and an MBA in
finance from the University of
North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
He currently serves as a Board
Member of the District 30
Democratic Club in Annapolis,
jennifer behrens
Annapolis VP Honored
Ready for a ride: The Senior Gift of the Class of 2009 in
Annapolis launched a bicycle-lending program on campus. Thanks
to donations from the graduating students, six high-quality
Globe bikes (tested above by Carol Partonen, A12; Zach
Harrington, A11; and Katie Corder, A11) were purchased to
launch the program.
Teaching Assistantship. He plans
to pursue questions about how a
second language is learned and
how advanced students accomplish fluency in speaking and
writing another language.
Allanbrook Honored
WYE JAMISON ALLANBROOK,
professor emeritus at the
Maryland, and is a former
board member of International
Services Agencies, Africare,
and the Sandy Spring Friends
School.
CATHY RANDALL (A82) ran
the Philadelphia and Baltimore
offices at Deutsche Bank Alex
Brown for 20 years. She served
on the firm’s Executive
Committee, which handled
such items as how to standardize procedures across the
branches by comparing and
contrasting effectiveness and
compliance with firm and
industry rules and regulations,
and gathering best practices for
conducting business.
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 }
University of California,
Berkeley, was named an
Honorary Member of the
American Musicological
Society. She served on the
Annapolis faculty for 25 years.
She currently holds an Andrew
W. Mellon Emeritus Fellowship
supporting research for
2008–10. x
DANIEL VAN DOREN (A81)
received his law degree from
Boston University School of
Law in 1985, where he cofounded the Public Interest
Project, a fellowship program
that distributes grants to
students for summer work in
public interest jobs. Since 1986,
he has worked in several of his
family’s real estate companies
and currently serves as
managing director of Van
Doren Management Co, LLC,
in New York City. He served as
president of the New York
chapter of the St. John’s
College Alumni Association
from 2004 to 2009. x
�9
{From the Bell Towers}
Still Obsessed with the
White Whale
At the University of Pennsylvania, Mike Kelly (AGI06) was
torn between a career in
economics and a career
teaching literature. Economics
won out, and right after graduation in 1972, Kelly landed a
job at NASA. One of the college
books he kept was a paperback
copy of Moby-Dick, a novel he
fell in love with as a teenager.
“It’s one of those stories you
can’t get out of your mind,”
he says.
In the fall of 2004, Kelly
brought that same copy—now
patched up with duct tape to
keep the pages from escaping—
to the Graduate Institute,
where he joined other students
in a preceptorial on the novel.
In a lively class in which each
participant had a passionate
interest in Ahab, Starbuck, and
the rest of the doomed crew of
the Pequod, he added to his
margin notes, wrote a paper
about courage, and left with
even more questions about
Melville’s masterwork.
In part, this obsessive
pursuit of the white whale can
be pinned on the preceptorial
tutor, David Townsend. In
response to one of Kelly’s
observations, Townsend wrote
in the margin: “What would
Aristotle say about this?” Even
with his diploma in hand in the
spring of 2006, Kelly was still
grappling with that question,
and as soon as he retired, he
devoted himself to pursuing it.
He applied to the GI to write a
master’s essay, and on a
Saturday afternoon in April, sat
for his oral examination.
Any GI graduate who desires
to write a paper may do so
within two years of graduating.
Kelly is one of a handful of
students who have taken this
step, although there’s no
tangible benefit to one who has
already completed the degree.
GI students can substitute the
master’s essay and oral for one
preceptorial.
“I think the fact that people
want to do an essay even after
graduating shows two things,”
says Marilyn Higuera, director
of the Graduate Institute in
Annapolis. “One: the essay is
really serving the purpose it
was meant to serve, namely
that it provide an opportunity
for graduate students to engage
in an extended, focused study
of some question which arose
for them during their time
here; the fact that people want
to follow up on such questions
even though it doesn’t ‘count’
toward a degree drives that
point home.”
Also, Higuera says, many
students are reluctant to give
up the rich discussions of GI
preceptorials in order to write
the master’s essay.
Kelly worked for 35 years as a
business deputy at NASA’s
Goddard Space Flight Center,
supporting key projects such as
weather and communications
satellites. But he never lost his
love for literature, and he
enrolled in the GI just at the
time he was preparing for
retirement. “I loved every
minute of it,” he says of the
graduate program.
Soon after he retired from
NASA in 2007, Kelly asked
Townsend to be his adviser, and
he sat in on Townsend’s undergraduate preceptorial on the
novel. It was a pleasure for
Townsend to take the journey
through Moby-Dick with Kelly
again, helping him synthesize
other ideas from his graduate
studies. “Mike Kelly took on
Moby-Dick as a genuine lover
of wisdom, confronting
squarely the need for courage
in facing the deepest questions
of life and death,” says
Townsend.
Kelly doesn’t plan to be
retired for long. He began
looking for a teaching job last
spring. x
—rosemary Harty
Letters
The Spring 2009 edition of The College contained a list of
the “best” booksellers. You failed to mention a wonderful
bookstore, The Symposium, on Hayes Street in San Francisco. It’s a unique store, with great selections, and is
owned and operated by two recent graduates of St. John’s.
I think they merit a note of recognition. Bookselling is a
very difficult business, and I think they would appreciate a
much-deserved comment for carrying on the tradition of
the Great Books.
Doug Head
Editor’s note: Robin Dunn only recommended bookstores
he has visited personally for “The Love of Books” in the
Spring issue. He’ll be sure to visit The Symposium next time
he’s in the Bay area, thanks to this tip from Mr. Head, a
Johnnie parent. Also, The College heard from John R.
Traffas (SFGI75), who chided us for not including Eighth
Day Books in Wichita. He has high praise for the store, with
a setting that “inspires cordial and wide-ranging conversation,” has free coffee, and offers a good selection of serious
books, including “a shelf of Loebs.”
Corrections
rosemary harty
A story on Karen Cook (SF74) in the Spring 2009 issue
incorrectly identified the institution for which Cook works.
It’s the University of Louisiana at Monroe.
A preceptorial paper on Moby-Dick left Mike Kelly with more
questions than ever, prompting him to write a master’s essay.
In the same issue, a story on Touchstones had the wrong
title for Stefanie Takas (A89). She is Touchstones’ executive
director.
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 }
�10
{Commencement}
CELEBRATING
COURAGE
Commencement Speakers Laud Graduates
for Choosing a Different Path
by Rosemary Harty (AGI09)
I
gary pierpoint
t was an unlikely coincidence that rain forced Commencement ceremonies indoors in both Annapolis and Santa Fe,
but both ceremonies went off without a hitch in the Francis
Scott Key Auditorium and Student Activities Center, respectively. For both ceremonies, alumni were speakers, and
both touched on the theme of courage in their addresses to the
graduates.
In Annapolis on May 17, 110 undergraduate students received
their Bachelor of Arts degrees, and 39 Graduate Institute students
received their Master of Arts in Liberal Arts degrees. Tutor Anita
Kronsberg (class of 1980), completing her third term as assistant
dean this spring, told graduates not to worry if they fail to
remember in perfect detail the paradigms and proofs they studied.
Kronsberg’s speech focused on courage—the courage needed to
enroll in a college such as St. John’s and the courage required to
pursue a lifelong habit of subjecting one’s opinions and beliefs to
constant scrutiny. “What is good is difficult, and questioning the
opinions we cherish is among the most difficult things to do,” she
said. “It requires courage, and when you leave this college it will
require more courage, for you will often be without communal
encouragement to it. But you will carry with you a disposition to
seek out this and other forms of what is good, and this is a
resource.”
In her address, Kronsberg likened the journey students take
through the Program to that of the hero of Homer’s Odyssey—in
part because Johnnies spend their four years reading the works of
long-dead authors, and Odysseus travels to the Land of the Dead.
But while Odysseus made his trip alone, Johnnies journey in the
company of their “shipmates” as they encounter strange new
things. They draw courage from each other.
“The illumination and enrichment of your life through your
efforts to coax the dead into a living conversation will be different
for each of you,” Kronsberg told the graduates. “Some of you may
have heard here what sort of life lies ahead for you, many of you are,
just now, overwhelmed by the welter of possibilities. All of you have
Left, Annapolis graduates Tabitha Silver (l.) and Jessica
Zimmerberg-Helms toast their success.
Opposite page: Top, Kevin Andrus and Erin Destito. bottom,
Anita Kronsberg (A80) spoke to the value of a Johnnie’s journey
“in the land of the dead.”
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 }
�{Commencement}
“You have practiced courage through the constant practice
of making mistakes of various kinds, both publicly
and in the presence of an ever-sharper inner witness.”
the disposition to enter into the experience of another as far as
possible while remaining the author of your own opinions.”
On May 23 in Santa Fe, 86 seniors and 21 graduate candidates
heard from Dr. Stephen J. Forman (A70), chair of the Hematology
and Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation Department at the City of
Hope Cancer Center in California. Forman is also the principal
investigator for a $15.2 million, five-year National Cancer Institute
bone marrow transplantation program project grant and principal
investigator of a five-year, $11.5 million Specialized Program of
Research Excellence grant by the NCI for translational research
studies for Hodgkin’s and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
Forman focused his remarks on the way in which the college has
been a continuing presence in his life and work. He explained why
he chose his specialty in medicine and why he has devoted himself
to working toward a cure for cancer: “When asked about my choice,
and the unusual college background that could lead me to such
work, I often answered that I chose the most philosophical of the
medical specialties as it forces one to confront, daily, the important
questions in our life and its meaning, about how we live our life, and
our relationship to each other, our family, and community, our
country, our world,” Forman said. “In essence, the work has
allowed me to continue to think about the same questions that you
gary pierpoint
teri thomson randall
Anita Kronsberg (A80)
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 }
11
�12
{Commencement}
“You have learned to pursue truth, an often painful process,
which has an inherent integrity, which is never ending
and as Socrates taught us, is not always welcome.
But it is the pursuit of truth that will enrich your life’s work,
deepen your friendships and your love of another human being.”
gary pierpoint
teri thomson randall
have been considering for the last four years.
Graduates are not the only ones to benefit from St. John’s,
Forman said. Because the college cultivates lifelong habits such as
“learning, listening, and the pursuit of truth,” the benefits of St.
John’s extend to graduates’ families, co-workers, and communities.
When graduates are asked about the significance of their liberal
arts education, Forman advised: “. . . I would say that we have
helped our young to become lifelong students, capable of anything,
who understand listening to be a virtue, who will pursue truth in
their work and in their life. Not a bad education.”
He congratulated students and their parents for choosing St.
John’ and the commitment this education demands. “I do hope that
you will remember this day, as we celebrate your graduation, the
courage that each of you has demonstrated in coming here, as this
is a very daunting place, as it exposes your fears, and, rather than
running away, you have remained, and, with the help of the college,
you have overcome them. We celebrate the courage of your parents
to trust you, and the college to guide and protect you and bring you
to this day. Yes, you are ‘Johnnies,’ and so are your parents. And, of
course, there is the courage of our faculty, resistant to the educational fads of the day and, like you, not here by accident or casually,
who, like you, face their own challenges in learning and teaching in
all parts of our community of learning. And, like all of you, I remain
grateful and respectful of their role in preserving this oasis of
learning.” x
teri thomson randall
Stephen Forman (A70)
Above right, Commencement speaker Dr. Stephen Forman (l.)
and Santa Fe President Michael Peters. Bottom right, Tutor
David Levine and other faculty members lined up in Santa Fe’s
SAC weight room for the processional. Bottom left, parents Ben
and Anna Bernanke with daughter, Alyssa, at the post-graduation reception in Iglehart Hall.
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 }
�{Commencement}
13
The Last of the Brocketts
Noel decided in his sophomore year of high school that he was
headed to Annapolis. “There was never really a doubt in my mind
that I was going to St. John’s,” he says.
St. John’s brought out their children’s talents, the Brocketts
say, and each participated in the life of the college in his or her
individual way. Hayden was the waltz archon and editor of The
Gadfly. Gillian was devoted to intramural sports and discovered
a love for science in the lab program and by working in the
college observatory. Noel proved to be passionate about the
liberal arts and Georgian culture and helped found a nonprofit
organization called OLEG (the Organization for Liberal Arts in
Georgia) to support a discussion-based liberal arts program at
New Gelati Academy in Tbilisi. He helped create a student club
that organized Georgian feasts and a Georgian dance class. Along
with other OLEG members, he applied for and won a $10,000
Davis Peace Grant to bring a two-week program, based on readings from classic works, to Georgian youth this summer.
Hayden, who met his wife, Mary Townsend (A04), when he was
a prospie in her freshman seminar, just graduated from George
Washington University’s School of Law and now works at the
Department of Justice. Gillian worked at the United States Naval
Observatory for a year before accepting a position as a medical
researcher at the University of Waterloo in Ontario. She’ll be
studying optical instrumentation in a master’s program at the
university’s department of System Design
Engineering. “I would not have discovered my love for astronomy or astrophysics if not for the relationships I built
while at St. John’s,” she says. She also
married a Johnnie, Ian McCracken (A04).
And after spending most of the summer
in Georgia, Noel plans to remain in
Annapolis and work on OLEG, with an eye
to graduate studies in philosophy in the
near future.
The Brocketts say that it was a sacrifice
to send three children to a private liberal
arts college. But as Philip Brockett
explains, they believe in two principles
when it comes to raising children. “One,
we’ve never regretted any money we’ve
spent on our children’s education,” he
says. “And our other mandate was to do
everything we could to ensure our children are independent. College is about
launching your kids into the world. And
St. John’s was just the right place to
launch them.” x
Each of the Brocketts (l. to r. Hayden, Gillian and Noel) found a special niche at
gary pierpoint
Among the graduates who marched across the stage in Annapolis
May 17 was Noel Brockett, the third and last member of a
Connecticut family to receive a St. John’s College diploma. In the
audience were his parents, Philip and Nancy; sister, Gillian
(A07); and brother, Hayden (A04), who launched the family’s
devotion to St. John’s when he received a college brochure in the
mail and made his college decision almost instantly.
It’s not unusual for a family to send several children to
St. John’s. Children follow parents, brothers follow sisters, and
legacies are born. Philip Brockett remembers when his eldest son
came home for Thanksgiving during his first year, brimming
with excitement about the books, his tutors, and his friends at
the college. “He told us St. John’s was home for him,” he says.
“On the one hand I was really glad for him, on the other hand,
I was a little taken aback that he felt so comfortable at the
college. He was so enthusiastic about St. John’s that he became a
salesman for the college to his younger siblings.”
Reluctant to follow her older brother, Gillian spent a year at
the University of Connecticut. By the second semester, however,
“she wasn’t satisfied with the educational experience she was
having” at the large university, Nancy Brockett says. After
visiting her older brother in Annapolis, “she called us up and
said she wasn’t going back to U Conn. It just wasn’t the right fit
for her. But she did really well at St. John’s.”
St. John’s, but they and their parents (Nancy and Philip) share a deep appreciation
for the college.
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 }
—rosemary harty
�14
{Frederick Douglass}
FREEDOM
THROUGH
EDUCATION
by Laurel Pappas (A09)
A
fter four years of St. John’s it was
time to read a bestseller. I needed
something accessible, mesmerizing, full of colorful events and
characters to snap me out of the
aftershock of graduating. I hit on
something modern, from 1845:
Narrative of the Life of Frederick
Douglass, an American Slave.
As a student, looking ahead usually consisted of checking
the seminar list to see what we would read next. As a graduate
looking ahead means wondering what I should do. Impressed
by the necessity for action in my own life, I was delighted to
encounter in Frederick Douglass a man whose genius was so
immediately applied to improving the world. Douglass makes
his childhood and the challenges of his growth central in his
books, and I soon realized that anyone who has sought
freedom through education can identify with his pursuit of it.
I was reminded that freedom is not merely a liberated body,
but a liberated intellect.
No Program author is as physically present in Maryland as
Douglass. He was born a slave on the Eastern Shore, worked
in a shipyard in Baltimore, had a summer house in Highland
Beach and made his final home in the Anacostia neighborhood of Washington, D.C. His Anacostia home in particular
revealed the breadth of Douglass’ curiosity, innovation, and
learning. He taught himself the violin, made his own checkerboard, spoke and wrote in German and French, read in Greek
and Latin, appreciated the arts and had one of the most
modern homes of his time. However, it turns out that he
shared more than his renaissance ethic with St. John’s. When
our tour guide, Noelle, learned where I went to college her
face lit up in a smile. Knowing that her news would delight,
she exclaimed, “Douglass loved to play croquet!”
As early as age 7, still ignorant of the existence of the free
states, Douglass knew the concept of freedom. “I distinctly
remember being, even then, most strongly impressed with
the idea of being a freeman some day,” he wrote in his autobiography. He wrestled to understand the commonplace
brutality of the plantation. He was told that God, who was
good, made white men to be masters and black men to be
slaves. He recalls, “I could not reconcile the relation of
slavery with my crude notions of goodness.”
In 1826 Douglass was sent to Baltimore to live with the
Auld family. His new mistress, Sofia, began to teach the 9year-old Douglass how to read. The lessons were halted after
she guilelessly told her husband that “Fred” was a fine pupil.
The resistance of his master awoke in Douglass a “slumbering train of vital thought.” He suddenly understood what
had mystified him about the power men had to perpetrate
slavery. He saw ignorance at the root. He realized that,
“knowledge unfits a child to be a slave.”
If his mistress’ help cracked the door to literacy, his
master’s resistance only reinforced the importance of
pressing all the way through. He reflected later that, “He is
whipped oftenest, who is whipped easiest.” Douglass was not
easily whipped, either by the obstacles keeping him from an
education or by the brutality he faced later.
The speeches he found in his first book, The Columbian
Orator, gave him the means to articulate his own thoughts.
“The more I read them, the better I understood them. The
reading of these speeches added much to my limited stock of
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 }
�{Frederick Douglass}
chad salecker
language, and enabled me to give
tongue to many interesting
thoughts, which had frequently
flashed through my soul, and
died away for want of utterance.”
He had discovered the power of
naming. Notably, Douglass also
pored over a short dialogue in
The Columbian Orator between a
master and his freshly captured
runaway slave. The master points
to the kindnesses he has shown to
his slave and insists that the slave
explain why he attempted
escape. The arguments of the
black man sway the master at
every turn; in the end, the master
emancipates him. Douglass’ and
his lifelong devotion to speaking
for social justice can be seen as a
living out of the texts that first
gave voice to his own thoughts
and desires.
After seven years in Baltimore
he was sent to St. Michael’s.
When Mr. Covey, the man hired
to break him, gave him a serious
head wound for being too ill to work, Douglass walked the
12 miles to St. Michaels and sought help from his master.
He knew he would receive no aid on the grounds of his
humanity, but argued that as property, he would be irreversibly damaged. His master sent him back. Douglass
returned to the farm of Mr. Covey and refused to be beaten.
He recounts that he and Mr. Covey gripped each other in a
cow pen for several hours and that there were no blows
exchanged between the men because Douglass neither
The Frederick Douglass summer home: Twin Oaks in
Highland Beach, Maryland. 410-267-6960 (open by
appointment)
Frederick Douglass National Historic Site: Cedar Hill
in Anacostia:
www.nps.gov/archive/frdo/freddoug.html
The Banneker-Douglass Museum in Annapolis,
Maryland: www.bdmuseum.com
Douglass on the Eastern Shore of Maryland: Douglass
was born on the Anthony farm, near the banks of the
Tuckahoe River. A historical marker on the Eastern
Shore on Route 328 is six miles away from Douglass’
birthplace.
15
In Frederick Douglass, Laurel
Pappas (outside the BannekerDouglass house in Annapolis)
found a man devoted to education
as a means of improving the world.
administered nor permitted them.
“This battle was…the turning
point in my ‘life as a slave.’ It
rekindled in my breast the smouldering embers of liberty; it
brought up my Baltimore dreams,
and revived a sense of my own
manhood. I was a changed being
after that fight. I was nothing
before; I WAS A MAN NOW.”
Four years later he escaped
disguised as a sailor, and his free
papers were purchased in 1845 by
friends. However, before he was
legally emancipated Douglass
made himself free through his
access to the written word, by
gaining the power to name his own
thoughts, and by confirming and
embracing his stature as a man.
His learning was not static. He
taught black men to understand and love words, and later,
when he was invited by abolitionists to join their circuit, he
taught white men to understand and hate slavery. When
initially invited to speak he was instructed to tell his story and
leave the philosophy to the white abolitionists. Douglass
chafed in this role. He later wrote that repeating the same
story night after night “was a task altogether too mechanical
for my nature. I could not always obey, for I was now reading
and thinking.” He wanted to do more than relay the horrors
of slavery; he wanted to condemn them. In a nation deeply
saturated in its prejudices Douglass persisted and became
one of the most gifted orators America has ever known.
In reading, I was enthralled by Douglass’ spiritedness. His
palpable legacy in Maryland helped me to meet, not simply
the force of Douglass’ sentiments, but a man. The bestselling
author I encountered did not help me sort out the particulars
of what I should do with myself, but his example encouraged
me. Douglass is a reminder that a true education, while for its
own sake, is toward practical life.* x
*“Statement of Educational Policy and Program,” Spring
2006, Michael Dink (A75)
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 }
�16
{The Program}
ON FREEDOM
“In any account of Freedom the great symbols
are chains and fetters. There is no universal and
immediately transparent symbol of Freedom as
such. The torch and the Statue of Liberty, the
Phyrigian cap, the gesture of open and uplifted
arms—these all symbolize freedom at best indirectly, by way of some historic or sentimental
connotations. But chains—that’s different. They
mean, directly, always and under all circumstances, compulsion. Why is this so? I think,
because, in the most concrete way, we are never
free. We are inescapably bound to the necessities
of life, we cannot escape death; we depend
intrinsically on everything around us, in the
present as well as in the past.”
– Jacob Klein, “The Problem of Freedom.”
I
n an essay he delivered 40 years ago at what
was then the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies, Jacob Klein spoke of both
political freedom and the freedom of
human beings as “thinking beings and as
beings having a will.” The concept of
freedom comes up frequently in program
readings, from Aristotle to Faulkner. In readings such
as the Dred Scott decision, the concept of freedom is
made most clear when we’re confronted with its opposite: bondage. The College asked three tutors to think
about freedom and write an essay. Not surprisingly,
the Program itself came to mind for tutor Jon
Lenkowski. Bill Pastille questions whether each individual unknowingly sets up barriers to freedom.
And Claudia Honeywell turned to a fictional character, Mrs. Dalloway, to examine freedom through the
difficult choices of one woman’s life.
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 }
�17
jennifer behrens
{The Program}
The Being-at-Work of Human Freedom
by Jon Lenkowski, tutor, Annapolis
As much as is possible, given all of the external exigencies
to which we are subject in our daily lives, St. John’s College
tries to provide us with freedom from certain sorts of wants
and needs, as well as freedom from care and from distraction. The ancient word for this condition is schole, from
which we get our modern words “school” and “scholar.”
The word schole originally means leisure, as well as the
place where leisure activity takes place, therefore
suggesting a deep connection between leisure and study, or
that study is the proper work of leisure. The liberal arts
have been traditionally conceived as the arts of freedom,
not only because they depend on leisure, but also because
they provide us with certain kinds of resources to help lead
us out of ignorance and blindness. In this way the liberal
arts can be viewed as liberating.
Any liberal arts college worth its salt must subscribe to
this view of the liberal arts. But here at St. John’s we go even
further than this: Learning can itself be slavish. What I
mean by this is that one can become enthralled by any
number of great thinkers, so that one takes a fancy to a new
way of thinking, or a new view of things, or a new technical
vocabulary, and learns it almost by rote, letting it take
possession of one’s soul without scrutinizing it carefully
enough to see whether it is really worthy of such an exalted
status. And then there are all the various methods and
procedures and models that one comes across in this or that
departmental specialty; these tend to be forced upon the
learner as though they were simply the truth of things; and
even without this compulsion and enforcement these also
often have a tendency to insinuate themselves into our
souls surreptitiously and almost automatically. These are
all forms of enslavement and un-freedom. And thus it is the
task of the liberal arts to be liberating in yet a further way,
that is, to help us develop powers of criticism such that we
don’t simply and immediately internalize unthinkingly
what we read, hear or learn.
Thus then the liberal arts as liberating. But all this is in
a way only preparatory to another freedom, which is the
most essential sort of freedom that we can achieve here.
It is perhaps the quintessence of our interior freedom.
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 }
�18
{The Program}
with it a new responsibility—
viz. to seek out those great
thinkers who can best help us
to formulate questions in just
the right way, and help us
pursue them and think about
them most profitably—for
without this guidance we run
the risk of missing many
things, as well as the risk of
trusting in our own abilities
alone, and just spinning
our own wheels, as self-indulgently delightful as that may
be.
jennifer behrens
This is the freedom of
thought, the freedom to be
able to think in whatever
direction the logos seems to
lead us, to follow its pointings wherever they may lead,
without fear of reprisal or
consequence—to question
and interrogate each of these
pointings as vigorously as we
can at each and every step of
the way, and then to be able
to say openly what we have
learned and what we think.
But this freedom also brings
Freedom: Comedy?
William Pastille, tutor, Annapolis
Some years ago I gave a lecture questioning the value of questioning. The Socratic project of radical questioning in the
service of the Delphic injunction “Know thyself” had become
unsatisfying for me. It seemed that all the questioning I was
doing was merely uncovering a host of unexamined prejudices,
long-standing beliefs, and inherited errors that had been
planted—often without my knowledge—in a hidden part in my
soul. For all I could tell, this subconscious network of thought
was irreducibly complex; and if that were the case, the Socratic
project would never be realized. I could spend my entire life
exposing the errors and the ignorance of my subconscious
“self” to the light of day, sanitizing its piles of trash, cleaning up
its mistakes, patching its holes—and I would be no closer to
knowing myself at death than I was at birth. Or, as Schiller once
put it, I would “miss” myself for the sake of an unrealizable
Socratic project.
In fact, it seemed to me then that the subconscious self
controls our lives far more than the conscious one. The whole
attempt to probe, to question assumptions, and to correct
errors is conditioned by the subconscious self, since it is the
source of the difficulties that radical questioning seems to
uncover, and it retains them until the conscious self happens to
light on one of them. Hence, the Socratic project is a sort of selfdeluding servitude to the hidden self: by convincing our
conscious self that something is being accomplished by our
continual exposure of unexamined assumptions, we conceal or
play down the impossibility of the project and the futility of our
activity. The subconscious self will never let go, no matter how
many errors the conscious self corrects. Seen from this perspec-
tive, questioning leads to slavery rather than to freedom.
In the question period, my colleague Chaninah Maschler
asked, “What is the obsession with freedom? Why is freedom so
important that it overrides everything else?”
“It bothers me,” I replied, “to think that something else is
living my life for me.”
“You should be grateful!” she shot back.
Everyone else in the room, including me, burst into laughter.
***
Of course, I thought that Ms. Maschler had somehow misapprehended my point, but in the days that followed, her “You
should be grateful!” kept running through my mind. Soon I
realized that it was a signal directing my attention to the fact
that I had gotten something very wrong. And it was not long
before the problem made itself known.
By assuming that the unconscious self was dominant, I had
granted it autonomy in its relations with the conscious self. But
surely this is a mistake. The unconscious self is evidently not
wholly self-determining, since ideas surreptitiously enter it
from the outside, and since the conscious self can modify it
through Socratic inquiry. So neither the conscious self nor the
subconscious self are independent, stable, fundamental beings.
Was it possible that there could be a more fundamental self? If
so, where was it, and how could I come to know it?
It turns out that there is a candidate for this more fundamental self. It is an aspect of consciousness that is sometimes
called “the watcher.” Despite the mystical overtones, there is
really nothing strange or extraordinary about it, even though
for the most part we do not notice its activity. In order to notice
it, you need to “step aside” from your thoughts and perceptions. The process for uncovering the watcher is well known in
meditative traditions, and is pretty simple: Choose a quiet place
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 }
�19
{The Program}
As paradoxical as this formulation may seem, it is—
finally—this interior freedom of thought that is the great
freedom that we have tried to force you to exercise.
Now, having said all of this, let me add a restriction: We
tutors are always under the gun. We spend the better part of
our waking lives in the service of this college, preparing,
and preparing and then preparing again. The things we
study are so difficult and so many-sided. A single page of a
book may point in a dozen different directions, and we feel
obligated—and it is both an intellectual and a moral obligation—to follow up each and every one of these leads. There
never seems to be enough time. We always feel rushed and
hardly ever feel adequate to the task. Usually we prepare
right up to class-time, and almost always go to class
thinking: if only we had another hour or two! But once
where you can be alone, and close your eyes. In your mind’s ear,
recite a line of poetry that you know well. Slow it down progressively until there are long gaps between the words. Then
concentrate intently on the gaps between the words. If you do
this repeatedly and with persistence, you will sooner or later
notice the presence of a constantly active awareness that is
always ready to take up content in the form of thoughts or
perceptions, but is just as lively when no such stimuli are
present. As far as I can tell, it is always the same every time I
clear space for it—an empty attentiveness without distinguishing marks. Is this the independent, stable, and fundamental self that grounds the unconscious and the conscious
selves?
It seems unlikely. Although it appears to have stability, it is
hardly self-determining: it cannot resist being filled with
content. The conscious self must strive to keep thoughts and
perceptions off to the side in order for the watcher to remain in
the open. This shows that the watcher is yet another self that
dances with the conscious self in a continual interplay of
submission and dominance, servitude and freedom.
Maybe there just isn’t a fundamental self.
***
And yet perhaps we can learn something from the process of
bringing the watcher into the open. What if the stepping aside
that makes room for the watcher is the right kind of activity, but
just isn’t complete enough to clear the way for the fundamental
self? What if we need to step aside not only from thoughts and
perceptions, but also from the body, the conscious self, the
subconscious self, the watcher, our memories, our various
identities, and whatever else may be in our makeup—from
everything that makes us ourselves? What if only something
that total could open up the clearing necessary for the funda-
Our classes work because we
have trusted you and you have
lived up to that trust.
Jon Lenkowski
inside the classroom something magical happens: the
conversation starts and a spirit of fluency takes over where
we anticipated only a sort of stuttering and hemming and
hawing. And so the class goes on quite wonderfully as
though it had a life and spirit of its own. And so it turns out
that we were all up to the task after all. And this happens
because our students have also been busy, preparing and
mental self to appear? What if only something like that could
reveal to us the “something else” to which we should be
grateful for living our lives for us?
Strictly speaking, such a total stepping aside is inconceivable. It would be a complete metastrophe, a turning of our
backs to our very existence, a kind of self-naughting. And if an
inconceivable experience of this kind were to open a clearing
for the fundamental self, then it would also be a supreme
paradox: how could we be gone and yet something be left over?
It seems likely that the approach to such an experience would
be terrifying, amounting, as it were, to a kind of death. And
indeed, in religious and mystical traditions where something
like this collapse of the self is discussed, it is often treated as a
death. Hence the famous dictum attributed to Mohammed:
“Die before ye die.”
But I wonder what the experience would look like on the
other side of the collapse. Would it be like suddenly getting the
punch line to a gag that had seemed utterly nonsensical beforehand?
***
There is an old Zen joke: A student approaches his master with
the question “Master, how can I be liberated?”
“Who binds you?” the master responds.
“Why no one binds me, master.”
“Then why do you want to be liberated?” the master says with
just a hint of a smile.
Wouldn’t it be ironic if we have been missing ourselves just
because we are in our own way; if the divine comedy really is a
joke—and the joke is on us; if the best way to step out of our own
way is to fall out of it by slipping on the banana peel of being?
Wouldn’t it be funny if learning to laugh at ourselves is the real
key to ultimate freedom? x
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 }
�20
{The Program}
preparing again. Our classes work because we have trusted
you and you have lived up to that trust by investing yourselves in our common enterprise.
You are not our pupils, but rather our co-workers, since
we learn from you, as you learn from us. This makes you full
partners in this great adventure of the Spirit that is at once
the quintessential being-at-work of human freedom.
Adapted from a toast given in December 2008 to degree
candidates of the Graduate Institute, Annapolis.
The Freedom to Be Herself
By Claudia Honeywell, tutor, Santa Fe
jennifer behrens
Thanks to the education and opportunity we have had, our
most pressing concern with freedom is often with the
highly individual choices that give us the freedom to be
ourselves. Yet our personal choices may be difficult for
those who love us to understand or even accept.
Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway gives an interesting
example of this. Peter Walsh, who has loved Clarissa for
30 years, does not understand why she rejected him and
chose instead Richard Dalloway and a marriage devoid of
passion.
The loss of personal freedom that Clarissa’s choice
entailed is emphasized throughout the novel, beginning
with the famous opening line which introduces her only
by her husband’s name and limits her autonomy to a frivolous trip to the flower shop. Yet in spite of being defined by
her husband, Clarissa has not succumbed, like Lady Bradshaw, to the “slow sinking, waterlogged, of her will into
his” (100). In fact, she is more open-minded than she was
30 years ago: “She would not say of any one in the world
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 }
�{The Program}
21
Peter realizes that there is a connection between the way
now that they were this or were that… and she would not
Clarissa’s “emotions [are] all on the surface” (75) and her
say of Peter, she would not say of herself, I am this, I am
creativity, her “extraordinary gift of making a world of her
that” (8).*
own wherever she happened to be” (75). Peter credits
Clarissa chose to marry Richard although she knew
Clarissa’s detachment with giving her this ability to express
herself to have stronger feelings for Peter. As the novel
life fully by her presence, to make a world of her own,
progresses, her choice appears due to something unfeeling
“to sum it all up in the moment as she passed” (174). Unlike
in Clarissa herself. Peter would like to condemn her for
Peter and Sally Seton, who are diminished in the post-war
“this coldness, this woodenness”, but instead he senses
world, the detached Clarissa retains her compelling
that it is “something very profound” and finds himself on
presence.
the day of the novel “unable to get away from the thought of
Peter and Sally looked for fulfillment in private life, but
her… trying to explain her” (76).
this option was never open to Clarissa, for private life
Clarissa’s lack of feeling is what connects her to
demands the feeling that she lacks. Clarissa can only
Septimus, her parallel character in the novel. Clarissa,
express herself socially, where human relathinks Peter, is “cold as an icycle” (80),
tions are more abstract than intimate. She
while Septimus, the narrator tells us
sees her party as an occasion to get at somerepeatedly, “could not feel” (86). This
thing “unreal in one way; much more real
quality of detachment, explored through
in another” (171) and her party is for her an
these two otherwise unrelated characters,
end in itself: “it was an offering to
is the main theme of the novel. Septimus is
combine, to create, but to whom? An
driven to suicide because those around
offering for the sake of offering, perhaps”
him are so threatened by his detachment.
(222). Clarissa’s connection is not to indiClarissa avoided Septimus’ fate by rejecting
viduals, but to human life as a whole: “in
Peter, with whom “everything had to be
the ebb and flow of things, here, she
shared; everything gone into” (8). By
survived. . .she was part” (9).
choosing to live “like a nun” with the
Claudia Honeywell
Until the final lines of the novel, Peter
emotionally undemanding Richard, Clarissa
thinks of this as Clarissa’s “transcendental
Dalloway has ensured that she will not be
theory” (152), which, he acknowledges,
harassed for her own detachment.
“worked to this extent: brief, broken as their actual meetAlthough not an artist, Clarissa thus has a certain
ings had been… the effect of them on his life was immeastemperamental connection to the woman of “A Room of
urable” (153). But in the novel’s closing line, Peter finds
One’s Own” who needs “money and a room of her own if
that Clarissa’s transcendence is not just theoretical, it
she is to write fiction” (4). In “A Room of One’s Own,”
manifests in her being, in her presence in the world.
Virginia Woolf suggests that detachment is a truer artistic
Through Peter’s experience of Clarissa’s presence, we
response than passion. Romance, she says, may have been
learn that Clarissa has retained the rare and personal
always an illusion:
freedom of being herself.
“Shall we lay the blame on the war? When the guns fired
Clarissa’s power to draw Peter fully into the present is a
in August 1914, did the faces of men and women show so
creative power, akin to the power of the author herself. In
plain in each other’s eyes that romance was killed?. . . .Why,
“A Room of One’s Own,” Virginia Woolf discusses the
if it was an illusion, not praise the catastrophe, whatever it
difficulties that women have faced in developing their
was, that destroyed illusion and put truth in its place?” (15).
creative powers. Clarissa’s strange choice to marry Richard
Although Clarissa’s enigmatic detachment was out of
now appears guided by her woman’s intuition of how to
place during the pre-war summer of romance and
protect and develop her own unique self. Mrs. Dalloway
courtship that ended with her choice to marry Richard, it is
gives us a woman’s insight into the source of creativity and
suited to the realism of the post-war aesthetic. Peter, who
encourages us to give up our romantic illusions and learn,
once believed that passion was the most important thing in
with Clarissa, to “wish everybody merely to be themselves”
life, has since learned that it is not passion but detachment
(126).
that gives “the supreme flavour to existence—the power of
* Line numbers are from the Harcourt edition.x
taking hold of experience, of turning it round, slowly, in
the light.” (79).
Clarissa can only
express herself
socially, where
human relations
are more abstract
than intimate.
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 }
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{Resilience}
RESILIENCE
in the face of
RECESSION
by Patricia Dempsey
U
nemployment, foreclosures, bankruptcies—these
are unsettling times for
Americans. The experiences of these four Johnnies reflect the gravity of a
prolonged recession, but they also inspire
optimism. Policy analyst Jim Sorrentino
(A80) helps people keep their homes.
Small business owner Trudy Koch
(AGI82) rides out the recession in a tiny
Virginia town, helping others along the
way. Mandy Dalton (A89) fearlessly
ventures into a new career. And in California, where the economy is staggering,
therapist Tom Horvath (A75) teaches
clients to hang on even when they’re
losing everything.
“This is A bout Community”
Jim Sorrentino (A80) Offers Hope for Homeowners
Jim Sorrentino (A80) fondly remembers the movie It’s a
Wonderful Life from the days when he ran the film program
at St. John’s. When the Depression hits, there’s a run on the
bank, and George Bailey offers the cash he saved for his
honeymoon trip to keep the Building & Loan and his
Bedford Falls neighbors afloat. “Let’s face it,” says
Sorrentino, a policy analyst at the Office of Housing and
Urban Development. “There are no George Baileys
anymore. Lenders, whether they are large or small companies, aren’t interested in the homeowner. Once they originate a loan for a home mortgage, they immediately sell it
and get it off their books. Once it’s sold, the homeowner’s
ability to stay above water is no longer the lender’s
problem. There is no sense of community anymore.”
At HUD headquarters in Washington, D.C., an Orwellian
concrete building that Sorrentino and his colleagues affectionately call “10 floors of basement,” the water-cooler talk
includes terms like “ninja loans,” “subprime,” “trenches,”
and “foreclosure contagion.” Working in a windowless
office, Sorrentino is one of many anonymous, unsung
heroes of the bailout, something of a modern-day George
Bailey. He doesn’t hand over his own cash, but Sorrentino
was tapped by the Treasury Department in 2008 to help
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 }
�{Resilience}
“There are no George Baileys anymore.”
mike gillispie
Jim Sorrentino (A80)
Jim Sorrentino, outside HUD headquarters in Washington, D.C., is an unsung hero of the Bailout.
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 }
23
�24
{Resilience}
of Chicago and after class, this gentlemen
craft a plan to funnel Troubled Asset Relief
came up to me. He was from a mediumProgram (TARP) funds into the right
large mortgage lender. He didn’t exactly
hands. The funds provide lender incentives
say we [HUD] were wasting our time, but
for foreclosure prevention and relief.
he implied it. He said, ‘Nice presentation,
“My job is public service,” says
but I gotta tell you the next big thing is
Sorrentino. “I want to help people stay in
subprime mortgages. Lenders will look at
their homes. What one person pays out,
your programs and say, ‘This is too complianother benefits from. In this way we
cated. There are so many rules, consumer
are in this bailout together. This is about
Jim Sorrentino
protections, to get an FHA-insured mortcommunity.”
gage, so we’re going to get out of the FHA
In 2008 Sorrentino was tapped to work
and all its verifications.’”
for six months in the Treasury’s newly created HomeownAt that time lenders were beginning to eagerly extend
ership Preservation Office, assisting in the development of
subprime or “ninja” (no income, no job, no assets) loans to
the Making Home Affordable program, the federal governhomeowners. “The mortgage business came up with all
ment’s attempt to address the housing part of the economic
sorts of creative terms to aggressively market these
crisis. Today Sorrentino is back at HUD, continuing to
subprime loans to homeowners. They refer to subprime
work on foreclosure relief through the recently revised
loans as ‘nonprime’ or ‘fault A rating’—that is one of my
Hope for Homeowners program, administered by the
favorites. One lender, Countrywide, called their program
Federal Housing Administration (FHA). As a result of this
Whole Spectrum. No credit? No problem. We’re Whole
program, the percentage of FHA loans is on the rise. “The
Spectrum, for everyone, like a big happy family. Thus, the
FHA market share dropped dramatically over the years.
magic of mortgage-backed securities took flight. The
Now we’re on our way to close to 20 percent. By the end of
lender could sell the loan in a package very quickly and be
the year 30 percent of the nation’s homebuyers will be in
done with it. When the loans were off their books, it was not
FHA mortgages.” That’s compared to just 2 percent of
their problem.”
homeowners in 2005-6, he points out.
Investment banks and hedge funds bought mortgageIn 1985, Sorrentino, just out of University of Maryland’s
backed securities to sell to investors. “Depending on the
School of Law, was hired by HUD’s Baltimore field office as
amount of risk involved they would package these things
an attorney-advisor to assist homeowners facing foreclointo ‘trenches’—pronounced “tra-ah-h-nches.” They loved
sure when Baltimore’s slumping steel industry left thouto use the fancy French terminology,” explains
sands out of work. Then he went to HUD headquarters as a
Sorrentino. “This was all part of the marketing hype, the
policy analyst in foreclosure prevention and relief and dealt
sales seduction.”
with the collapse of the shale oil industry in Colorado in the
The lure of easy money attracted not just unsophisticated
late 1980s. “Those were regional crises,” Sorrentino
borrowers, but highly educated, savvy borrowers who
explains. “What we haven’t had for a long time is a collapse
thought “their property would appreciate until the end of
of national scale. I remember in the late 1980s going out to
time,” says Sorrentino. “People were getting fairly complex
our office in Denver and driving down street after street
loans, an adjustable rate tied to the London Libor rate,
and seeing foreclosure signs. Those folks left—they went to
terms many of us have never heard of. How is that person,
another city. They had a place to go. Now there is no place
even a highly educated person, supposed to really underthat is a safe haven financially. So we are all in this
stand what kind of obligation he or she has signed?” By
together.”
contrast, Sorrentino has kept a tight rein on his own
Sorrentino first heard the term “subprime” in Chicago
finances and only refinanced his home once in the last
over a decade ago. “In 1998 I taught a class on a program
seven years. “We only took out enough to cover the
that required all FHA lenders to evaluate potential homeexpenses of adopting our children,” he says, “and just last
owners. I taught this program at the Federal Reserve Bank
“Now there is no
place that’s a safe
haven financially.
So we’re all in this
together.”
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�{Resilience}
month we refinanced a second
time, for home renovations.”
For those like Sorrentino, who
have managed their finances
conservatively, shelling out tax
dollars for TARP bailout funds is
a tough pill to swallow. He
understands why people who
live within their means angrily
wonder why their tax dollars
should help those who didn’t.
“My answer is this is a national
crisis,” he says. “Besides, how
many foreclosed homes do you
want on your street lowering
your property values? In places
like Detroit there is something
we call ‘foreclosure contagion.’
Guys pull up, kick down the
door, and remove all the copper
pipes from foreclosed home
after home. The values deflate
even further. We need to all care. We need to pull together
to get through.”
Though he primarily deals with foreclosure policy, in
some cases borrowers track Sorrentino down. Sometimes,
they’re referred to him after they’ve complained to their
congressman, senator, or even the White House about the
lenders’ terms for their restructured loans. If a case looks
reasonable, it may land on his desk, and Sorrentino reviews
the case with the loan servicer, sees if the lender violated
policy, and gets the HUD field office involved to offer
housing counsel to the borrower. “I try as much as possible
not to be a go-between between borrower and lender –that’s
not my job, but I’ve done it on many occasions. I have held
onto thank-you letters from borrowers that I have helped
out. I hope that as the years went on they managed to get
their lives straightened out. I hope I helped them in some
way with that.”
Now that the percentage of FHA loans is increasing,
Sorrentino is home on weekends, no longer putting in
extra hours. This leaves him more time to spend with his
wife, his 6-year-old daughter and 6-month-old son. It’s a
25
While the recession means slow sales at her quilt shop, Trudy
Koch is devoting time to making quilts for good causes.
sad irony that the Sorrentinos were able to adopt their son
because the child’s mother, who lives in Maryland, could
not afford to raise him. In that way, Sorrentino says, “Our
baby was a gift of the recession.”
Quilts Made With Love
Trudy Koch (AGI85) Fosters Goodwill
Times are threadbare in Tappahannock, Virginia, a sleepy
colonial town along the Rappahannock River. “There are
now three ‘cash-to-you’ places in town. This is a bad sign,”
says quilt shop owner Trudy Koch (AGI85). “Some weeks I
sell not even a yard of fabric.” While sales of fabric and
notions at her downtown shop, Water & Queen, have
slowed, Koch is rich in time, friends, and energy. The long
tables in her brightly lit shop in a rambling colonial house
are often filled with customers, neighbors, and friends,
who quilt and talk while listening to the radio. Water &
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{Resilience}
“The director was so helpful. St. John’s changed my life,”
Queen is more than a gathering spot; it’s a stage for a recesshe says. She attended during summers and cooked familysion trend Koch calls a return to service. “Some things in
style dinners for fellow GIs to pay for gas for the drive to
this depression, and people sense it, are important. These
and from her home in Silver Spring, Maryland, where
are the things that do not cost money—kindness and free
she raised six children as a single mother. “Money was so
energy. It’s not about turning a buck. It’s about goodwill
tight that during the week when I was in Annapolis, I
and service.”
cooked big dinners and charged $3 a person,” she says.
Koch, who settled here after retiring from teaching,
“I would write the menu on a brown paper bag—things like
organizes fellow quilters to create “Quilts of Valor,” handfried chicken, corn on the cob, cornbread—and post it.
stitched works of art, often in red-white-and-blue and starsWe’d eat at the house where I was staying. The sense of
and-stripes motifs, for injured vets of the Iraqi war. “These
community was wonderful.”
are soldiers who are severely mutilated, legs blown off,
Koch creates a sense of community wherever she lives.
limbs severed. How good it must feel to drape beautiful
Even though she’s a “come-here” in Tappahannock, she’s
colors over these injuries, whether in a wheelchair, or over
gained acceptance in a town sometimes wary of outsiders.
a bed, they can savor the bright, cheery colors.” Koch’s
“When strangers walk in the shop I say, ‘Come visit. Let’s
group, called the Sting Ray Quilters, is part of a larger
put on a pot of tea and talk.’ You meet the most wonderful
national movement and ships the quilts to vets in regional
people. They tell me their life stories. Some come to quilt.
hospitals as well as those across the country and overseas.
I don’t charge people anything to use the space. Eventually
“Every now and then we get a thank-you letter, but that
they will buy some fabric.”
isn’t why I make them,” says Koch. “Down in the corner of
mine I embroider ‘God, bless this American soldier’
The Fears of a Clown
because I feel so deeply for the tragedies of war and how it
affects these strong young people. These quilts are made
Mandy Dalton (A89) Shifts from Mime to New Media
with love.”
Koch also creates brightly colored quilts—block square,
When people cut back on expenses, apparently clowns are
diamond, and Baltimore album patterns, and fancy
among the first to go. That’s what Mandy Dalton (A89),
appliqués—for those in need who live closer to home. She
known as “Mandy the Clown,” was facing when the
and fellow quilters, a cross-section from various church
economy sank. Like Americans in all walks of life she has
denominations in Rappahannock County, reach out to the
had to reinvent herself to survive.
homeless and others in county shelters and rehab centers.
“Around 9-11, back in 2001, the bottom dropped out of
The program is called “Project in So Much,” a reference to
the event market in this area. That’s how I was making
a Bible verse: “. . . for what I do unto brothers that you do
most of my money,” says Dalton. “During the next six
unto me in so much. . . .” “I donate fabric and we make
months special events went into a tailspin. Municipal funcquilts in my shop for the homeless in shelters for battered
tions, grand openings, corporate events weren’t
women, lap robes for elderly in wheelhappening. People didn’t feel like celechairs at rehab centers, and even tote bags
brating. Then there was the sniper scare in
lined with cheery fabric for the handiWashington, D.C., and the anthrax
capped.” Her group is called “The
threats, schools were shutting down.
Menders,” says Koch, because “we hope
People had the jitters.” Even the buildup
we mend hearts and lives as well as fabric.”
to Iraq slashed her bookings says Dalton,
Koch is no stranger to resiliency and
who had numerous clients at Fort Meade,
survival. About 30 years ago, then a public
an army base in Maryland. “Not many
school teacher in Montgomery County,
people want to have a party when their
Mandy Dalton
Maryland, she wrote a letter to the Gradloved ones are going to war.”
uate Institute asking for a scholarship.
Just as things were starting to pick up
“Not many people
want to have a party
when their loved ones
are going to war.”
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�{Resilience}
again, the recession “knocked my business out of the
water,” says Dalton. This past February, she didn’t have
a single booking. And one of her corporate clients who
owed her money declared bankruptcy. “By the time I would
have gone to New York and attended the bankruptcy
proceedings to try and collect it, I would have gotten
pennies on the dollar. Besides, can you imagine the judge
in bankruptcy court, what he or she would have to say about
a fee for a clown?”
Dalton, who attended professional clown school for two
years before attending St John’s, has spent decades cultivating what she calls her clown personae. “There is no
pretense. You pull something out of yourself and reveal it.
My persona is an overgrown 5-year-old. I’m a rag doll
on Red Bull—with red hair.” She’s feisty and resilient,
much like Pippi Longstocking, but last winter when she
was laid up with a back injury, Dalton hit bottom. “I was
flat on my back for three
days. Clowning is very physical work. I juggle, I walk on
stilts, I goof around a lot
and fall a lot. My knees
can’t take the stilts anymore,
and my back is in bad shape
after falling for more than
20 years. My doctor wants me
to stop.”
Finally, Dalton faced the
fact that she had to find
another way to make a living.
Since then she has transitioned her flair for performance, stunts and stilts into
another precarious profession: journalism and its
cutting edge of new media.
Dalton’s bright red hair
stands out on the United
Press International (UPI)
27
website, where her footage as a news videographer
conducting man-on-the-street interviews appears in the
“Issue of the Day” feature. “I’ve always been a news junkie
and have had a long interest in video—the production,
writing, editing—since high school. I also still love the
ability for analysis that I cultivated at St. John’s.” Dalton
sought mentoring from a friend who is a production editor
at ABC News and informally worked as his personal editing
assistant. Then last fall she landed her part-time internship
with UPI. “I tell people I’m transitioning right now.
At 43 looking for a new line of work means I’ve been facing
a lot of unspoken age discrimination. But given the recession and the fact that so many people are looking to career
shift, this has been a good time to transition.”
Being a news and event videographer adds another
dimension to her repertoire as professional clown, drama
instructor, and mentor to youth. “The best part is how
When bookings for “Mandy the
Clown” began dropping off,
Mandy Dalton looked to her
talents for a new career plan.
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{Resilience}
clowning and news videography inform each other. They
feed one another in a natural way.” For instance when
Dalton conducts interviews for UPI, she poses questions
that her producer has written on a subject that is breaking
headline news. Dalton stops some 50-75 people a day to ask
them for 30 seconds of their time to comment on these
issues. Her producers may write the questions, but it’s up to
Dalton to get people to open up. “Most people walk fast,
avoid eye contact, talk on their cell phones, but I have this
gesture from my clown training—I keep my mike pointed
down and put my hand over my heart. I don’t know
scientifically why it works, but it does. People stop and talk
to me. From my years of clowning I’m more sensitive and I
find this gesture helps. People see my sincerity. I fear
becoming robotic, too aggressive, chasing the bouncing
silver ball of news.”
Some days as a UPI videographer are especially
compelling. “It involves writing, creating, observing,
listening, storytelling—all the things I love. The Johnnie in
me likes to go out and start a conversation with people
about random subjects. When [Justice David] Souter was
retiring from the Supreme Court, we jumped on it to find
out what qualities people would want to see in a Supreme
Court Justice. A woman rushed out of Starbucks and said to
me, ‘I have to talk to you about this.’”
In the future Dalton wants to improvise and create her
own questions for her video interviews. “Money is fascinating, especially in a recession. What is the meaning of
money ultimately? Have you done any
bartering to save money? I’d like to
ease into a conversation about money.
People want to know how I fare as a
clown in the recession. What about
the other side? I want to know how
they are dealing with money.” She
even has already found some people
who want to laugh about money.
“They are laughing through their
tears about money, but who knows,
the desire to laugh means that my
clowning business might pick up
again.”
A Lifeline in Times
of Stress
Tom Horvath (A75) Knows
How to Listen
Therapist Tom Horvath sees the
emotional toll the recession is taking
on his clients who come to him for
treatment at Practical Recovery in La
Jolla, California. One of his clients
just lost her home and is coping with
Tom Horvath’s clients are struggling
through California’s hard times.
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 }
�{Resilience}
29
as treatment. His clients include the
anger and doubt as she’s forced to make
affluent, as well as those who struggle
financial decisions. She and her husband
economically and attend free therapy
have moved into a rental property, and
sessions offered through Practical
her mother is paying for the treatment to
Recovery’s community program. Both
help them get through their crisis. “She
groups experience anger and grief related
wants to come through this with some
to their economic woes, though on
sense of honor,” Horvath says. “The bank
different scales. “We’ve had clients come
keeps squeezing her and her husband. . .
in who are under stress because they’ve
pressuring them to sign a $50,000 note to
Tom Horvath
lost a lot of money,” says Horvath. “Their
avoid foreclosure and ruining their credit
portfolios are not what they used to be.”
rating. Even though her husband is a
As a psychologist, Horvath has his pulse on crisis-related
construction worker and they are breaking even right now,
stress. As the author of the book, Sex, Drugs, Gambling
they won’t be able to keep up with those payments. She
and Chocolate: A Workbook for Overcoming Addictions, he
feels it is dishonest to sign the note, since she knows they
understands how human beings crave comfort during hard
cannot afford it.”
times. “During Hurricane Katrina, a time of catastrophe
Horvath can empathize with the stress of financial loss.
and crisis, there was an increase in substance problems. It
Horvath, who has a doctorate from the California School of
is a natural response,” says Horvath. “I have noticed statisProfessional Psychology, founded his addiction treatment
tics that show that in the last year since the recession,
center, Practical Recovery, in San Diego in 1985. Three
alcohol sales [nationwide] are up by 10 percent, romance
years ago, when San Diego’s economy took a nosedive, his
novels have seen a 33 percent increase in sales. This is a
business was hard hit. “It was a disaster,” says Horvath,
kind of female pornography; women escape into a
“Spending is more discretionary here so we felt the receswonderful relationship in these novels. Men tend to steer
sion sooner than the rest of the country. Discretionary
towards Internet porn in times of stress. The economy
spending, which includes counseling, fell dramatically.” In
dipping is a factor that is out of one’s control, so that
2006, Horvath laid off four people. “By 2007, I had to put
creates a stress. And escape is a time-honored way to deal
my own money into the practice to keep it afloat, and I took
with stress.”
no salary for a year,” he says.
In his work Horvath draws on the Johnnie approach to
Horvath hired three new employees this spring, and his
conversation and listening. As part of SMART Recovery, an
business is strong, thanks to a new Internet marketing
organization he helped to establish and led as president
strategy. As a small provider in a big industry, Horvath had
from 1995-2008, Horvath occasionally leads a SMART
difficulty competing with larger, well-known treatment
Recovery meeting, one of more than 400 recovery discuscenters such as the Betty Ford Center. In May 2008, he
sion groups held weekly around the world. “There is a
hired a consultant to help build an online presence, and the
handbook and like a math tutorial, we work through probinvestment paid off. “Since September 2009, we typically
lems,” Horvath says. “The discussion focuses on rational
rank near the top in searches for addiction counseling,”
analysis of thoughts, feelings, and situations. This is a way
Horvath says. “While revenue was down 20 percent three
to give back, especially to those who cannot afford treatyears ago, now it’s up 20 percent.”
ment. When I’m leading one of these these groups, or
With his business on solid ground, Horvath can focus on
training the volunteer facilitators, I feel very much like
what he does best: counseling clients who struggle with
a Johnnie.” x
addiction. He has clients from the San Diego area and from
around the world who come to his center, which offers both
inpatient and outpatient treatment. Horvath says Practical
Recovery offers “an empowering alternative” to the traditional view of addiction as disease and the 12-step program
“By 2007, I had to put
my own money into
the practice to keep it
afloat, and I took no
salary for a year.”
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 }
�30
{Bibliofile}
The Newton Wars and the
Beginning of the French
Enlightenment
J.B. Shank (AGI92)
University of Chicago Press (2008)
By Curtis Wilson (HA83)
J.B. Shank’s The Newton Wars and
the Beginning of the French Enlightenment is an account of changing
attitudes and controversies among
French thinkers, from the 1690s
through the 1750s, regarding the
scientific and presumptive moral and
metaphysical import of Newton’s
Principia. From the start, French
reviewers praised Newton’s mathematical achievement in this book but
complained of his failure to explain
how bodies could attract one another
gravitationally over distances
through empty space. The Cartesian
vortex theory, which assumed transmission
of force by contact of solid bodies, seemed
more rational. (Truth to tell, “solidity” and
“contact” are as problematic as action at a
distance.) Other objections, moralistic and
metaphysical, were raised later. Was not
the metaphysics implicit in Newton’s book,
Leibniz asked Samuel Clarke in 1716,
conducive to materialism, atheism, and
immorality? (See The Leibniz-Clarke
Correspondence.) At times the controversy
turned ugly.
Shank follows the twists and turns of this
discussion in detail. He focuses on the politics and sociology of it: the “self-fashioning” whereby individual players in the
field sought to create a persona that could
survive and prosper amidst controversy
and the politics of a stratified society. For
42 years, from 1697 to 1739, the ‘perpetual
secretary’ of the Académie des Sciences
was Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle, a
gentleman of the Cartesian persuasion.
He was succeeded, for still a few more
years, by another gentleman of the same
persuasion, Dortous de Mairan. For these
gentlemen, the correct posture was that of
the honnête homme, fair-minded, decent,
ready to compromise, ‘rational.’ The ultimate power over the Académie, to be sure,
rested with the King’s minister, for the
Académie was state-funded, the creature of
the monarchy.
Yet by 1758, according to d’Alembert, a
younger member of the Académie, the
Excerpt:
On May 28, 1728, a little-known member
of the Paris Academy of Sciences rose
before the assembly to deliver a paper
on celestial mechanics. The academician was Joseph Privat de Molières,
and in the spring of 1728, although fiftytwo years old, Private de Molières was
still struggling to establish his reputation as a savant. He began his career as
an Oratorian priest and teacher,
studying mathematics with Father
Reyneau at Angers in the 1690s and then
serving as a priest and professor of
mathematics at the Oratorian colleges
of Saumur, Juilly, and Soisson from
1699 to 1704. He had come to both the
Oratory and mathematics through a
devotion to the writings of Nicolas de
Malebranche, and in this way his intellectual trajectory mirrored that of many
others in France in the same period.
J.B. Shank, The Newton Wars.
Cartesian theory of vortices was a dead
duck. How had it happened? Shank
portrays the change as the result of the
self-fashionings and shrewd interventions
of two men, Pierre-Louis Moreau de
Maupertuis, working from within the
Académie des Sciences, and the enfant
terrible Voltaire, hurling his witty barbs
from the safe distance of Cirey, the home
of his learned Newtonian mistress, the
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 }
marquise du Châtelet. The important result, in Shank’s view, was the
emergence of a new public persona,
the philosophe, free-thinking, libertine, Newtonian, instigator and
agent of Enlightenment.
Unquestionably, it is a leitmotif in
a highly publicized drama. Is it the
whole story? Certain scientific
developments, I would urge, can
have had an important role in the
triumph of the Newtonian program.
In 1749 Clairaut showed that the
motion of the Moon’s apse could be
derived from Newton’s theory,
contrary to earlier failed attempts,
his own and those of other mathematicians. In 1749 d’Alembert
published his Recherches sur la
Précession des Equinoxes, showing
Newton’s attempted derivation of
the precession (in Prop.39 of Book
III of the Principia) to be fatally
flawed. But d’Alembert then went
on to show that both the precession and
the nutation (an effect established empirically by James Bradley in 1748) were exact
consequences of Newton’s theory.
Newton’s failure had been due to his lack of
a correct dynamics for rotational motion,
which had been responsible as well for his
failed disproof of the Cartesian vortex
theory of planetary motion. Also in 1749
was published Euler’s Recherches sur la
question des inégalités du mouvement de
Saturne et de Jupiter. Here Euler introduced trigonometric series, which made it
possible for the first time to compute the
mutual perturbations of planets systematically and exactly. Newton had had no way
of computing these effects. A reasonably
accurate table of the perturbations in the
Earth’s motion due to planetary perturbation became available in 1758 in Lacaille’s
Tabulae Solares. The Earth was the platform from which astronomical observations had to be made, and errors in its position were unavoidably projected into all
celestial observations.
In sum, by the 1750s a Newtonian
program to account for planetary and lunar
motions precisely was an up-and-going
enterprise, and success could be reasonably hoped for, independent of disputed
metaphysical questions. In this race the
Cartesian vortex theory was not yet out of
the starting-gate. Where to put one’s bets
was a no-brainer. x
�31
{Bibliofile}
Beatrice Hawley Award, and the Academy
of American Poets’ James Laughlin Prize.
Editor’s note: see the inside back cover of
The College for one of Waldner’s recent
poems.
Each Month I Sing
L. Luis Lopez (SFGI69)
Farolito Press, 2008
Celebrating
Johnnie Poets
Trust
Liz Waldner (A83)
Cleveland State Poetry Center, 2008
Our senses entrust to us the world that the
heart minds, and so gives us a point of
view, the “sight we hope to see through
(to) / Always.” Deeply attentive to form
and music, each of Liz Waldner’s poems,
written between the early eighties and midnineties, serves as a trust for the mending
of that sense of separateness. Ever the
stranger in yet another strange place—in
subway and orchard, ER and library, cemetery and classroom—they ask: “What is the
shape?” of the story. “Who is mindful of
me?” and sometimes answer: “Thank you,
I have enjoyed / imagining all this.”
Trust won the Cleveland State Poetry
Center’s Open Book Competition in 2008.
Born in Cleveland, Waldner grew up in
rural Mississippi and worked in various
factory, janitorial, botanical, and museum
jobs before graduating from St. John’s. She
later earned an MFA at the University of
Iowa’s Writers Workshop. She wrote for
18 years before publishing the first of her
six previous books, which have won such
awards as the Iowa Poetry Prize, the
Longino Lopez’ Each Month I Sing is a
collection of poems inspired by the months
of the year, capturing the poet’s impressions, observations, and experiences of
each month. The book won The American
Book Award, presented by the Before
Columbus Foundation at Berkeley, which
honors works that represent multicultural
diversity in American literature. The
Colorado Independent Publishers Association also honored the work with an EVVY
first-place award for poetry.
Lopez, in his 44th year of teaching, is
currently at Mesa State College in Grand
Junction, Colorado, where he has, until
recently, served as director of the Academic Honors Program. He received two
National Endowment for the Humanities
fellowships, one to study lyric poetry with
Helen Vendler at Harvard, and a second to
study the literature of innocent suffering
with Duke University’s Terrence Tilley.
Lopez has published two other volumes
of poetry, Musings of a Barrio Sack Boy
and A Painting of Sand.
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 }
Poet L.S. Klatt, author of Interloper.
Interloper
L.S. Klatt (AGI98)
University of Massachusetts Press, 2008
Lewis Skillman Klatt teaches literature and
creative writing at Calvin College in Grand
Rapids, Michigan. His poems have
appeared in Columbia Poetry Review,
Turnrow, the Southeast Review, Notre
Dame Review, Phoebe, and Five Fingers
Review. He also published a new essay on
the poetry of Walt Whitman in the
Southern Review.
In 2008, Klatt was named the winner of
the University of Massachusetts Press’
Juniper Prize, for which he was a finalist
twice before. The prize included publication of his manuscript, Interloper. The
poems in this volume unsettle frontiers
between disparate worlds so that the imagination is given room to roam: pears
become guitars, racks of ribs are
presented as steamboats, and helicopters
transmute into diesel seraphs. The poetry
aspires acrobatically in the manner of
prayers and pilots, but adventure
throughout the book is viewed as precarious and the will to conquest leads to
apocalypse and ruin. The interloper
wanders through crime scenes and crash
sites as he glosses the landscape—at home
and not at home with the America of
yesterday and tomorrow. In symbols that
scat and ricochet, the interloper scores a
new song, one that composes—and decomposes—on the page. x
�32
{Alumni Profile}
Listening to the Unknown
Michelle Vest (SF90)
by Deborah Spiegelman
“They line up. First the men, then the
women, then the children. My first job?
Fell in my lap. I was out driving around
looking to dig a grave on the outskirts of my
family’s ranch. It’s that way, you know.
It’s a country unto itself out there. We own
miles not just acres. Have for more than six
generations. Funny, it was Mexico then . . .
it’s Arizona now.”
S
o begins the dramatic monologue written and performed by
Michelle Vest (SF90), part of
her one-woman play, Sole
Survivors: Journey Across
Borders. The speaker is Maria,
the adult daughter of an Arizona rancher
who starts out with altruistic intentions
toward the migrants she encounters on her
land but eventually becomes a greedy, hardened “coyote.”
Based on extensive interviews with documented and undocumented Southwestern
migrant workers, the play is a stirring presentation of the experiences of immigrants
who risk everything for a chance at a better
life in the United States. “I wanted to look
beneath the usual stereotypes and assumptions and explore the more enlivening
truths that exist there,” Vest explains.
Inspired also by Woody Guthrie’s
“Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos),”
Vest presents four characters: the coyote
Maria, and three immigrants: Rosa, Jesus,
and Juan. Though their stories are contemporary, the characters are named for the
four deportees killed in the 1949 New
Mexico plane crash Guthrie memorialized.
Rosa, who grew up in a small Mexican
village, left her son behind to cross the
border illegally in search of work. Juan,
also undocumented, tells of how he came to
accidentally kill a man who was trying to
take his job. Once a professor in San
Salvador, Jesus was forced to flee his country
during the civil war of the 1980s. He left his
family behind to seek political asylum in the
U.S., reuniting with them 11 years later.
A mariachi band opens the play with a
traditional song about immigration and
remains on stage throughout as a Southwestern-inspired version of a Greek chorus.
Vest moves to stage right to transition from
In her play Sole Survivors, Michelle Vest
went beyond stereotypes to portray the
experiences of migrant works in America.
one character to another, changing her
shoes or shirt, or putting on a hat—all part of
the drama. “A lot of people are mesmerized
by this,” Vest says.
The shoes symbolize the many connotations of the word sole, as an allusion to the
characters’ footsteps across the border and
to the notion that the ordeal of migration is
a test of individual determinism. The play
on words (sole, soul) also underscores Vest’s
desire to draw from these stories the
common threads of humanity—love for one’s
family, hopes and dreams, resiliency, loss—
that unite people of different backgrounds
and experiences.
Since debuting her show in Santa Fe in
October 2007, Vest has performed in D.C.,
Philadelphia, and New York City. After a
sold-out show last year in New York, Sole
Survivors returned to New York in June for a
limited run at Stage Left Studio, followed by
performances in Albuquerque.
Born in Annapolis and raised just two
blocks from the St. John’s campus, Vest met
Johnnies at her family’s downtown restaurant and in the college library, her preferred
homework spot. An early enthusiast of the
classics, she developed an aptitude for
languages and fascination for other
cultures. After a year at Florida State,
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 }
she enrolled at St. John’s in Santa Fe.
“St. John’s just happened to be what I
needed,” Vest says. “To be with a group of
students who shared a similar love [for
learning] changed my whole life scholastically. I never knew that education could be
so well-rounded and that I could love every
aspect of it.”
After graduation, Vest attended the
Cleveland Institute of Arts’ international
program in Florence to study painting. She
moved to San Francisco to pursue photography and later worked as a documentary
photographer at the Smithsonian’s Museum
of Natural History. Since returning to Santa
Fe in 1997, Vest has shown her photographs
in a number of galleries around town, and
her paintings were included in the 2005
New Mexico Women in the Arts Juried
Show at the Museum of Fine Arts.
Vest found her way to performance via
dance. Physical movement, she speculates,
triggered talking, which led to acting. Keen
on developing a one-person show, Vest
plunged into a yearlong workshop taught by
Tanya Taylor Rubinstein, artistic director of
Project Life Stories (and now the director of
her show). One assignment—to deliver a
short monologue based on an interview—
changed Vest’s life. Talking with her housekeeper, a native of Mexico, Vest was struck
by both the differences and commonalities
of their lives.
Motivated by the workshop’s enthusiastic
response to her monologue, Vest began
collecting more stories, including that of a
man she had known while working in a San
Francisco café. He served as inspiration for
her character Jesus. The former professor
was now the cleaning person, while she, a
college graduate, was “taking money and
selling muffins.”
Her experience in the Program, with its
emphasis on dialogue and careful listening,
greatly influenced the spirit of Sole
Survivors, says Vest. St. John’s “was a safe
place to admit that you didn’t know something, and also to affirm the importance of
wanting to know.” If her play is part quest
for knowledge, she has found a grateful
audience. “They tell me that I did a great
service [by telling these stories],” Vest says.
“They are listening.” x
�33
{Alumni Notes}
1932
1945
HENRY SHRYOCK, JR., is a
member of the Cosmos Club of
Washington, the Wilderness
Society, the Census Alumni Association, Nature Conservancy,
Population Connection, So
Others May Eat (SOME), and the
Union of Concerned Scientists.
EDWARD MULLINIX reports: “In
recent months, I have been
heavily involved as a member of
the American College of Trial
Lawyers Task Force on
Discovery, which has been
working with the University of
Denver’s Institute for the
Advancement of the American
Legal system on a project seeking
reforms to reduce the out-ofcontrol cost of civil litigation in
the United States. Our final
report, released to the public on
March 11, 2009, puts out a series
of proposed principles for
nationwide discussion—built
around the most significant
principle, which calls for radical
reduction of the pretrial
discovery procedures currently
permissible. The report has been
the subject of widespread
publicity in the general media
and in law-related media.”
1937
A retired dental surgeon,
HAROLD BROOKS writes that he
and his wife, Norma, will be
married for 72 years on Nov. 26,
2009. They live in sunny Sebastian, Fla., and are in good health.
1942
ERNEST HEINMULLER has
published a new book, A
Different Focus. It’s available at
the college bookstore, on
Amazon.com, or in the library.
The poems are from 1938-2008,
including some haikus he wrote
his freshman year.
1943
“How nice to see the names of so
many members of the classes of
1940 through 1944 in the capital
campaign report,” writes
MARTIN ANDREWS. “They evoke
vivid and happy memories. In
recent years, the enchantment of
St. John’s has even expanded for
me by the good fortune of
meeting and getting to know the
incomparable Eva Brann.”
BURTON ARMSTRONG has been
living in Charlottesville, Va.,
since 1982. He recently became a
great-grandparent to Henry
Burton Alt, age 1.
“For the old bod I do tai chi
(after a fashion) and walk
(slowly). For the rapidly disappearing gray cells, I write stuff
for judges (incredibly technical
and boring), play mediocre
bridge, and read, most recently
Crime and Punishment with
great pleasure and American
Pastoral with lesser pleasure.
We travel lazily, mainly on cruise
ships, today’s best travel deal.
Am in the hands of doctors literally from head to toe, but hey, if I
weren’t, I probably wouldn’t be
writing this. Just the same, old
age should happen to younger
people,” writes GEORGE BRUNN.
1946
PETER WEISS, in his capacity as
president of the Lawyers
Committee on Nuclear Policy,
addressed the Nonproliferation
Treaty Conference at the United
Nations on May 5 and gave a
lecture on “The Legal Obligation
for Nuclear and General Disarmament” at a Peace Through
Law Conference in Berlin on
June 26. “I have also decided to
try my mind at topical poetry in
my retirement,” says Weiss:
If you’re feeling kind of blue/But
not unhappy through and
through/Is what you’re having a
depression/Or, you hope, just a
recession?
1950
THOMAS MEYERS writes: “I have
become one of those old men I
used to see at Homecoming when
I was a St. John’s freshman.
I recall meeting a very nice
gentleman who had been graduated from St. John’s when I was
but 6 years old. Wow! I may not
be as gentlemanly as he, but I
have made it to 87 years. And
counting!”
1955
HAROLD BAUER has taken his
life’s activities beyond the world
of music, the world in which he
has spent most of the past
50 years. Painting (mostly oils)
has become a major area of
concentration. He regularly takes
classes at the Evanston Art
Center in Illinois, where in addition to being a student, he also
serves as president of the Board
of Trustees. He also has become
an involved Rotarian. He was
first attracted to the Evanston
morning club by their extensive
involvement in international
humanitarian outreach and now
will become the chair of that
committee. He felt a strong need
to “do something” for the
severely needy of the world, and
this seemed to offer a window
into that possibility. He’s
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 }
wondering if the 55th anniversary year is going to bring classmates back to Annapolis in 2010.
JOHN GORDON retired from film
and video production in 1997 and
is happily engaged in designing
landscapes and gardens in Maryland. Most recently back to
school in the landscape architecture program at the University of
Maryland, John has taught landscape design at the USDA graduate school for two years. Having
previously traveled widely as a
documentary film cameraman,
John and his wife, Jenny, will be
in Italy this summer on a tour led
by a landscape architect.
“Anyone need a Renaissance
parterre garden designed?”
he asks.
1957
MARCIA DEL PLAIN REFF
reports that she and her
husband, Martin, are continuing
to enjoy life in Naples, Fla.
Marcia is in her third year as
president of the Naples Orchestra
and Chorus. She was playing the
violin in the orchestra but taught
herself to play the viola and made
the switch last season. Marcia
also enjoys teaching bridge
classes at the local duplicate
club. Her son, MICHAEL
O’MAHONY (A77) also lives in
Naples. The Reffs enjoyed a visit
in May to Annapolis to visit sister
PAULA DEL PLAIN BINDER
(class of 1959).
1959
ROBERTO SALINAS PRICE writes
with an update and some
Homeric musings: “A new life
begins for me with the loss of my
friend, mistress, wife, of more
than 50 years, but, in the meantime, before we meet yet again
forever, I continue with my
Homeric researches. I am
�34
{Alumni Notes}
currently writing ‘Homer, from
Scholion to Myth,’ in which I
hope to show how ‘myth’—
nonsense data about this or that—
developed from a lack of tutorial
guidance in Homeric thinking.”
1960
JOHN LANE is doing some
community work in retirement.
He is the vice president of the
Cascades Homeowner’s Association, with 6,500 households, the
largest HOA in Northern
Virginia. He is vice chairman of
the Loudon County Board of
Equalization, which hears
taxpayer appeals on assessment.
He has acquired a real estate
license and is a practicing realtor
in Great Falls, Va. “Retirement
has turned out to be a short
time,” he says. “Life is good.”
PETER RUEL writes with hopes to
attend the 50th reunion of his
class. He also noted that the
University of Chicago held a
“spring weekend” devoted to
Darwin: “How could we pass that
up? Darwin, Freud, and Einstein:
three fascinating authors for the
senior year at St. John’s.”
1961
As part of a featured exchange
titled “Life Without Lawyers” in
its May 14, 2009 issue, The New
York Review of Books published
a letter by HARRISON SHEPPARD.
Sheppard’s letter, criticizing the
book of that name by Philip K.
Howard and its review by
Anthony Lewis in the publication’s April 9, 2009, argued that
both the book and the review
failed to identify the root cause of
abuses in American legal education and practice attributable to
the dominance of an adversarial
“war-making” model as opposed
to a “problem-solving, peace-
Ahead of the Pack
C
HAMMEN (class of 1944) has been running in
races all over the country. “There was a big
runners’ weekend in Tampa, Feb. 28 to March 1,
the Gasparilla
distance classic,
with thousands of
runners from all over the U.S.,” he
writes. In the 5k race, Carl won
the M85-89 division, and his wife,
Deborah Kazor, finished twelfth
in the F55-59, which had 276
women. This summer, they were
busy training for the National
Senior Games this August in Palo
Alto, Calif. x
ARL
making model” of the kind Yale
Law school Dean Anthony
Kronman identifies as the
“lawyer-statesman ideal.” Sheppard maintains his solo civil law
practice in San Francisco while
continuing his nonfiction writing
and editing. His last published
book was Too Much for Our Own
Good: The Consumeritis
Epidemic. He is now editing the
manuscript of a distinguished
physician concerning the need to
separate the teachings of
dogmatic religion from reasonable moral judgments, and a
second manuscript relating to
the early career of Elvis Presley,
written by a woman who, as a
teenager, had dated Presley.
1962
JERRY BRENNIG reports:
“I continue to work at the
Department of State, now
12 years since I retired from the
Foreign Service. The long
commuting time is definitely a
downside, and I would like to
give more time to my garden, but
I work in the bureau that covers
Pakistan and Afghanistan (and
India, too). There is no lack of
daily stimulation and the satisfaction of being involved with
central concerns of our country.”
1963
“After more than 30 years in
advertising, I am now retired and
enjoying as many weeks on Cape
Cod as the weather will allow,”
writes JED STAMPLEMAN. “I am
also participating in the monthly
seminars held by the New York
alumni chapter. I went through a
bout of cancer but I am doing
fine, and the doctors are happy
with my recovery. Best to all at
St. John’s.”
WILL DAVIS, retired from his
longtime work as chairman of the
Board of the Berklee College of
Music, continues working for
Credit Suisse from his office in
Holderness, N.H., where he and
JESSICA HOFFMANN DAVIS (class
of 1965) now live most of the
time. Jessica retired from
Harvard in 2004 to do more
writing and has completed three
books so far. They enjoy visits
from their three sons and their
wives and their three sons’
three sons.
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 }
1965
TOM EATON is retired at age
67. He has served as class captain
and an alumni interviewer for a
number of years. Additionally, he
set up a small library fund in his
mother’s name in Santa Fe and
was able to persuade three of his
students to attend St. John’s.
In the “better late than never”
category, MICHAEL WOOLSEY
writes: “Forty-four years
removed from St. John’s and five
years into retirement, I received
this May a Master of Liberal
Studies degree from the University of Minnesota. My thesis title
is “The Limits of Liberalism:
A Study of Liberal Disillusionment in the Twentieth Century.”
The thesis relies heavily on the
political thought of former tutor
Leo Strauss and former deans
Scott Buchanan and Jacob
Klein.”
1968
“At the prompting of my children
and grandchildren, I’ve entered
the brave new world of Facebook,” confesses SARAH FISHER
(A). “It’s fun, but I wonder if I
can keep up? Time for reflection
and consideration doesn’t seem
to be part of the picture.”
DEAN HANNOTTE (A) has
created a new website devoted to
the 20th-century philosopher
Paul Rosenfels. It makes available for free all of Rosenfels’
writings as well as numerous
contributions from his many
students around the world. Visit
the Paul Rosenfels Community at
www.rosenfels.org.
ANTIGONE PHALARES (SF)
reports that the Sacramento-area
seminar group has received a
most welcome influx of a number
of local and not-so-local St. Johnnies: “Most meetings have been
�35
{Alumni Notes}
held at TOM (HA94) and Marion
SLAKEY’s home and also at other
members’ homes. I became a
grandmother December 17,
2008. Iris Aurore Marie Wastyn
Moore at three and one half
months has three passports:
Peruvian (she was born in Lima);
has an American mom (my
daughter) and a U.S. passport;
and a French passport from her
father (who is French). When a
child is born, so is a grandparent!
It’s lovely being a parent once
removed. I’m still teaching
middle-schoolers at a public
school in south Sacramento.
I have 13 more years to go to get
to 30 [years]!”
1969
The Before Columbus Foundation awarded LONGINO LUIS
LOPEZ (SFGI) the American
Book Award 2008 for his latest
book of poetry titled Each Month
I Sing. The book also won first
place in poetry from the
Colorado Independent
Publishers Association.
1970
DAVID DEBUS (SF) finished a
bachelor’s degree in English at
UCLA, and after three years as a
conscientious objector during
the Vietnam War working at a
United Methodist Church with
street kids, attended the Claremont School of Theology: “I
never had a ‘call’ to be a pastor.
Then I entered doctoral studies
at the United States International
University in San Diego (now
called Alliant International
University) and received a
doctorate in clinical psychology.
I stood for the test in 1980 and
passed the first time. After many
years in private practice and as
the clinical director of a therapeutic community for schizophrenia founded by Moira Fitzpatrick, Ph.D., I enrolled in
music at University of San Diego
for studies in music.”
RONALD FIELDING (A) retired
from OppenheimerFunds on May
20. “Three days later my wife
and I took off for a three-week
trip to Europe, starting in
Barcelona, cruising the Mediterranean Sea with 74 other guests
and three professors on a small
(and 30 percent empty) cruise
ship and ending in Greece.
Surely the highlight for me to
report to Johnnies was entering
the huge so-called Treasury of
Atreus, but really the Tomb of
Agamemnon, just outside the
walls of Mycenae. It’s quite
amazing how the Greek legends
and Homeric poems seamlessly
merge into Greek history, from
Perseus to the present. We have
sold our residence in Rochester
and established residency in a
beach house on Kiawah Island,
just outside of Charleston, S.C.,
though we will get a much
smaller summer house in
Rochester to evade the hot,
humid summers here. I will be
back on the Board of Visitors and
Governors in July, as well as a
small insurance company board,
Plato Proves Useful
J
EFF HUME-PRATUCH (A79) writes that she and her
husband, Tom Pratuch, recently completed the adoption
of their daughter, Meredith, after a long foster relationship: “We are ecstatic! Currently, I am working as an
editor for a publisher of scholarly journals. I’m convinced
they hired me because in my first week as a temp, I
caught the author misquoting Plato, Hegel, and Descartes.
Who says the Program won’t help you get a job?” x
a tiny mutual fund board, and
the International Museum of
Photography board. Plenty of
stuff to keep me busy between
trips hither and yon. And I need
to attend Summer Classics
again, too.”
MARTIN ROSENTHAL (SF)
recently published a novel,
The Cult Teacher, using the
penname Phillip Ahtmann.
There is a chapter which takes
place at St. John’s Annapolis is
1966. It is available at
www.amazon.com or at
www.theCultTeacher.com.
1972
HAROLD ANDERSON (A) writes:
“I live outside of Washington in
Greenbelt. I am currently a
member of the core faculty for
the Master of Arts in Cultural
Sustainability graduate program
at Goucher College (where I
teach cultural documentation). I
also teach cultural anthropology
at Bowie State University. But my
main (pre-) occupation is as a
contract ethnographer. And I
have completed ethnographic
studies of communities in the
United States and abroad.
Currently I am working a project
for exhibition at the new Prince
George’s County African American Museum and Cultural
Center of North Brentwood. The
project is titled “The Arts of
Praise” and it aims to document
aspects of how people celebrate
and perform their faith in Prince
George’s County, Maryland.
Products of this project include
transcriptions of oral histories,
audio, still photographs, and
video for exhibition at the Prince
George’s County African American Museum.”
EVAN (A) and Jane’s son,
Matthew Dudik, will arrive as a
freshman in Annapolis this fall
with lexicon in one hand and
French horn in the other. His
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 }
twin is studying bassoon and
German in Vienna in a gap year
before deciding about this or that
college/university. Elder brother
Graham appears to be in his
senior year at Portland State
University. Empty nests rule!
Jane is thinking about post kids.
Evan is running his
strategy/operations management
consulting firm including recent
projects with Daimler and
Novartis. In between saxophone,
painting, art history, he is
working on a book with the
working title “Thinking Independently.” He’s also finishing
up his second term on the
college’s Board of Visitors and
Governors, having raised enough
hackles for six or seven years.
1973
MICHAEL AARON (SF) was
named the Director of Banking
and Financial Markets, Growth
Markets Unit, IBM Corporation
in 2009. In this role, he is
responsible for the Banking and
Financial Markets Industry
vertical business in the growth
markets, which cover AsiaPacific, Latin America, Central
Europe and the former Soviet
Union, as well as Africa and the
Middle East. Michael considers
his St. John’s education to have
been an important step in his
developing the capabilities to
deal with this type of executive
role, as it requires constant
reading, analysis, informed judgment and the ability to communicate—listening and speaking. It is
also useful to know how to read
very long books on very long
flights of up to 24 hours. Michael
remains married to Danuta (30
years this August) and has two
sons, Daniel and David. The
Aarons live in Sydney, Australia,
close to Bondi Beach.
MARY L. BATTEEN (A) was chair
of the Oceanography Department at the Naval Postgraduate
�36
{Alumni Profile}
Seeking a Balance
Jazz Producer A.T. Michael MacDonald (SF76)
by Nathaniel Roe (SF08)
M
nat roe
ichael MacDonald
(SF76) brews another
cup of coffee in
AlgoRhythms, his
mastering studio
tucked away in
Brooklyn’s DUMBO neighborhood.
He recounts how his journey—from a
new graduate with no career plans to a
music producer who has recorded jazz
legends including McCoy Tyner and
Tito Puente—began on a bicycle.
“My gift to myself after graduation
was a cross-country bicycle trip,”
MacDonald recalls. “I ended up getting
injured and had to come home early. I
remember sitting in an Amtrak dome car
going through Montana, just looking at
the stars and soul searching. I asked
myself, ‘what would I really love to do?’”
With time to think about his future,
MacDonald decided to become a
recording engineer because it combined
his love of music and knack for science.
Michael MacDonald records jazz legends in his
“After this epiphany, I moved to
brooklyn, N.Y., studio.
New York to break into the recording
business.”
MacDonald is best known as a virtumaybe I could help you.’”
osic jazz producer; numerous AlgoRhythms
The record executive didn’t understand
sessions have garnered Grammy nominathat the old friends meant they were happy
tions. His live recordings at the Village
with each other’s work. At the end of the day
Vanguard are considered among the best in
MacDonald got a pink slip. Hersch sorted
the celebrated jazz club, a space that
out the situation, and the duo finished
demands masterful microphone placement
recording together. “We still laugh about
and sense of musical balance. In addition to
that today.”
Tyner and Puente, MacDonald has worked
When he arrived in New York City in 1977,
with legends such as Hank Jones, Roy
MacDonald began at the bottom of the
Haynes, and John Scofield. He has recorded
ladder, as an intern at Skyline studios. Since
two Grammy-winning albums with McCoy
then, changes in technology have meant
Tyner, who is most famous for his early work
radical changes in his industry. “Because of
in John Coltrane’s band.
the Internet, most people today consider
One of MacDonald’s most lasting
music to be a free commodity. This demorelationships is with renowned pianist
cratic approach can be really great, but let’s
Fred Hersch. “When we work together, we
say McCoy Tyner wants to record another
don’t have to talk about sound anymore,”
big-band project. That recording requires a
says MacDonald. “We know exactly how
certain minimum dollar amount. If the
we want it to be.”
people investing the money don’t break even
During one recording session with
in record sales, they are less likely to fund
Hersch, a record company executive came
the next record. And so Tyner will have to
to sit in. “Fred and I argue to entertain
scale back the big band to a trio, so the
each other,” says MacDonald. “When Fred
listener won’t get the full effect.”
came into the control room and said ‘this
The availability of inexpensive quality
sounds awful, can’t you do anything right?’ recording technology has similar drawbacks.
I replied, ‘If you knew how to play piano,
“I’m really hard pressed to find jazz record{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 }
ings recorded today that are as good
sonically as the golden age, when Sinatra
was recording. [Producers and engineers] had limited technology, but they
had great ears and great training.
There’s no technology shortcut for that.”
As an adjunct engineering professor at
Johns Hopkins University, MacDonald
trains budding recording engineers and
producers by emphasizing the basics and
systematically limiting the tools they can
use to complete assignments. His goal
is to produce engineers who rely on
knowledge and instinct.
In his courses, MacDonald incorporates the St. John’s approach to questions. “A student wanted to know how
and why VU [volume] meters were
invented,” he says. “I scoured up the
original 1933 Western Electric white
paper and held a class discussion.”
When no one had questions, MacDonald
picked out a detail and stumped the
class by saying, “I don’t understand what
this means.” In the ensuing discussion,
“we gained insight into a real engineering problem and how the pioneers
of audio solved it.”
The Program, and language tutorial in
particular, has helped shape MacDonald’s
outlook on recording. “What I learned in
language class is what has carried me most
through my recording career,” explains
MacDonald. “I’m really a translator. Sound
is a three-dimensional physical phenomenon
that changes from moment to moment.
I’ve got to carefully capture and then
translate it into a series of ones and zeroes
and somehow reconstruct something that
resembles the original.”
When translating Baudelaire, literally
rendering a word will likely obscure the
poetic qualities of the French. By the same
token, focusing only on the lyrical qualities
of words can make a translation vague.
MacDonald looks at recording the same way.
“When translating, something is always lost.
To focus on one part, you necessarily lose
something else. If I make the vocal sound a
little more present, will that affect the right
hand of the piano? It’s always a balance.
Asking the questions of translation has
always served me well in recording.” x
�{Alumni Notes}
School in Monterey, Calif., from
2001-2008: “I am now on a yearlong sabbatical at the Hopkins
Marine Station of Stanford
University. I am writing a textbook called Exploring Ocean
Physics, which I hope will excite
future scientists to explore the
important roles of ocean physics,
from helping us understand
climate change to taking better
care of our earth, which is really
the Ocean Planet.”
SUSAN MARTIN DRESSEL (SFGI)
retired in June 1994 from Los
Alamos National Laboratory,
where she had served as Division
Leader for Information Services.
Six months later, Susan’s
husband, Ralph W. Dressel, died.
After a couple of years, Susan
relocated to Albuquerque to be
near her son and daughter. In
July 1999, Susan bought a lot in a
development on the Rio Grande
and retained an architect and
construction boss to build a
Tuscan-style villa “on spec.”
About three months before
construction was to begin, Susan
met Donald Myers, a retired
lawyer and judge, accomplished
pianist and certified flight
instructor. She soon realized she
did not want to manage a
construction project, sold the lot,
and left for a winter on South
Padre Island with her new friend.
They are now married and living
in their mountain home on
wooded acreage bordering the
Cibola National Forest, where
they both enjoy hiking and
birding. Although back surgery
required her to give up skiing and
white water kayaking/rafting,
Susan is happy to be traveling,
golfing, and dancing with Don,
and spending snowy months in
warmer climes. And she is
grateful to Don for his willingness to relocate in New Mexico
near her family “At our ages, a
loving family support system
becomes increasingly important.
Retirement brings many advantages that help compensate for
the aches and pains that come
with advancing years.” She would
be happy to hear from any GI
alumni.
1974
DAPHNE KAPOLKA (nee
GREENE, A76) and GERRY
KAPOLKA (A) are celebrating
their 35th anniversary. Gerry
writes: “I am now Dean of Academics and chair of the English
department at Santa Catalina
School in Monterey. Daphne is
senior lecturer in physics at the
Naval Postgraduate School, also
in Monterey. Our daughter,
BASIA (A01) is in Chicago about
to produce a play she has written
based on The Jinx, by Teofile
Gautier. Our older son, Andrzej,
is a computer game designer for
Three Rings in San Francisco.
Our younger son, Marek,
will be a junior at San Jose
State University.”
MARGARET SANSOM (SFGI)
reports: “I am enrolled in The
Ultimate Game of Life, a highly
effective teleconferencing
coaching program led by Jim
Bunch. As a result of participating in the program, I have lost
40 pounds, amped up my fitness
level, and completely remodeled
my house, a project that I had
been just contemplating for the
past five years. Because traveling
is my passion, I have been to
Paris for five months in 2005,
to Great Britain in 2006, Alaska
in 2007, and Zion, Bryce, and
Yellowstone in 2008. Next on my
list is a Greek isle cruise in 2011.
In the meantime, I am going to
stay home and enjoy my home for
a couple of years and concentrate
on getting the funding at a functional level for the scholarship
foundation that I head. Scholarships are awarded to people who
have been out of high school for a
few years and have finally realized
that they need further
training/education in order to
fulfill their dreams.”
1975
BOB SHIMIZU (SF) has recently
released a new CD of jazz for
his quartet, Bob Shimizu and
Signal Strength. “Cuchillero”
is available online at
www.signalstrengthband.com.
1977
CLIFF ADAMS (A) has been living
in Germany for nearly eight years
and has been married to a
German woman since July 3,
2008. He worked for Amadeus, a
travel services computer
company as a software test engineer from 2001-2006 and is now
a self-employed web programmer
in Erding, just outside of
Munich. Cliff has been working
on various Mideast peace projects in connection with participating in Landmark Education
(www.landmarkeducation.com)
programs. The most recent one is
www.israelpalestineproject.com.
He has three grown children
living in New York.
1979
LESLIE W. WESTMORELAND (SF)
writes: “I’m a deputy attorney
general in the Appeals, Writs,
and Trials section of the Criminal Law Division of the Attorney
General’s Office of the California
Department of Justice. (That’s a
mouthful—I’m a trial and appellate prosecutor.) Married to
Carmen Milagros Delgado (de
Puerto Rico), a criminal defense
attorney. Living in Fresno with
too many little dogs, and near our
two grandchildren. Classmate
LAIRD DURLEY (SF79) surprised
me recently by dropping by.
It seems he lives about one mile
away. I’d love to hear from
anyone who’d like to say hey.”
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 }
37
OWEN GOLDIN (SF) lives in
Milwaukee, Wis., with his wife,
Miriam Sushman, and their
daughter Esther, 5. He teaches
philosophy at Marquette University. His translation with notes of
Philoponus’s Commentary on
Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics 2 is
scheduled to be published soon
by Duckworth Press.
BEN HAGGARD (SF) divides his
time between Santa Fe and
Berlin, and divides his energies
between Regenesis (an ecological
consultancy he helped found
12 years ago) and painting.
After 27 years, he and JOEL
GLANZBERG (SF84) are still
working together, these days as
principal designers with Regenesis and contributors to the blog:
www.edgeregenerate.com. Ben
shares an apartment in Berlin
with his partner, Joe, who plays
French horn with the Deutsches
Symphonie Orchester. Photos of
Ben’s paintings can be seen at
www.benhaggardstudio.com.
He’s planning to attend Homecoming in Santa Fe.
MARILYN L. SCHAEFER (SFGI) is
glad to see “growing links
between St. John’s and Shimer
College,” as reported in the
Fall 2009 issue of The College.
Her sister, Susan Schaefer,
graduated from Shimer in the
mid-1960s, and Susan and her
friends are very enthusiastic
about the college, she says.
“There seems to be a natural
compatibility among grads of
St. John’s, Shimer, and the
University of Chicago.”
TONY WATERS (A) is a professor
of sociology at California State
University, Chico. He is married
to Dagmar Waters, and they
travel back and forth to her
native Germany frequently.
They have two children, both of
whom are college students at
St. Olaf College in Northfield,
Minn. His recent books include
When Killing is a Crime (2007)
and The Persistence of Subsistence
�38
{Alumni Notes}
Agriculture: Life Beneath the
Level of the Marketplace
(2007/2008).
1980
“As of January 1, 2009, I am now
vice president for international
programs at the Atlas Economic
Research Foundation,” reports
TOM G. PALMER (A). “I remain a
senior fellow at the Cato Institute. At Atlas I direct field operations to promote libertarian
values worldwide, along with
active programs of book
publishing, websites, video
production, summer schools, and
more in 15 languages. Since the
start of the year I have given
lectures, held conferences,
appeared in the media, and
organized new ventures in Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan,
Ukraine, Malaysia, Indonesia,
the UK, and Brazil and on
Thursday I depart for India,
Pakistan, and Afghanistan. I’ll be
quite busy with summer schools
and site visits throughout the
summer and fall, as well as with
additional programs, including
delivering papers at academic
conferences in Germany, France,
and Italy. My book Realizing
Freedom: Libertarian Theory,
History, and Practice, will be
published later this month. I am
keeping busy, and there is not
one single day during which I do
not draw on my education from
St. John’s, which not only
provided me with a good springboard to my further education,
but continuously informs how I
understand the world and the
choices I make.”
ANGEL ANN PRICE (SF) writes:
“For six months, I’ve left my
plum position at the US EEOC
(federal sector appeals and
training team) for a detail as a
Special Assistant US Attorney for
the District of Columbia. I’m
prosecuting misdemeanor
domestic violence cases and have
seen more of the inside of the
courthouse, tried more cases,
and signed off on more witness
vouchers in the past few weeks
than in almost 15 years of
practice. The opportunity to
speak on behalf of the community comes often, but with only a
moment to be heard. The theme
of the season is the split-second
rhetorician.”
December 2008 brought some
dramatic changes for JIM
SORRENTINO (A): “I began an
inter-agency assignment to the
Department of the Treasury’s
Office of Financial Stability, in
the Homeownership Preservation Office, created as part of the
Troubled Asset Relief Program
(TARP). It’s exciting, dynamic
and challenging—not words one
usually associates with large
government bureaucracies.
Two weeks or so after I began the
job at Treasury, our adoption
agency contacted us. And on
December 31, we brought home
our new son! Vincent Sorrentino
was born in mid-December, in
Baltimore. He is a healthy,
happy, hungry little boy, and he
is a delight to us all. Although it
seems a little crazy to become a
father (again!) at 49, I recall
something Brother Robert said to
me after meeting my daughter,
Sophia (who was not yet three),
at Homecoming in 2005:
‘Children complete life,
don’t they?’ The answer, once
again, is yes.”
1982
ADRIEN HELLER (A) has been in
Shijiazhuang, People’s Republic
of China for the last three years,
teaching English and doing art.
1983
JACK ARMSTRONG (SF) writes,
“I’ll be driving from Philadelphia
to Los Angeles this summer with
my son, Michael. Really looking
forward to it.”
Arugula and Wild
Turkeys
J
L. BUSH (SF84) and his wife, Elizabeth, are
savoring summer in Blacksburg, Va. “She has her
garden going with the usual garden herbs, tomatoes,
peppers, pole and bush beans, basil, fresh arugula, and
other greens. I am trying to do more fly fishing and get
out to the Blue Ridge for morel and wild turkey hunting
as often as possible. I am also trying to utilize the
wondrous natural qualities of the area such as the New River for
canoeing, rafting and small mouth bass fishing, and the
Appalachian Trail for hiking, camping, and trail running whenever possible. We both are beginning to think about a house
design for some property we have in Ellett Valley in Montgomery
County. I am reading Russell Banks and Cormac McCarthy as
well as Grant’s autobiography. Our grown boys are well and prospering, and we would love to hear from or visit with old friends.
We have made contact with Robert and CHARLA ALLEN (SF79)
since they moved back to the Smokies near Asheville and hope to
see their new house and both of them soon. I am running for
local office this summer for Town Council and so that will keep
me occupied and engaged in local politics.” x
OHN
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 }
1984
PETER GREEN (A) is living in
New York’s Washington Heights
and loving New York. As a world
news reporter at Bloomberg
News, he was off to Prague in
June to interview Vaclav Havel,
the former Czech president, and
then wander around the East for
a few weeks. He’s looking
forward to Homecoming.
TRISHA (FIKE) HOWELL (SF)
has been focusing recently on a
healing and life coaching system
she developed called Lifonics
(www.Lifonics.com) She also
continues to write books and
screenplays and hopes to resume
her acting career soon. Before a
year hiatus, she was appearing in
many plays and low-budget films.
Trisha welcomes hearing from
classmates at Trisha@TrishaHowell.com.
DENNIS ROBERTS (SFGI) retired
from the Associated General
Contractors of New Mexico
Building Branch after 40 years of
service. He is currently an
adjunct professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at the
University of New Mexico.
MARK POTHIER (A) writes:
“ANNIE KEZAR (A) has been
tireless in keeping our class
engaged and happy.”
1985
L. JAGI LAMPLIGHTER WRIGHT
(A) reports: “My first novel
comes out from Tor (a major
publisher of science fiction and
fantasy) this August. It is the first
of a trilogy. A fantasy story set in
the present day with humor and
mystery, it is a sequel of sorts to
Shakespeare’s Tempest.
The series is called Prospero’s
Daughter. The first novel,
coming out in early August,
is Prospero Lost.”
�39
{Alumni Notes}
1987
PEGGY O’SHEA (A, SF05) was
married to Susan Unger in
Massachusetts on January 2.
RAY ANDRE WAKEfiELD (A)
has published The Disordered
Police State: German Cameralism
as Science and Practice.
Wakefield is associate professor
of history at Pitzer College in
Claremont, Calif.
1988
JANA GILES (A) will be starting as
an assistant professor of 20thcentury British literature at the
University of Louisiana at
Monroe in fall 2009. Her specializations are modernism, postcolonialism, and aesthetics. She
would love to have any visitors,
so please let her know “in the
unlikely event” that you are
passing through Monroe.
1989
Having never run before in her
life, SARA CATANIA (A) ran the
LA Marathon on May 25 to raise
money for AIDS Project Los
Angeles. Details are available at
www.laobserved.com/runon.
GEORGE TURNER (A) is working
half time to make room for
“more fun and family time.”
He’s training for the California
International Marathon on
December 6 in Sacramento, with
hopes of qualifying for Boston,
“the runner’s Mecca.” “Other
than that,” he writes, “same
house, same spouse, kids another
year older. Life is good.”
Dante Meets the Zombies
K
PAFFENROTH’s (A88) zombified version of
Dante’s Inferno, is now available as a limited
edition hardback from Cargo Cult Press
(www.horror-mall.com). In it, the Florentine
stumbles onto an infestation of the undead,
and the horrors he witnesses there—people
being burned alive, devoured, decapitated, etc.—are what later
inspires his epic poem. x
book of poems will be published
by Salmon Poetry (Ireland) in
April 2010.
IM
1990
GRAHAM HARMAN (A) has been
named Associate Vice Provost for
Research at the American
University in Cairo, Egypt. His
fourth book, Prince of Networks,
has recently been published by
re.press (Melbourne). His next
book, L’objet quadruple, will first
appear in French translation with
Presses Universitaires de France
(Paris) in 2010.
1991
JULIE RENNINGER PASS OBER
(AGI) writes: “I am a humanities
professor and painter, and I
retrain thoroughbred racehorses.
My paintings and horse
tales/tails are all at my blog:
www.honeysucklefaire.
blogspot.com. My painting,
Smoke, was juried into
Pennsylvania’s Art of the State
2009. This is my third year
accepted into this show. Horses,
art and family consume me!”
1992
ANNE ASPEN (née BOYNTON, SF)
left her senior city planner position at the City of Fort Collins in
January for a project manager
position at the city’s Downtown
Development Authority. “It
allows me to focus on what I love
most: architecture and our
downtown. We’re doing a lot of
exciting projects here, and I’m
learning some new tricks. Family
life is fulfilling now that the kids
in our life finally moved here
from Santa Fe. Unfortunately,
Jane and I don’t have ready
excuses to visit Santa Fe
anymore, though.”
1993
ALEX and VANESSA ELLERMANN
(AGI, A) are expecting their third
son in March. Alex is flying for
Delta and with the Navy Reserve,
and Vanessa is practicing law in
D.C. They live in Kensington,
Md., and don’t get to Annapolis
nearly enough.
John Abraham Kelley, the first
child of Genevieve and OWEN
KELLEY (A), was born with a
shout on September 11, 2008.
They still live in Greenbelt, Md.,
and Owen still works at NASA.
NANCY MARCUS (A) has moved to
Cleveland and joined the law firm
Berhmen, Gordon, Murray and
DeVan, the firm that put
Mapp v. Ohio on the map, and
has had a number of other
historic successes. Her practice
includes trial and appellate litigation in the areas of constitutional
law, civil rights, torts, criminal
defense, and LGBT rights.
Ernest Marlowe Strautmann was
born in May 2008 to Jacob
Strautmann and VALERIE DUFFSTRAUTMANN (SF). Valerie’s first
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 }
1994
“My wife, ELIZABETH (RHODES)
FARLEY and I (both A), are happy
to report the birth of our third
child, a boy. Samuel Duncan
Farley was born on April 5,
2009,” writes DAN FARLEY.
“Our other two children, Hannah
(11) and Dylan (9), participated
wonderfully in the birth of their
brother and are now doting
siblings. We are now measuring
our lives not solely with coffee
spoons, but also with diapers
again! We have also recently relocated to Eugene, Ore., and invite
any Johnnies in the Northwest in
particular to contact us and come
and visit if possible!”
BEN FELDMAN (A) was married
in January to Chaya Bracha Silver
from Israel/ N.Y. “I have
continued to work in New York as
a master’s-level psychologist,
providing services for developmentally disabled individuals.
Now, I am getting ready to move,
in August with my wife to Cleveland, Ohio, so I can pursue a PhD
in Experimental Psychology,
specializing in developmental
disabilities research, at Case
Western Reserve University.
I will begin by helping to run a
research study on Prader-Willi
Syndrome.”
1995
HEIDI OVERBEEK (A) lives in
the East Mountains outside of
Albuquerque and loves it.
“My partner, Cindy, and I have a
14-year-old son named Ashante
who we adopted five years ago.
I work as a labor and delivery
nurse and am (leisurely) looking
at grad schools to become a nurse
�40
{Alumni Notes}
the company and spending
my weekends with Karen. Life
is good.”
Business
Leader
P
KATZ
(SF95) was the
subject of a
cover story in
Milwaukee’s
Business
Journal. Katz is founder and
principal of Phillip Katz
Project Development, a
Milwaukee-based design
and management practice.
An architect, Katz was among the journal’s picks for
Milwaukee’s top 100 “movers and shakers.” x
HILLIP
practitioner. I’m a ‘master
gardener’ for the county and try
to live in my garden!”
CRAIG SIRKIN (A) reports that he
and his wife, Wendy, are happy to
welcome a new addition to their
family: “Sarah Isabelle was born
on March 10, and due to a very
short labor was born at home
with me acting as midwife and
her older brother, Isaac, sleeping
peacefully in his room. Everybody is happy and healthy.”
“Our impending exodus from
Mobile, Ala., has been nudged
along by the economy, thanks to
which my first small business
venture—a coffee house across
from the university—has come to
a close,” writes KIRA ZIELINSKI
(SF). “Not allowing business
failure to equate with personal
failure has been a tremendous
emotional education for me as
well. But I’m learning that
although it’s quite possible that
we are responsible for the entire
world economic collapse, I’m
learning to be OK with that.
I’m looking forward to some time
to catch up on life—reading,
continuing our home improvement saga, getting back into
music, and putting a match to the
contents of no less than 15 filing
cabinets. Despite all the tumult,
my wonderful Nathan is still my
fiancé, and our pre-marital
counselor allows us to return
each week and invent new
psychoses.”
1996
“I am in Vermont,” writes
CHERYL HENEVELD (AGI),
“sometimes leading discussion
groups for the Vermont Humanities Council. Taking a mythology
course from the nearby state
college. Re-reading the
Odyssey—keep learning the
St. John’s way! Come for a visit.”
JEFFREY A. PALMER (A) married
MARGURITE T. PFOUTZ (SF03)
in Pittsburgh, Pa., in a wellexecuted elopement.
1997
DOMINIC CRAPUCHETTES (A)
was recently married to Karen
Litsinger. They live in Bethesda,
Md., and Dominic’s board game
company, North Star Games, is
going strong. “We now have six
people working for North Star
Games with product in Target,
Barnes and Noble, Borders, and
many other locations,” he says.
“I’m having a lot of fun growing
VAN CUNNINGHAM (SF) writes,
“Mom graduated from the GI a
few years ago, Stella’s 9 1/2,
Rockstar is a scaredy-dog, we are
7 miles from the ocean until we
figure out which mountains to
head to.”
JACOB CURTIS (SF) and DAYNA
SIMS CURTIS (SF98) announce
the birth of their second baby,
Atticus Hamilton: “Big sister
Clio is adjusting well, we are
feeling very blessed with a boy
and a girl.”
BRENDA JOHNSON (AGI) has
completed the docent training
course at the Walters Art
Museum in Baltimore, Md. She is
enjoying taking some of the
28,000 school children who visit
every year through the museum.
JESSICA CAMPBELL MCALLEN
(SF) writes: “Lowry, Isaac,
and I welcomed Patrick Oliver
with so much love on February 1,
2009. He was 6 lbs. 13 oz.
and 19 1/2 in.”
JILL NIENHISER (SFGI)
completed a two-year acting
program at the National Conservatory of Dramatic Arts in
Washington, D.C., in December.
She appeared in The Houseguests
and A Midsummer Night’s Dream
in April, and will perform this
summer with Kaleidoscope
Theatre in a two-person production of The Lion, the Witch, and
the Wardrobe for schools and
libraries.
NATHAN SCHLEIFER (SF) reports
that his second son, Elijah, was
born June 16, 2008.
1998
STEPHEN CONN (SF) reports:
“On the literary front, I recently
had my 10th published letter in
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 }
Mojo Magazine, and to top it off,
I am studying for my MFA in
Screenwriting at the Academy of
Art in San Francisco. Any Johnnies who feel like a nice Italian
dinner in North Beach, feel free
to come on over!”
RICK FIELD (SFGI) and his wife
Jessica welcomed twin girls into
their lives on August 2, 2008.
The elder child, by two minutes,
was named Grace Apollonia, and
the younger, Alexandra Electra.
Both girls love to hear books read
aloud, and they enjoy various
types of music.
DORA JACOBS (A) and
WALKER STUMP-COALE (A00)
will both begin law school at the
University of Baltimore in
August. Their son, Mac, is now 11
months old and their daughter,
Isabel, is almost 2 1/2, so things
will be crazy at their house for a
while—but not too crazy to catch
up with old friends, particularly
if there’s advice to be had about
managing full-time school
and a young family. Use
dorajacobs@hotmail.com or
walkerstumpcoale@
hotmail.com to drop a line.
1999
Having completed seven years of
formation at Our Lady of
Guadalupe Seminary in Denton,
Neb., BRIAN T. AUSTIN, FSSP
(A), was ordained to the sacred
priesthood on May 30 in Lincoln,
Neb., and sang a Solemn High
Mass of Thanksgiving on June 6
in Philadelphia. The Rev. Austin
is a member of the Priestly
Fraternity of St. Peter, a clerical
Society of Apostolic Life of
Pontifical Rite, founded in 1988
by His Holiness John Paul II for
the sake of fostering the ancient
Latin Liturgy of the Roman
Catholic Church.
�41
{Alumni Profile}
Nurturing a Love for Learning
Melanie Jago Hiner (A81)
by Rosemary Harty
bruce weller
A
t nine years old, Melanie Jago
Hiner (A81) was a curious
bookworm attending a
progressive school in
Chicago. “Our social studies
teacher told us we could
study anything we wanted, as long as we
could explain why,” she recalls. “I decided to
study the Mongolian invasion of China. I
made a scale model of the Great Wall and
loved every minute of it.”
While her social studies teacher encouraged independent thinking and creativity,
her math teacher frequently gave timed tests
that made Hiner so anxious she suffered from
stomach aches. “I came to loathe math,” she
says. “And I almost didn’t come to St. John’s
because the Program included four years of
math.”
Hiner made the leap and discovered she
loved mathematics. Her experiences at St.
John’s—learning through dialogue, being a
part of a community, delving into difficult
and unfamiliar subject matter—helped to
shape her ideas of what education could be.
She enrolled in a graduate program at the
University of Delaware, focusing on cognition and instruction, and finished the coursework required for her doctorate.
In 1995, at the prodding of her 7-year-old
son, Hiner founded the New School in
Newark, Delaware, using St. John’s College
as her model for helping children and young
adults become lifelong learners. The school’s
motto: “Education for the courageous,
inquisitive, and independent-minded.”
“The ‘radical inquiry’ of St. John’s is very
much at the heart of what we do,” says Hiner.
“We’re always challenging the kids to think
deeply about things.”
Hiner started the school in the basement
of a women’s club with $1,000 and seven
students. Now housed in a historic home
with an acre of land, the New School has
about 40 students in kindergarten through
grade 12. Students vote on the governing
principles of their school and decide individually what to study and how to study it. “Children learn to listen to one another and learn
from another. We’re not hierarchical. There
are no experts—just like at St. John’s, the
teacher is a fellow learner.”
So far, three New School graduates have
matriculated at St. John’s. One of Hiner’s
Her own experiences in the classroom led Melanie Jago Hiner to create a school that
fosters creativity and wonder, in the spirit of St. John’s College.
first students was Molly Roach (A09). “It was
more like a family than a school,” Roach
recalls. “I was used to being told what to do,
so at first, I had a little trouble adjusting to
the self-directed aspect of the school.”
At the New School, Roach enjoyed
learning through conversation. Hands-on
projects such as sewing gained time alongside reading and studying mathematics, and
in time Roach began to thrive with her new
freedom. Her senior thesis explored the
concept of paradise, focusing on the Persian
root of the word as enclosed garden. As part
of her project, she transformed the school’s
meeting room into a “paradise garden,” with
plants, a bench, and a fountain.
“If I had gone to a traditional high school
and had all the pressures about test scores
and college applications, I would have been
miserable because I would have wanted to
please everyone,” says Roach. “I wouldn’t
have known anything about what I was actually interested in.”
The New School restricts students choices
in a way, because students are strongly
encourage to seek out things that are difficult
and they’re required to explain their choices.
The ultimate goal, says Hiner, is creating
self-reliance and perseverance in students.
“We talk to them about Plato’s discussion of
the soul—if you’re just drawn along by the evil
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 }
horse to things you merely enjoy doing,
you’re not going to get anything worth doing
done,” Hiner says.
On Wednesday nights, Hiner leads seminars for New School parents and community
members. Readings from The Wealth of
Nations, Democracy in America, and Pascal’s
Pensées have been recent choices. Hiner has
also developed an informal continuing
educational program for adults. She mentors
adults who want to structure their own
program of self-education.
Along with devoting herself to offering a
St. John’s-inspired education, Hiner is
moving into community organizing. Last
year, she created a nonprofit called Omnia
Humanitas, aimed at encouraging individuals and communities to pursue “integrated,
sustainable lives” that include lifelong
learning, community involvement, and environmentally responsible lifestyles. The
school and nonprofit organization together
allow Hiner to introduce the concept of “the
examined life” to those who haven’t read
Plato. “To be fully engaged in what you’re
doing, to take time to develop neglected
aspects of your life, to keep asking important
questions—that’s what it means to live a
productive life,” she says. x
�42
{Alumni Notes}
MICHAEL HOKENSON (SF) has
been spending the last several
years creating a fund to provide
loans to microfinance institutions (“MFIs”). The Minlam
Microfinance Fund lent money to
10 MFIs, which created more
than 18,000 new loans during
2008 in emerging markets from
Peru to Azerbaijan. These loans
are intended to help small businesses grow and boost household
income for poor families, which
is linked to higher investment in
education, nutrition and health.
The institutions have loans with
more than 400,000 women.
He continues to live and work in
New York City.
2000
Here’s some news from JASON
(AGI) and SUSIE SALINAS
(AGI99): “Susie and I will
celebrate our ninth anniversary
on June 10. I just finished three
years in Annapolis, where I
taught English at the Naval
Academy. This week we moved
back to San Diego so I could
return to flying helicopters for
the Navy. Susie has been busy
raising our two boys, Henry, 4,
and Sam, 2.”
2001
After five years of living in Santa
Fe and working in the art gallery
scene, BRENDAN BULLOCK (SF)
moved back to New England and
has been in Portland, Maine, for
the last two years. “I’ll be moving
to Rockport, Maine, shortly to
begin a summer-long position as
a teaching assistant at the Maine
Media Workshops, an incredible
institution for photographic
learning,” he says. “I’ll be
working alongside some of the
best photographers working
today, teaching both seasoned
professionals and young children
getting involved with photography for the first time. That
aside, I’ve been getting in plenty
of good fishing with fellow
Johnnie GEORGE DEANS (A02),
who, incidentally, is now working
as a stonemason, has just bought
a house and will be getting
married to his fiancée, Ludmila
Svoboda, in September.”
2002
AMELIA ADAMS (A) begins her
residency in Orthopedic Surgery
at Washington University in
St. Louis this June.
BENJAMIN ANDERSON (AGI) has
received a three-year David E.
Finley Fellowship from the
Center for Advanced Study in the
Visual Arts at the National
Gallery of Art. “This will support
completion of my dissertation
(Bryn Mawr, History of Art) on
images of the Ptolemaic cosmos
in the early Middle Ages,” he
says. “At present I am traveling
about the near East, researching
late Roman and early Islamic
monuments, but will spend most
of the next two years in Munich
before returning to D.C. for the
final year of the fellowship,
insha’Allah!”
ISABEL CLARK (A) writes: “I’ve
moved to Austin, Texas, and am
working for Whole Foods Market
on the new healthy eating team
at their global HQ. Before the
move, my partner, Brian
Ambrose, and I went on an epic
cross-country adventure for
several months (detailed in the
archives of brianandisabel.com).
I also have a new website with
recipes, articles, and materials
from my previous work doing
wellness counseling at
forkbytes.com.”
AMANDA SIMONE KENNEDY
FINNEY (SF) graduated from
Southern Methodist University
Dedman School of Law in Dallas,
Texas, with a Juris Doctor on
May 16, 2009.
2003
CHELSIA (WHEELER) HETRICK
(SF) was married May 24, 2009,
to Erik Hetrick, whom she met
while doing her first tour as a
foreign service officer in
Rangoon, Burma. They are
scheduled to finish their tour in
Burma this September, then
move to Johannesburg, South
Africa, in October.
SEAN MCLAIN (A) writes:
“I have been living in Abu Dhabi
for the past year and a half, and
writing editorials for a new
English-language daily here.
I never expected I would end up
in the media. However, in retrospect, getting paid good money
to tell people what I think is
pretty much the ideal career.
Called to Virginia
J
USTI SCHUNIOR (A99) recently graduated from Candler School of
Theology at Emory University in
Atlanta and in June was ordained to
the priesthood in the Episcopal
Church at the Cathedral of
St. Philip. “I’ve accepted a call to
Christ Church in Old Town Alexandria and
will be moving up to Virginia to begin work
in July. I hope to make the reunion this fall
and catch up with class of ‘99. x
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 }
The UAE is a fascinating young
country. In 37 years it has gone
from a collection of desert
emirates under British mandate
to a thriving hub of commerce.
There are innumerable growing
pains from such rapid growth,
and one of the most rewarding
aspects of my job is to try to make
sense of the country to the world
and vice versa. I don’t know if I
could do this forever, but it is
certainly a rewarding pit stop on
the way to whatever future lies
ahead.”
MARGURITE T. PFOUTZ (SF)
married JEFFREY A. PALMER
(A96) in Pittsburgh, Pa. They
then ran away together to
Portland, Ore., with their cat
and some books.
MICHAEL WALDOCK (SFGI) and
JOHANNA OMELIA (SFGI02)
have launched Ailemo Books in
Oregon and just released their
first title, Voyage 185: A British
Gentleman’s Extraordinary
Adventures Abroad by Thomas
Hughes Jackson.
2004
ENJOLI COOKE (A) will begin
optometry school at Pennsylvania College of Optometry at
Salus University in the fall. “It is
a four-year program without a
required residency, so I will
(hopefully) be a practicing
optometrist in four years and
two months!”
ANNIE ROLLINS (née BAILY) and
DUSTIN ROLLINS (both SF) are
currently living and working in
the Boston area. Dustin recently
finished his MA in Philosophy at
Boston College and works as
adjunct faculty at several New
England colleges. Annie finished
a master’s in teaching at BU and
just wrapped up her first year
teaching senior English in a
regional high school. They have
purchased an old colonial house
�43
{Alumni Notes}
north of Boston in the Bradford
area and are looking forward to
beginning a family. “Best wishes
to our classmates, and give us a
holler if you are in the area,”
they write.
2005
SAMANTHA BUKER (A) plans on
hosting musical après-midi in her
Baltimore garden all summer
long. First on the performer’s
list, JAMES PEARSON, cellist
(A05) was well received for his
Bach Suite #3 in C. All nearby
musical alums are invited to
showcase their talents. When not
inviting musicians to drink her
wine and gorge on rich, buttery
desserts and decadent fruits, she
praises or pans them in writing
for the Baltimore City Paper’s
rated Best Local Music Blog:
Auralstates. Read her posts right
here: http://auralstates.com/
author/sbuker. While this music
critic stint takes her round to the
nation’s top orchestras, it doesn’t
pay the rent. So she rounds out
her day by delving deep into
Federal Reserve mayhem and all
sundry things sociopolitical and
economic for Agora Financial—
particularly enjoying her status
as roving reporter for their
Libertarian-leaning rag Whiskey
and Gunpowder.
After two years of post-bac
coursework, JAMES HARRISON
(A) will be starting medical
school at the University of
Philadelphia this fall. “To old
friends and classmates, all are
welcome if you’re passing
through Philly.”
CARLY ROSE JACKSON (SF)
began a master’s program in
journalism in September 2008.
She lives in Boston, goes to
school, interns at a local weekly,
and like everyone else in the
universe has a blog. Cross your
fingers that newspapers will
still exist in 2010 when she
graduates.
ALEXIS SEGEL (SF) is happy to
be through the first year of her
Master of Fine Arts program at
Mills College in Oakland, Calif.
She will continue her studies in
Italian at Middlebury this
summer, and hopes to see some
Johnnies at her master’s recital
in spring 2010.
2006
DANIEL GRIMM (SF) writes:
“I own and operate Fishbar on
the Lake, a seasonal seafood
restaurant in Montauk, N.Y.,
the last town in the Hamptons.
My partner, Jennifer Meadows,
is the executive chef. The restaurant overlooks Montauk Harbor
and serves seafood right off
local boats, many of which
dock right in front of the
restaurant. Pictures of the view
are available on our website:
www.freshlocalfish.com.
Everyone is invited to come!”
MADELINE MAHOWALD (SF)
will begin a post-baccalaureate
premedical program at Bryn
Mawr College in May.
CARRY ROSE (A) and her fiancé,
Jacob Brown, will be having a
baby in November, their first
child.
KELLY KEENAN TRUMPBOUR
(AGI) was recently named senior
director of Running Start, a
nonprofit dedicated to inspiring
high school and college women
to pursue political office.
2007
BRENDAN GREELEY (SFGI)
has completed primary flight
training at NAS Corpus Christi,
Texas. He will fly the T-45 (Navy
Planning and serving in
the Volunteer State
W
ILLIAM GREGORICUS (SFGI00) is a senior
policy advisor in Tennessee Governor
Bredesen’s Office of Planning and Policy.
His main charge is the coordination of the
efforts of the Governor’s Criminal Justice
Coordinating Council, a 15-member
group, appointed by the Governor to examine ways to reduce
juvenile and adult recidivism and improve public safety and
serving as the deputy to the director of the Governor’s Tennessee
Recovery Act Management Office. Prior to joining the Bredesen
administration, he served under Governor Bill Richardson with
the deputy cabinet secretary for Children, Youth and Families,
with responsibilities for the Juvenile Justice Division. You can
find him on Facebook. x
Strike Jet Trainer) at NAS
Kingsville, Texas, where he will
earn his “Wings of Gold.”
CHELSEA STIEGMAN (A, now
Chelsea Ihnacik) has been
married for more than a year to
Ryan Ihnacik, her boyfriend
since high school. She’s
managing a Starbucks at the
Annapolis Mall and planning to
go to law school in the fall of
2010. In good weather, she may
be spotted traveling through
town on her new scooter.
2008
and helping a student-initiated
fundraiser to help save the
Javan rhino.”
2009
DALTON LOBO DIAS (A) is
working this summer as an e
mergency medical technician and
will be starting his premedical
post-baccalaureate program at
Bryn Mawr College in the fall. x
What’s Up?
Last May, DON BRIGGS (AGI)
was a panelist for the National
Association of Homebuilders
Green Building Conference on
“Valuing Green Buildings” in
Dallas, Texas.
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 November;
deadline for the alumni notes
section is October 10.
ALEXANDRA SCHWAB (A) has
been teaching sixth-grade math
for the past year at The Pingry
School in New Jersey, where she
will be next year, too: “My
non-math-related adventures this
year included vocal coaching for
our high school production of
Les Misérables, backup singing
for the middle school’s Godspell,
Alumni will also be sent a call
for classnotes via e-mail in
September. To see the last
mystery picture identified,
visit the online community at
www.stjohnscollege.edu, click
on Alumni.
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 }
The College Magazine
St. John’s College, P.O. Box 2800
Annapolis, MD 21404;
rosemary.harty@sjca.edu
�44
WILLIAM DARKEY, CLASS OF
1942
William Darkey, tutor
emeritus, died in Santa Fe on
June 22, 2009, at the age of 88.
He will be remembered by
friends and colleagues for
contributions that made a
tremendous difference in the
life of the college. He was
among the first students of
Barr and Buchanan’s New
Program, and he spent a year as
a tutor right after graduating.
As a founding faculty member
and dean in Santa Fe, he
helped create and foster a new
St. John’s College community
in the high desert. As a lifelong
learner and encouraging
teacher, he inspired others
with his passion for ideas.
Mr. Darkey was active on
campus when Victoria Mora,
Santa Fe dean, arrived as a
tutor in Santa Fe. “He had such
a lovely, understated way of
drawing our attention to the
important things in faculty
meetings,” she recalls. “He
had a quiet, Mark Twain-like
wit. He loved the college and
he loved the Santa Fe campus.
He had a fascinating view of
how the landscape and light on
this campus added to the
student experience of the
program, their starkness
confronting the students with
themselves as profoundly as
the books do.”
Mr. Darkey’s lecture on translation remains fresh and relevant to the work of the college
today, Dean Mora said. “It is
used widely in language classes
to help students see what a
powerful and rewarding experience a simple translation can
be. Bill saw meaning in the
everyday and familiar; what
better wisdom does a lifelong
dedication to this program
have to offer?”
{Obituaries}
He was also appreciated for his
quiet humor.
“He loved music, poetry, and
literature,” says tutor emeritus
Sam Kutler (class of 1954), who
was a student of Mr. Darkey’s.
“He was one of the founders of
the Key School here in
Annapolis because he cared
about education at all levels.”
Mr. Darkey was preceded in
death by his wife, Constance
(SFGI85). He is survived by his
stepson, Peter Nabokov; his
daughter, Catherine Darcy;
and a grandson, Aaron Darcy.
BRIAN WALKER (SF90)
by David Marquez (SF90)
William Darkey will be remembered for his quiet, Mark Twainlike wit, says Santa Fe Dean Victoria Mora.
Raised in Western Maryland,
Mr. Darkey attended St. John’s
on a scholarship and, before
graduating in 1942, was offered
a faculty position. He enlisted
in the U.S. Army in 1946 and
then, upon his honorable
discharge, pursued a graduate
degree in English literature at
Columbia University. Noted
poet and professor Mark Van
Doren was both a mentor and
good friend. Returning to
St. John’s in 1949, Mr. Darkey
joined a cadre of tutors who
helped build the college’s reputation, including intellectuals
and refugees from Europe such
as Eva Brann and gifted
composers such as Elliot
Carter.
At the new campus in Santa
Fe, Mr. Darkey served as dean
from 1968 to 1972 with “imagination, diligence, and perceptiveness,” former president
Richard Weigle wrote in one of
his memoirs. A dedicated
teacher and proponent of the
St. John’s Program, Mr. Darkey
was known for his intellect, his
gentle manner in the seminar
room, and his ability to bring
out different points of view.
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 }
As his classmates, much of our
appreciation of Brian is framed
in our shared experience of
St. John’s College. To us,
Brian’s life is not a series of
accomplishments and milestones, especially given that
he, like us, chose to attend a
college without the usual yardsticks of letter grades, midterms, multiple choice tests or
final exams. His decision to
follow an ancient method of
learning based on the simple
and complex tasks of reading
and conversing and also to lead
a life full of complexity, beauty
and creativity is proof of his
deep inspiration and feeling for
the world. Our Brian Walker
was, without a doubt, the
exemplary “Johnnie.”
To list Brian’s accomplishments is a little like trying to
trace the course of a stream
from its mountain origins as it
grows to a river and onward to
its ultimate union with the
greater sea, and in that course,
name all of the ways that gift of
water affects the places and
creatures it touches as it
passes. It is better then to say at
least some of the things Brian
was to those of us who knew
�45
{Obituaries}
him. Above all else he was our
friend: a whirl of life, joy,
sarcasm, wit, hilarity, sorrow,
vanity, appreciation,
generosity, empathy, deep
understanding, profound imagination, grammatical knowledge and a boundless well of
love for life and all that was a
part of it.
He was a poet and a creator:
the very highest honors one
could take from the college
Brian chose. It was his ability
to use wit and sarcasm that
kept his feet firmly planted on
the ground. His cock-eyed view
of pretentiousness when he
encountered it and the way he
could cut to the quick of any
situation to reveal its true form
told all of us that here was
someone who could see
through the most carefully
crafted constructs. This was a
power to be reckoned with and
respected. For many of us, it
was Brian who would give voice
to what we were all thinking,
but could not diplomatically
express.
He was a master of creating
the world as he saw it and in
such completeness that those
of us around him could not
imagine it not being so. In this
way a big green Ford pick-up
became both chariot and
limousine, and a student flat
with bad plumbing could
become a banquet hall fit for
tasting the world’s finest champagnes. Those of us around
him happily engaged in his
world view not out of dissatisfaction with the world as it was,
but because what Brian
brought out in each of us was
the hope and the belief that the
world would be just as we all
imagined it could be: full of
poetry and low humor, music
and guffawing, crassness and
beauty, and throughout all,
love.
It is no coincidence that all
who met Brian in those years at
St. John’s, and I am certain in
those years before and after,
are unable to forget him. This
is because he is one of those
rare individuals who those of us
fortunate enough to have as a
friend know that because of
him our view of the world and
of our own lives will never be
the same. As he departs it is
undeniable that any honors and
accolades that Brian may have
collected during his time here
are only dim reflections of the
light he shared with us.
IRA MILLER (AGI07)
Ira Miller, a retired general
surgeon whose passion for the
classics brought him to
St. John’s, died in March at his
home in Bethesda, Md. He was
78 and had prostate cancer.
Dr. Miller was on the staff of
several hospitals, including
Suburban Hospital, where he
chaired the surgery department from 1991 to 1993 and
served as chairman of the
medical staff from 1993 to
1995. A native of New York,
he received a bachelor’s degree
in English from Columbia
University in 1951 and a
medical degree from the
University of Buffalo in 1956.
During retirement he came to
St. John’s to continue his
education. “Ira’s years at
St. John’s were a very
rewarding time after his retirement from surgery,” says his
wife, Barbara. “He was very
grateful for the opportunity to
study the works of many of the
thinkers whose writings he had
glossed over as an undergraduate. His studies at St. John’s
enhanced his abilities as a
discussion leader in the Great
Books program, and led to his
developing courses on the Iliad
and the histories of Herodotus
and Thucydides.”
PATRICK PATRONE (SF78)
Patrick M. Patrone, M.D., died
suddenly at his home in
Hopkins, Minn., on April 16,
2009. He was 51.
Born in Izmir, Turkey, Dr.
Patrone spent most of his early
years in Fairfax, Va. After graduating from St. John’s, he
earned an MS in physiology
from Georgetown University,
and his medical degree from
the University of Virginia. He
completed his residency in
pathology at the Cleveland
Clinic and did a fellowship in
pediatric pathology at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. He practiced pathology at
Jefferson University Hospital in
Philadelphia before moving to
Lancaster County, where he
worked as a pathologist at
Lancaster General Hospital for
nine years. He also worked at
Reading Hospital and most
recently at Lower Bucks
Hospital in Bristol, Pa. He was
a fellow of the College of
American Pathologists.
JOHN M. ROSS (A69)
John Maxwell Ross died
April 6, 2009, of natural
causes at his home in Seattle.
After graduating from
brian walker
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 }
St. John’s he served for four
years in the U.S. Coast Guard,
where he was stationed in
St. Louis, Mo. He eventually
settled in Seattle, where he
spent the next few decades
pursuing personal and
professional interests.
An accomplished author of
technical books, Mr. Ross also
pursued other writing projects,
including a planned study of
the writings of E.B. White.
He combined his Coast Guard
radio engineering experience
and his love for music and folklore to serve many local organizations, including KRAB
Radio, Northwest Folklife, and
the Seattle Folklore Society.
A dedicated archivist, Mr. Ross
was deeply committed to
preserving the musical
heritage of the past in new and
different media. He also
enjoyed collecting local Pacific
Northwest wines and making
homemade apple cider with
members of the Northwest
Cider Society. He served on the
Wallingford Community
Council.
ALSO NOTED:
RICHARD FRANK (CLASS OF
1949), MAY 5, 2009
CHARLES WYMAN GROVER
(CLASS OF 1948), MARCH 19,
2009
STEVEN KEY (A74), MAY 26,
2009
ALVIN LEVY (CLASS OF 1938),
JAN. 22, 2009
WILLIAM SPRANKLE (CLASS OF
1951), FEB. 7, 2009
KEVIN STACEY (A75), MARCH
23, 2009
BOWEN WEISHEIT (CLASS OF
1940), APRIL 29, 2009
JOHN WINSLOW (CLASS OF
1933), DEC. 28, 2008
�46
{Croquet}
Johnnie vs. Johnnie:
Showdown with Santa Fe
F
aced with
another Sunday
croquet match
this spring (Navy
had a scheduling
conflict), Alumni
Director Jo Ann Mattson (A87)
hit on an idea: why not fill the
empty Saturday with a Johnnie
vs. Johnnie, East vs. West
match? When enough Santa Fe
students took the challenge,
Mattson made it an official part
of the weekend. Since Sunday
drew the largest crowd ever—
about 3,000 people—the
informal and intimate Santa Fe
vs. Annapolis match was the
highlight of the weekend for
many. “This is what croquet
was like in its early days,” said
Mattson, her picnic set up on
the edge of the playing court.
“Look at all the students here.”
Students who made the trip
from Santa Fe, along with
transfers to Annapolis, gathered under a tent where they
proudly displayed the New
Mexico flag. Other students
lounged on blankets in the sun
and did homework or read as
the games went on around
them. “I’m not really following
the game,” confessed Gina
Russom (A09), who spent her
first two years in Santa Fe. “But
it’s nice to have a little bit of
Santa Fe here in Annapolis.”
Even though Santa Fe’s team
included six former Annapolis
students who transferred to
Santa Fe, Annapolis prevailed
3-0. And though the Santa Fe
players practiced a couple of
times a week, it can’t be said
that either team took things
too seriously on Saturday.
Santa Fe’s team was led not by
an Imperial Wicket but by a
“Grand Marnier.” Another
player donned a clown’s outfit
for part of his match. Along
with their nicknames
(“Drunken Alex” and “Fried
Smokra” among them), the
Santa Fe competitors printed a
quote from the Roman poet
Claudian on their red shirts:
“It is no victory unless the
vanquished admits your
mastery.”
But on Sunday, it was all
business. Perhaps it was the
spring warmth after a dreary,
bad-news winter that brought
such a large, enthusiastic
crowd to campus for Sunday’s
match. Dressed as Vikings
(costumes chosen to hint at
domination of the seas), the
Johnnies triumphed 4-1 over
Navy.
Imperial Wicket Micah Beck
was well pleased with the
victory, although he and his
partner lost their match.
Perhaps the large crowd had
something to do with it, he
ventured. “There were alumni
lining the sidelines watching,”
he says. “We had some nervous
jitters to work out.”
The following weekend the
Johnnies closed out their
croquet season by bringing
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 }
home another trophy, as
winners of the National Intercollegiate Championships held
April 25-26 at the Merion
Cricket Club in Haverford,
Pennsylvania. The Johnnies
were among the top seeds
going into Sunday’s play, and
they won all of their six-wicket
matches. Teams were fielded by
institutions including the Naval
Academy, Bard, Haverford,
Davidson, and SUNY-New
Paltz. x
�{Croquet}
Opposite page: Top right, Santa Fe players consider their choices; Bottom
right, a quote from Claudian on a Santa Fe t-shirt; left, Gina Russom (A09)
watches the action. Above: clockwise from top, fierce Vikings face off against
the nattily dressed midshipmen; the Annapolis cup awaits the victor in the
alumni tent; the Santa Fe-Annapolis match was like the “old days” of
croquet; Elsabe Dixon (A11) and Joao Fernandes (A09) join the swing dancers.
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 }
47
�48
{Alumni Association News}
CALENDAR
Alumni, it’s time to come home to Annapolis
and Santa Fe this fall!
ANNAPOLIS
Friday, September 25
4-8 p.m.
Registration
4:30-6 p.m.
Alumni/student networking and welcome
reception, FSK Lobby
5:30 p.m.
Class reunion dinners/receptions
8:15 p.m.
Homecoming Lecture: “Don Quixote and
the Law,” by Pedro Martinez-Fraga (A84)
Saturday, September 26
8:30-noon
Registration continues
10:30 a.m.
Seminars, children’s story hour and seminars
noon
Family barbeque/ class reunion luncheons
2 p.m.
Freshman chorus, revisited
3 p.m.
The Mitchell Gallery’s “Tools in Motion”
exhibit; Soccer Classic
4 p.m.
All-Alumni Meeting/awards assembly;
book signing
5-7 p.m.
Cocktail party/birthday celebration
7:30 p.m.
Alumni banquet
9:30 p.m.
Alumni ball; rock party
SANTA FE
Friday, October 9
4-8 p.m.
Registration
4:30-5:30 p.m.
Alumni/student reception
5:30 p.m.
Class reunion receptions
6 p.m.
GI welcome reception
8 p.m.
Homecoming lecture
10 p.m.
Movie
Sunday, September 27
11 a.m.
Presidents’ Brunch
CROQUET
St. John’s vs. the U.S. Naval Academy
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Raindate: Sunday, April 18, 2010
PIRAEUS, Alumni Continuing Education
Thursday, June 3, to Sunday, June 6, 2010.
Saturday, October 10
8:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m. Registration
9:30 a.m.-10:15 a.m. State of the college
10:30 a.m.-noon Seminars and children’s story hours
12:30 p.m.
Picnic
2 p.m.
Hike to Atalaya
2-4 p.m.
Bocce tournament and Italian lawn party
5 p.m.
Speaking Volumes lecture
6 p.m.
Collegewide Art Show
7 p.m.
Homecoming dinner
9 p.m.
Homecoming dance
Sunday, October 11
11 a.m.
President’s Brunch
Seniors and alumni came together for a reception at the Paca
Gardens before Commencement. L. to r.: Jessica ZimmergbergHelms, Carol Freeman (AGI94), and Alexandra Munters.
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 }
�{Alumni Association News}
A Day in the
Country
E
ach May Sharon Bishop (class
of 1965) welcomes Washington-area alumni to her
home in Winchester, Va., for
an annual “Day in the
Country,” featuring a picnic,
tutor-led seminar, and an opportunity for
Johnnies to frolic in the sunshine. This
year, the popular event had one of its best
turnouts since Bishop began hosting about
six years ago. About 50 participants
attended the event, held on Memorial Day
weekend. Tutors Eva Brann (H89) and
Peter Kalkavage led the seminar, on Book
10 of Augustine’s Confessions.
Each group talked for an hour, then
Brann and Kalkavage switched groups.
Kalkavage’s opening question was: how
does Augustine lay out the difference
between the inner man and the outer
man? The discussion focused on memory
as the medium for inner man. Brann
concentrated on the chapter as “first
phenomenology.”
Bishop provided a catered lunch (salad,
grilled chicken, salmon, lemon squares,
chocolate mousse) paired with wines from
alumni winemakers: Hawk’s Crest, from
Warren Winiarski (class of 1952); Frog’s
Leap, from Larry Turley (SF69); and
Sanglier Volant, from the vineyard of the
late Jeff Bishop (H96), the college’s longtime vice president for advancement.
After the seminars, some alumni played
croquet, bocce, and badminton; others
lounged under shady trees and talked.
Bishop’s bearded collies, Brie and
Sunshine, participated in every activity.
Ymelda Martinez-Allison (A74) and her
husband, David (A73), were among those
who made the trek. “The Day in the
Country was fabulous,” Martinez-Allison
said. “We had lovely weather and a great
time of socializing. The luncheon was
absolutely delicious, and the seminar
discussions were lively and fruitful.”
“Thanks to Sharon, it was an absolutely
perfect day,” says Jo Ann Mattson (A87),
director of Alumni Relations. “It was such
a generous gift to her fellow alumni.”
“I enjoy hosting the event,” says Bishop.
“I love having the house in the country,
and I enjoy sharing it. And, we had great
weather.” x
Scenes from a day in the country: Seminars, Augustine on
Kindle, friends, and badminton. Photos by David Allison.
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 }
49
�50
{Alumni Association News}
A Special Correspondence
Alumni Association Honors WWII Hero
H
“. . .He modestly
disowns any praise for
his personal courage.”
tutor Eva Brann, on Martin Andrews
lives, and his family and friends joined in
congratulating him. In her remarks at the
brief ceremony, Miss Brann noted that
Mr. Andrews is “the alumnus of alumni.”
He left St. John’s in 1941 to enlist as an
aviation cadet in the Army Air Force. After
he completed his flight training in 1942,
Mr. Andrews was promoted to 1st Lieutenant and flew the B-17—the Flying
Fortress—out of England. On his 13th
mission, his plane was fired on by Luftwaffe fighters, and Mr. Andrews was forced
to set his damaged bomber down in neutral
Switzerland. He spent seven months in
internment camps there before being
released through a prisoner exchange with
Germany. (Along the way, he carried out a
spy mission for Allen Dulles, who headed
up the OSS in Europe.) After the war
Mr. Andrews settled in New York, where he
became a documentary filmmaker.
Although he didn’t finish the Program,
Mr. Andrews carried the ideals of the
joe sledge, va medical center
is health wouldn’t allow
World War II veteran
Martin Andrews (class of
1943) to come to
Annapolis to receive the
Alumni Award of Merit,
the highest honor given by the Alumni
Association. So Alumni Director Jo Ann
Mattson (A87) and Steve Thomas (SF75),
vice president of the association, traveled
to the Northport Veteran’s Administration
Medical Center on Long Island, New York,
to present the award to him on March 17.
They brought with them a special guest:
tutor Eva Brann (H89), who through a
dedicated correspondence with
Mr. Andrews developed a friendship that
has lasted more than two decades. When
they arrived at the center Mr. Andrews
introduced his wife, Jean, to the group
and quipped to Miss Brann, “she knows I
love you.”
The Award of Merit was presented by
Mr. Thomas, in recognition of
Mr. Andrews’ outstanding service to the
country, his affection and dedication for
St. John’s and the ideals it represents,
Mr. Andrews has been deemed a most
worthy recipient of the Award of Merit,” he
said. The ceremony was held in a common
room of the VA Center, where Mr. Andrews
college to war with him, Miss Brann said:
“Under the pilot’s window of the Flying
Fortress he piloted, he preempted the
display of the customary buxom blonde by
a stenciled quotation from our old seal:
Nulla via invia virtutis—No way is impassable to courage,” she said. “From his
aircraft he released catalogues of the
New Program attached to little parachutes.
It still makes my heart leap to think of
these plans for a liberal education floating
down from the heavens into totalitarian
Germany.”
Miss Brann recalled meeting
Mr. Andrews at Homecoming in 1998,
and shortly afterward, she received the
first of his letters, an account of his war
experiences. “ How young they all were,
Lieutenant Andrews himself only 23? And
what the world owes them. He won’t,
I hope, mind this way of putting it,
although he modestly disowns any praise
for his personal courage.”
She expressed her gratitude for the
friendship that has developed through
letters: “When I see his beautiful handwriting on an envelope, I’m happy.” She
noted that they have occupied the same
places but at different times or under
different circumstances during their lives.
For example, in 1943 Mr. Andrews passed
under escort through San Sebastian in Spain
after his release from internment in Switzerland. “As it happens, I too passed under
escort through San Sebastian, but in 1941,
when a last refugee transport was mounted
leaving Berlin for Lisbon.” Miss Brann and
her family settled in Brooklyn, and after
earning a doctorate at Yale, she became a
tutor at St. John’s in 1957.
“So now, once more, space and time
have happily made connection for us,”
Miss Brann concluded. “It is indeed purely
wonderful to me, for I’ve grown to love
Martin.”
Still dapper at age 89, Mr. Andrews
was visibly moved by the presentation.
He expressed gratitude for both the honor
from St. John’s and the visit from
Miss Brann.
“This is a thrilling moment for me,
because Eva Brann is an extraordinary
woman,” he told the guests. “She is the
dearest correspondent I have, and I love
her dearly.” x
Penpals Eva Brann and Martin Andrews
have developed a deep friendship, rooted
in mutual admiration.
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 }
�{Alumni Association News}
Spotlight: The Harrisburg
Reading Group
W
hen Hannah
Eagleson (AGI04)
moved back home
to Hershey,
Pennsylvania, to
work on her
doctoral dissertation on lyric poets, she
found herself missing seminar. She missed
the conversations she had at the St. John’s
Graduate Institute and as a graduate
student at the University of Delaware.
It might have been easy to find a book
group or a reading club in the area, but
that wasn’t what she was looking for.
“I wanted to meet more people who
enjoyed reading and wrestling with
texts in the way that Johnnies tend to,”
she says. “Many of my friends in this area
are thoughtful readers, but they might
not have time for a St. John’s style
reading group.”
In February, Eagleson started a
St. John’s alumni reading group in nearby
Harrisburg. Meeting once a month at a
local coffee house, participants get
together to discuss works. Leadership of
the discussion rotates between members,
who can ask an opening question if they
choose. Participants in the group include
alumni from both campuses, and from
both the undergraduate and graduate
programs. Regular participants include
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.
“I love reading with
Johnnies because they
tend to be interested in
approaching the text on
its own terms. . .”
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.
Hannah Eagleson
Randy St. John (AGI87), Aaron and Sarah
Frederickson (SF95), Kristen Litsinger
(A93), Marvin Israel (SFGI73), Rebecca
Stevenson (AGI95), Mike Jerominski
(SF97), and Kristin Lockhart (SF97).
Readings have included selected poetry
of John Donne and King Lear, which
Randy St. John has been leading the group
through act-by-act. Group members are
eager to move beyond the seminar to
arrange social and cultural outings; they’re
planning to attend a local Shakespeare in
the Park production of Cymbeline, as well
as organize a group hike.
“We’re still figuring out a lot of things,
but it’s been very exciting so far,” Eagleson
says. “[I]t has been a great pleasure to give
careful attention to texts together, and to
hear what everyone else has to say. I love
reading with Johnnies because they tend to
be interested in approaching the text on its
own terms, but also interested in how texts
interact with life experience.”
The group typically meets on the fourth
Friday of each month at Cornerstone
Coffeehouse, 2133 Market St., Camp Hill,
Pennsylvania. Contact Hannah Eagleson
(hannaheag@comcast.net) for more
information.
— Sara Luell (A09)
Introducing Nancie Wingo
I
n June, Nancie Wingo
joined the Santa Fe
staff as director of
Alumni Activities.
Prior to joining the
college, Wingo
worked in Richmond, Va., for
the YMCA of Greater Richmond Association. She held
numerous roles in her seven
years with the association,
most recently directing
member services.
A native of Merced, Calif.,
Wingo is a 1981 graduate of
Baylor University, where she earned a
bachelor’s degree in communications.
She has also held jobs in public relations
and marketing. She has two sons:
Harrison, 23, and Andrew, 19. An avid
traveler, Wingo enjoys tennis, hiking,
reading, films and trying new recipes.
Wingo is pleased to join “this gem of a
college” and eager for the opportunity to
reach out to Santa Fe alumni. “I have a
deep and growing respect for the College,
the Program, a stimulating community,
and the opportunities that the future
holds,” she says. x
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 }
�52
greenfield library
{St. John’s Forever}
A
century ago this past
February—just as the
college was preparing to
celebrate the 125th anniversary of its charter—
McDowell Hall was gutted
by a blaze most likely caused by defective
wiring. President Thomas Fell had been
working in his McDowell office that
Saturday morning, February 20. He later
told the Baltimore Sun that he and his
secretary had smelled smoke, but they both
thought someone was burning trash
nearby. Fell went home to lunch at 1 p.m.,
but within minutes, his secretary was at the
door, reporting that McDowell was on fire.
Students formed a bucket brigade, but
they soon realized they could not reach the
source of the flames. Instead, led by faculty
members, they concentrated on saving the
building’s contents, including college
records (including some from King
William’s School), class shields and
portraits of the college’s presidents. Led by
Lt. E. Berkely Iglehart (class of 1894), a
squad of students was dispatched to carry
out the 30,000 rounds of ammunition for
the college’s military program stored in
the basement. Firemen and midshipmen
from the Naval Academy also helped fight
the blaze, which could be seen for miles
around and attracted hundreds of spectators to the campus.
When it was all over, the upper two
floors of McDowell were gone. Falling
debris and water left the building’s first
floor in ruins.
Though badly damaged, the masonry
walls were intact, and this helped Fell and
the board decide that McDowell would rise
again. Contributions from alumni started
pouring in immediately. With their
financial support, the college rebuilt
McDowell according to its original design,
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 }
with the largely intact rear rooms serving
as models. By June 1910, the reconstruction was complete.
In 1989, the college undertook an extensive restoration of McDowell, moving
administrative offices to a new wing in
Mellon Hall and refiguring them as classrooms, installing heating and air conditioning, and shoring up the floors and
galleries.
It’s hard to imagine the Annapolis
campus without McDowell. Its iconic bell
tower was carried over to the design of
another building 2000 miles away, what
would become Weigle Hall in Santa Fe. x
For more on McDowell’s history and a full
account of the 1909 fire, consult McDowell
Hall at St. John’s College in Annapolis:
1742-1989, by John Christensen with
Charles Bohl.
�{Eidos}
On Moving Again
This evening, walking along the long field
My eye was drawn to a living shimmer in the sky:
Three aspens alone alive in a world of almost motionless
Cottonwood and willow and Chinese elm trees.
The breeze that barely stirred the others
Sprang it free, spangling leaves like light on water,
An electric flutter, the secret energy
In the heart of the world revealed. Free.
An aspen leaf might believe itself inordinately busy
(especially comparatively) and certain therefore
It will expire prematurely, useless, stupid, failed.
From where I stood, it was the most beautiful thing to see.
My life could be similarly pleasing to God.
I guess this could be service enough for me.
Liz Waldner
About the artist and poet
Karina Hean’s Nebulous (36" x 24" charcoal, conté, and graphite
on cotton rag paper, 2007) was created for an exhibit at the
University of Colorado. After teaching at Fort Lewis College and
completing several national and international fellowships and residencies, Hean (A00) will be a visiting professor at the University
of Montana this fall. Upcoming solo exhibitions include the
Contemporary Center for the Arts in December 2009, Fort Lewis
College in January 2010, and ArtHaus 66 in summer 2010.
Liz Waldner (A83) is the author of Saving the Appearances; Dark
Would (the missing person),winner of the 2002 Contemporary
Poetry Series; Etym(bi)ology; Self and Simulacra (2001), winner
of the Alice James Books Beatrice Hawley Prize; A Point Is That
Which Has No Part, winner of the 2000 James Laughlin Award
and the 1999 Iowa Poetry Prize; and Homing Devices (1998). Her
poetry has appeared in the New Yorker, Colorado Review, Denver
Quarterly, Ploughshares, VOLT, and many other publications.
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 }
�NON -P ROFIT ORG .
U.S. P OSTAGE
PAID
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Santa Fe, NM
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�On Galileo
SIJOHN’S
College
ANNAPOLIS • SANTA FE
“7 don y know ’—what a beautiful expression that is—so candid in its honesty. ”
Galileo Galilei
bserving the natural world raised questions for Galileo, for example:
Why did the water on the surface of the earth slosh around once or
Born in 1564 in Pisa,
Galileo
at ainmonastery
considered
becoming
a monk,
twice
a day, studied
like water
a swingingand
container?
Galileo
rejected
the
but his father insisted
that
hethe
study
medicine.
Galileotowas
intrigued
mathe
idea
that
moon
had anything
do more
with it.
Instead,with
he concluded
matics, which he studied
with
a tutor
dropping
out
of the around
University
that itindependently
was because the
earth
was before
both rotating
and
moving
the
of Pisa altogether. He
later
returned
to
the
university
to
teach,
but
at
a
very
low
salary,
and
sun, constantly speeding up and slowing down, generating the
tides.
It
his appointment to the
of Padua
saved him
from
poverty.
Galileo alsoled
pursued
wasUniversity
a rare mistake
for Galileo,
whose
thought
experiments
him to
potentially prohtable
projects;
one
of these,Ofa course,
telescope,
proved
successful.
such
brilliant
insights.
he had
the quite
big picture
right.He
turned his instrument to the heavens with more questions, publishing his observations in
Starry Messenger.
Always a prudent scientist, Gahleo nevertheless made mistakes, for example, overesti
mating his political connections and friendship with Pope Urban VIII when he published
his Dialogue on Two Chief World Systems in 163a. He had finished the work on Christmas
Eve, iGag, but the bubonic plague delayed the news of his work, which challenged the
Catholic Church’s ban on teaching Copernican theories, getting to Rome.
Galileo never married, but he had three children with his housekeeper, Maria Gamba.
In her book Galileo’s Daughter, Dava Sobel documented the especially close relationship
he had with his daughter, Virginia, whom he settled in a convent as a young girl. When she
joined her order, Virginia took the name Maria Celeste. Although she lived a cloistered
existence, she followed her father’s career and worried about him. After his trial in 1633,
in which the Roman Inquisition found Galileo guilty of heresy, Maria Celeste took on his
penance. Galileo had hoped to persuade the church to consider purely scientific matters
apart from faith. Instead, the Dialogue was banned for aoo years. Galileo was forced to
publicly confess his error and was sentenced to house imprisonment for the remainder of
his life. He died in 1642.
We read his works at St. John’s, follow his thinking, and replicate his experiments. But
the spirit of Galileo is reflected in laboratory in another way; Johnnies are asked to be
gadflies when they consider science. Like all other classes at St. John’s, “laboratory
proceeds in the mode of radical inquiry,” explains Michael Dink < A75), dean in Annapolis.
“We don’t want simply to assimilate the conclusions of science; we want to raise questions
about not only its conclusions, but also its methods, and indeed the whole enterprise.
Thanks to the interplay of seminar and laboratory readings, we are in a position to see the
project of modern science as novel and questionable.”
This issue of The College celebrates inquiry, both in laboratory and in the work of five
alumni engaged in fascinating pursuits in science.
-7?//
O
The College (usps 018-750)
is published quarterly 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
postmaster: Send address
changes to The College
Magazine, Communications
Office, St. John’s College,
Box 2800, Annapolis, MD
21404-2800.
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
Christopher Allison (SF97)
Ethan Brooks (Aio)
Shane Gassaway (SF06)
Ruth Johnston (A85)
Cathi Dunn MacRae
Tom Nugent
Deborah Spiegelman
Erica Stratton (A08)
Kea Wilson (A09)
Jennifer Wright (A08)
Magazine design by
Claude Skelton Design
® Mixed Sources
I
J
FSC
Product group from well-managed
forests, controlled sources and
recycled wood or fiber
www.fsc.org Cert no. SW-COC-002404
O 1996 Forest Stewardship Council
�"I "I
College
The
ZINE FOR Alumni
of
Vol
y
St. John’s College
Annapolis •
{Contents}
PAGE
(J
DEPARTMENTS
Commencement 2008
In Annapolis, the chairman of the
National Endowment for the Humanities
tells graduates to be grateful.
In Santa Fe, the president of the
Council on Foreign Relations asks
Johnnies to be citizens of the world.
PAGE
ZO
Talking About Science
PAGE 8
Johnnie researchers tackle big questions
dealing with the human brain, dangerous
diseases, and basic mysteries of the universe.
3a ALUMNI
PAGE 14
Progress
An aspiring writer ponders whether
artistic expression can co-exist with the
demands of the Program.
PAGE
•
•
•
Eastern Classics helped Lisa Levchuk
(SFGI05, EC06) finish her novel,
Everything Beautiful in the World.
Radical Inquiry
A Work in
Celebrating capital campaign success
New outreach effort in Annapolis
A dream walking
Cultivating outdoor skills in Santa Fe
Helping high school students get
to college
Deconstructing a greenhouse
Annapolis’ weekend warriors
A new GI director in Annapolis
Salvatore Scibona (SF97) found
inspiration for his first novel. The End,
in his heritage.
Z^
PAGE
FROM THE BELL TOWERS
•
•
•
•
•
30 BIBLIOFILE
No part of the Program has undergone as
much revision as the laboratory.
PAGE
a
PROFILES
3a Singer-songwriter Buddy Mondlock (A82)
finds success in the music business.
36 The Peace Corps introduced
Melanie Kirby (SF97) to a life with bees.
40 Adrian Bordone (AGI96) helps nonprofits
prove their worth.
Z^8
45 OBITUARIES
In Love with Croquet
Remembering two dedicated Annapolis
staff members.
For one day a year, Johnnies are
bloodthirsty Spartans.
PAGE 48
47 ALUMNI VOICES
Christopher Allison (SF97) finds purpose
in the foreign service.
ON THE COVER
Galileo Galilei
Illustration by DavidJohnson
50 ALUMNI ASSOCIATION NEWS
5a ST. John’s FOREVER
�{From the Bell Towers}
The Campaign for St. John’s
Exceeds $125 Million Goal
When the college formally declares its
success at campaign celebrations this July
in Santa Fe, and September in Annapolis,
there will be quite a few people to thankLed Zeppelin among them.
The legendary rock band reunited in
December 2007 (with Jason Bonham
replacing his late father on the drums) in
London for a tribute to Ahmet Ertegun,
class of 1944 and founder of Atlantic
Records. Proceeds established the Ahmet
Ertegun Education Fund, which benefits
four educational institutions, St. John’s
among them.
Many individuals-from an anonymous
donor who made a $12 million gift to
strengthen the college endowment to a
recent alumnus who made a first-time gift
of $20 to the college’s Annual Fundcontributed to the success of “With a Clear
and Single Purpose”: The Campaign for
St. John’s College. As of June i, 2008,
more than $130 million has been raised in the campaign,
an extraordinary achievement for a small college. “We have been
able to address important priorities such as financial aid and
faculty salaries, as well as improving the physical facilities on the
campus,” said Annapolis President Christopher Nelson (SF70).
The Santa Fe campus, which is marking the 40th anniversary of
its first commencement this year, will see some of its most impor
tant long-term goals come to fruition as a result of campaign gifts.
Among them are the Norman and Betty Levan Hall, a new home
for the Graduate Institute; a new dormitory; and the Ariel Intern-
Great things have already been accom
plished
THROUGH THE CAPITAL CAMPAIGN.
Dr. Norman Levan (SFGI74) made a
$5 million gift for a new GI building in
Santa Fe. Below: Gilliam Hall in
Annapolis was made possible through a
GRANT FROM ThE HoDSON TrUST.
left:
ship program that provides work experi
ence for students. “The success of this
campaign will mean a stronger, more vital
campus community in Santa Fe,” said Presi
dent Michael Peters, “Innovation and vision
have always meant a lot to this campus.
Financial stability, increased support for
student financial aid, and improved facili
ties position us for a bright future.”
The campaign formally opened in 2006
with opening celebrations in Annapofis
and Santa Fe. On July 25, Santa Fe will
host the first closing celebration, a Fiesta
for New Mexico alumni and supporters.
On September 13, Annapolis-area alumni and college friends will
celebrate the successful completion of the campaign.
Strong leadership gifts, most notably from Ronald Fielding,
campaign chairman, started the campaign out on a high note.
Fielding directed his gift to the endowment, for financial aid.
To stimulate giving in the final year of the campaign, he issued a
$2.5 million challenge to alumni, matching first-time gifts,
increased gifts, and multi-year pledges to the campaign.
The challenge worked-alumni met and exceeded the challenge,
prompting Fielding to raise the challenge and match qualifying
gifts through June 30. One of the greatest achievements the
college can celebrate in this campaign. Fielding noted, is the
creation of a strong culture of giving among alumni.
Leadership gifts from donors such as Fielding, a strong
response to the annual fund from alumni, and the support of
foundations all contributed to the campaign’s success, says
Sharon Bishop (class of 1965), chair of the Board of Visitors and
Governors. “I think this campaign has reinforced our central
beliefs about St. John’s,” Bishop says. “First, St. John’s stands for
something important and valuable in higher education. Secondly,
our alumni believe in our Program and are willing to support it
with their dollars, more than they ever have in the history of our
college. Finally, we have gained the admiration and financial
support of foundations and friends which have been critical to our
success.”
When the celebrations end in the fall, the college will embark
on a new strategic plan, one that establishes priorities and iden
tifies challenges for the college in the coming years. Bishop says.
“Because this campaign has been such a resounding success, we
can move on to the next chapter, firmly grounded in our purpose
and confident about our future.”
- Rosemary Harty
{The College -St. John’s
College • Summer 2008 }
�{From the Bell Towers}
Reaching out in Annapolis
BY Ethan Bkooks (Aio)
In past years, Annapolis
students have engaged in
community service in a
variety of ways, from tutoring
local children to working on
Habitat for Humanity proj
ects. Early this summer, a
group of students who are
concerned about the social
issues of the wider Annapolis
community launched a new
project: Epigenesis, a lo-week
leadership program for
Annapolis youth “who have
experienced serious difficul
ties in life,” says Jamaal
Barnes (Aio). The idea, says
Barnes, is for Johnnies to
support teenagers as they
“work through the Annapolis
community to create the
change they want
to see.”
Four students created
Epigenesis: Barnes, Rachel
Davison (AoB), Raphaela
Cassandra (Aio), and Joshua
Becker (A08). The group
already has seed money: a
$10,000 grant from The
Davis Projects for Peace
program.
The effort arose from a
growing concern among
students over social problems
in Annapolis, including drugrelated violence, a high drop
out rate for students of color,
and a lack of opportunity for
area youth, says Barnes.
“Epigenesis was inspired by a
love for the Annapolis
community,” he says.
“Instead of being worried and
concerned and sitting in our
The
founders of
lofty positions on campus, our
education inspires us to act.
If something’s wrong, we
should try to fix it in whatever
way we can.”
Epigenesis founders began
their project by making
contacts with social service
and community organizations
in Annapolis, including
Annapolis High School, We
Care and Friends, Asbury
United Methodist Church,
and the Boys and Girls Club
in Annapolis. “We thought
it was important to partner
with other groups and get
the support of other
community programs,”
says Ms. Cassandra.
The program began in mid
June with a leadership work
shop for a dozen area
teenagers, selected with the
help of community partners,
at St. John’s. The group will
continue to meet throughout
“A Dream Walking”
St. John’s lost one of its biggest fans last February when
writer, newspaper columnist and conservative pundit
William F. Buckley, Jr. died. Buckley was the Commence
ment speaker in Annapolis in May 1996. Shortly afterward he
praised the college in his nationally syndicated column,
focusing on the titles of the senior essays he read about in the
Commencement program. Not easily impressed, Buckley
described his column as “a lullaby to the forlorn on the
theme of: Believe it or not, some American students learn.”
He described expressing his astonishment at the “academic
and intellectual sophistication” of the students to Ray Cave
(class of 1948), who sat next to him on the podium. He listed
many of the authors read on the Program, and concluded
with a line that the college has treasured since: “Did you ever
see a dream walking? Go to St. John’s.”
4"
the summer to plan and carry
out projects in their own
communities. Students will
develop programs to address
the social problems they see
as the most critical in the
Annapolis community today.
Barnes says these could
include open-mic nights and
community fairs. Johnnies
Epigenesis
HOPE TO EMPOWER AnnAPOLIS
YOUTH TO WORK FOR CHANGE IN
THEIR communities: (l. to R.)
Rachel Davison (A08), Jamaal
Barnes (Aio), Raphaela
Cassandra (Aio), and Josh
Becker (A08).
{The College-
3
St. John’s College ■ Summer 2008 }
will help facilitate the
program as advisers, office
assistants, or group leaders,
“to help the teens in whatever
way possible,” he says.
�{From the Bell Towers}
Ah, Wilderness!
Search and Rescue Fosters
Outdoor Skills
Thanks to wider cell phone
coverage, fancy GPS devices,
and better wilderness and
safety education, fewer hapless
hikers are getting lost in the
mountains near the Santa Fe
campus. That’s meant a shift in
focus for the college’s Search
and Rescue Team.
Brendan O’Neill, Athletics
and Outdoors Program coordi
nator in Santa Fe, has been
involved with the team since
1998. Since Search and Rescue
was founded in 1971, the team
would field 30 or so rescue
missions a year, he says. With
fewer rescues, the team has
focused more energy on
teaching Johnnies leadership
and outdoor skills. O’Neill says
extended training is focused in
four main areas: navigation,
including map reading,
compass skills, and GPS;
wilderness medi
cine; communica
tions, including
using radios; and
field certification,
which the state of
New Mexico
requires for search
and rescue partici
pants. The team has
about 30 members,
35 of whom are
St. John’s students.
Team members are
encouraged to
attend at least two
sessions a month.
In the pastyear
several courses
Nate Murray
have been held on the Santa Fe
campus, including a wilderness
first-response course taught by
Wilderness Medical Associates,
an amateur radio license class
taught by the Los Alamos
Radio Club, and an avalanche
course. Cultivating leadership
skills is still an important goal
of the team, O’Neill says, and
to that end students take on
important roles such as presi
dent, training officer, and
logistics officer.
All this training means a
safer and more effective
mission when Search and
Rescue heads off campus to the
mountains. In January, three
searches in four days involved
members of the St. John’s
team. In the first, the hiker
turned up while rescue teams
were mobilizing-“the best
result in a mission,” says
O’Neill. The second involved a
rescue that was completed just
before a snowstorm. The third
rescue, in which two people
were lost for three nights in the
Santa Fe Ski Basin area,
required 13 teams working in
blizzard-like conditions.
- Jenny Hannifin
(SF09) IMPROVES HIS
COMMUNICATION
SKILLS.
A Book That changed your life
Is there one book that changed your life? Opened your eyes to
something you never considered before? The College is
collecting stories about how one or two (three at the most!)
books affected alumni. Send your thoughts to the editor by email: Rosemary.Harty@sjca.edu or mail to; The College Maga
zine, PO Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404. The deadline is
September 15. We’ll print as many as we can fit.
Here’s a sampling to inspire you:
Erin Hanlon (SF03): ''War andPeace brought me to a belief
in God. That part where Pierre is searching and meets the old
Mason kind of paralleled my own searching, and when Pierre
goes through the initiation ceremony it somehow dawned on
me that God existed. That said, I did not become a Mason, but
instead an Orthodox Christian. The other book that had a big
effect on me was The Boxcar Children in third grade. It was the
book that made me realize I loved to read-and I became a
bookworm after that.”
{The College-
Anna Perleberg (SF02): “Alot ofbooks have been influential
in my life-kind of like breathing. But the first was Mystery at
Lilac Inn, a Nancy Drew that my kindergarten teacher gave me
when she realized I’d read all the picture books in the class
room. Not only did it have exciting girly adventures, it began to
instill confidence in me that I could educate myself at my own
pace and not have to fit into a mold.”
Rhonda Ortiz (A04): ''''Pride andPrejudiccw^s, the first
‘grown-up, thinking’ book that I read and enjoyed. This
coincided with taking a class from my most influential teacher
in high school, Mr. O’Malley (AP history). Together, they mark
the beginning of my adult thinking. Reading Euclid and
Apollonius taught me to appreciate and love the beauty of
mathematics. The Bible and the liturgy, however, have been the
most formative of my life.”
St. John’s College ■ Summer 2008 }
�{From the Bell Towers}
5
Determinate Negation:
Razing the Santa Fe Greenhouse
BY Shane Gassaway (SFo6)
In early January, a call went out
from Mike DiMezza (SF98,
EC99), former assistant
gardener. He was spreading
the word to those who helped
him huild it that the adohe
greenhouse behind the Fine
Arts Building would soon he
taken down. Its decommission
makes way for a fire safety road
that will serve the Norman and
Betty Levan Hall, the center
for the Graduate Institute, on
which construction will begin
later this year.
For many people, the green
house, built in 2003, stood as
a legacy and a proud accomplishment. It was distinct
among buildings on the Santa
Fe campus in that students
conceived of, designed, and
built it-with help from alumni,
the Buildings and Grounds
office, and friends of the
college. A “green” structure,
it served as a model for owner
ship, stewardship, and
belonging in the St. John’s
community. Even though its
destruction makes way for a
great benefit to the college,
many will feel its loss deeply
and for a long time. That’s why,
when Mike suggested a recon
vening of some of the old crew
to deconstruct the greenhouse,
I agreed to join in. We would
salvage the materials to be
reused elsewhere-perhaps for
another greenhouse built by a
later generation of students.
Upon reflection, of course,
the idea seems a bit crazy.
After all, Mike was
calling me in New
Orleans from his
place in Brooklyn,
where he lives with
his wife, Amy, and
one-year-old son,
Lucca. The old crew
is scattered to far
corners at this point.
But as Mike said later
in Santa Fe, “So
many people helped
build that green
house, so much
heart, love, and care
went into the site, to
have just destroyed it
would have been too
much to bear.” In March,
Mike and I flew to Santa Fe.
Together with some students,
staff, old guard B&G workers
and David Perrigo, the campus
architect, we brought down
the greenhouse in four days.
I delighted in seeing John
nies again with tools in hand.
It felt similar to building the
greenhouse as a student along
side other students. The work
had been a diversion for some
of us, or an outlet for the
stress of the trials of the class
room; for others it was a
means of honing thoughts
engendered therein. For all, it
meant learning a practical
application of the St. John’s
method by addressing each
task, if not as a knower, then
as a thinker. It meant learning
to take stock of the tools and
resources at one’s disposal,
however few they were and
Deconstructing the Santa Fe
GREENHOUSE WAS AS MUCH A
LABOR OF LOVE AS BUILDING IT FOR
Mike DiMezza (SF98,EG99).
Materials were preserved to
REBUILD THE GREENHOUSE WHEN
THE BEST SPOT IS CHOSEN,
{The College-
St. John’s College ■ Summer 2008 }
however crude, and using
them to the utmost with
creativity and deliberation.
For five years the greenhouse
stood as a monument to that
invaluable lesson, and as a
refuge and place of beauty for
the students, faculty, and staff
of Santa Fe. Will it have a
future incarnation? As Santa Fe
President Michael Peters told
me, a greenhouse does belong
on campus. Materials salvaged
from the greenhouse were
saved, and the structure will be
rebuilt as soon as the best loca
tion has been determined.
Until then, it shall live in
the hearts and works of those
whose hands shaped it and
whose lives it touched. *
Shane Gassaway is enrolled in
the PhD program in philos
ophy at Tulane University.
In New Orleans, he’sput his
building skills to use in
assisting in the construction
ofa playground through a
program called Kaboom,
whose mission is to build a
playground within walking
distance ofevery child in
America.
�6
{From the Bell Towers}
Weekend Warriors
Armed with Padded Weapons,
Johnnies Pursue Honor
BY Erica Stratton (Ao8)
The Melee Club, which wages a
(bloodless) battle on the soccer
field after lunch every Saturday
afternoon, has an important
niche at St. John’s: It reminds
armchair Iliad enthusiasts
what hand-to-hand combat was
actually like. Forget that these
weapons are foam instead of
bronze and that the partici
pants fight not for honor, but
until the last man is standing.
That’s not to say that there
aren’t moments of stoicism that
would do any Spartan proud:
though no face or groin hits are
allowed, everything else is
fair game.
“Things like Melee just
evolved out of warfare, like
most modern forms of martial
arts and weapon practice,”
explains Michael Sloan (Aii),
who has been playing since he
came to St. John’s. “The only
difference is that while things
like fencing and Aikido teach
the tactics and procedures of a
specific form of combat. Melee
is simply a brawl.” No specific
physical prowess is needed to
play-though many of the
veteran players will be happy to
demonstrate techniques that
would make any zombie
fighting ninja proud.
The traditional Melee
weapon is a foam sword called a
“boffer,” though soft rephcas of
axes, spears, and shields are
also common. They all have a
core of PVC, wrapped in pipe
insulation foam in the shape
and size appropriate to the kind
of weapon needed. After the
glue has set, the entire weapon
is wrapped in colorful duct tape
to add durability. Archon
William Kunkel (Aii) says,
“The name ‘boffer’ is probably
based on the sound one makes
when hitting someone solidly.
With a well padded one, it actu
ally sounds like ‘boff.’ ”
This year’s Melee group
numbers around 20 students,
including several women. The
rules of battle are simple and the
objective is clear. Club members
split up into two opposing
“armies,” chosen by “captains”
as if it were a soccer game.
Usually the opposing teams
stare at once another for a few
seconds, then suddenly rush at
each other, screaming a battle
cry. Combatants get their arms
and legs “cut off’ with the slap
stick glee of a Monty Python
movie. Once a limb is
“disabled,” the player must act
as if it no longer functions,
leading to the classic Melee pose
of hopping after someone on
one foot. And, though they
might start out as two armies,
loyalties are fluid and any game
can quickly become “everyman
for himself.”
With all this treachery and
risk of bruising, why do people
play?
Killian Gupton (Ari), who
just started playing this year,
says, “I play because I really
need an opportunity to wail
away at someone and let off
steam without hurting
anybody. It just helps me
relax and get something out
of my system.”
Kelly Trop (Ari), one of
the female players, gets
straight to the point: “I play
mostly because it’s fun to
attack people with giant
foam weapons.”
The origins of Melee on the
St. John’s campus are lost to
those who play the game now,
but Archon Jason Ritzke (Art)
believes this particular game is
unique to St. John’s. “Many
other padded-weapon fighting
groups exist,” he says.
“However, this has the special
nature of allowing us to truly
communicate (to a classmate)
what we really thought about
that point made in seminar.”
Above, Scott Jones, Michael
Sloan, and Bill Kunkel let off
STEAM
in pretend
BATTLE.
Bottom left, Kunkel, Scott
Jones, Cameron Thompson,
Sloan, Jason Ritzke, Robert
Mercer, and Daniel Dausman
mount a charge. All are
members of the class of
{The College.
St. John’s College . Summer 2008 }
aoii.
�{From the Bell Towers}
News & Announcements
New GI Director in
Annapolis
Tutor Marilyn Higuera is the
new Graduate Institute director
in Annapohs, taking over for
Joan Silver. Higuera has heen a
tutor at St. John’s since 1979.
She earned bachelor’s and
master’s degrees at the Univer
sity of Michigan and spent two
years as a mathematician at the
Apphed Physics Laboratory of
Johns Hopkins University.
Having taught graduate
students at St. John’s, Higuera is
excited about spending the next
four years strengthening the
institute, recruiting new
students, and supporting
students. “They have come to
St. John’s after earning an
undergraduate degree some
where else, and they know that
they’ve really missed some
thing. Many of them have fulltime jobs and commute long
distances to come to the
college,” she says. “I’m touched
by their level of commitment,
the lengths that they go to in
order to be here.”
One of Higuera’s most
important charges as the
new director, succeeding
tutor Joan Silver, is to
continue to promote the
Hodson Trust Teacher
Fellowship. The program
pays up to 70 percent of the
total cost of attending the
program for kindergarten
through rath-grade
teachers.
Honors for Aicla
Head Sensei Ferol Arce,
9th Dan and one of the
highest-ranked martial
artists in the country in
Karate-Do, came to the
Santa Fe campus for his
first visit in February aoo8, with
three other Black Belts. St.
John’s Dojo members, including
tutor Jorge Aigla, were pleased
to be able to work out with him.
But Arce also had a surprise in
store: he awarded Aigla a 7th
Dan, making Aigla the highestranked martial artist in New
Mexico, according to Arce.
Aigla has been teaching
Karate-Do free of charge on the
Santa Fe campus for 22 years
and has been practicing for
39 years. The St. John’s Dojo has
about 15 committed members
and comprises students, faculty,
and staff. Aigla accepted the
award on behalf of the St. John’s
Dojo, adding that “this distinc
tion really belongs to the
students and to the college.”
New Look for the
Web Site
The St. John’s College Web site
was redesigned this spring by
Baltimore firm no/inc, with the
college’s Web team imple
menting the changes. The new
look prominently features the
great book authors, and offers
improved navigation through
drop-down menus and quick
links.
Staff News
Anna Sochocky is the new
College in Santa Fe. She brings
18 years of experience in areas of
media cultivation, advertising,
promotion, and electronic and
print pubheation development.
During the past 10 years, she
has operated a successful
consulting business in these
areas as well as government rela
tions and creative writing. Most
recently she was director of
Pubhc Relations and Marketing
at the College of Santa Fe.
Sochocky earned a bachelor’s
degree in history and political
science at Macalester College
and a master’s in liberal studies
at Hamline University.
Melissa Latham-Stevens, art
director/senior graphic designer
for the Santa Fe campus, has
been recognized for her design
talents by the Council for the
Advancement and Support of
Education (CASE). LathamStevens won a Silver Medal in
the Alumni Relations Pubhea
tions category for her design of
the St. John’s Homecoming
2007 brochure.
Correction
In the Winter 2008 issue of
The College, an article on the
Annual Fund incorrectly identified Jack Walker. We regret
the error.
director of Communications and
External Relations for St. John’s
Tutor Marilyn Higuera
Helping High School
Students Get to College
The Ronald Simon Family Foundation, which helps high school
students prepare for and succeed in college, chose St. John’s
College as the site for its tutoring efforts in Santa Fe, creating
opportunities for St. John’s students interested in education. The
foundation provides educational support in areas including test
preparation, college admissions counseling, and tutoring.
Steve Simon, coordinator for the foundation’s New Mexico
program, chose St. John’s as the Santa Fe tutoring site because of
the college’s emphasis on classical education. In the fall of 2007
the foundation hired St. John’s students and alumni to tutor local
high school students participating in the program.
{The College.
Martin Timmons
(SFLA07, EC05) is the
tutoring coordinator,
and works with Kay
Duffy (SF04, EC05),
Jennifer Fain (SF09),
Liam Goodacre (SF08),
Juhan Gress (SFio),
Kathryn Leahey (SFii),
Brooke Nutini (SF05),
Adam Perry (SFii),
Aaron Kane Turner
(SF09), and Nicholas
Weeks (SF05, EC06).
St. John’s College . Summer 2008 }
Brooke Nutini (SF05), left, tutors
HIGH school student AdRIANNA
Romero.
�8
{Commencement}
“A Shared Experience”
inutes after
Cole congratulated the
the reces
parents of the 106 graduating
sional
seniors and 2,2 Graduate Insti
marking the
tute students who obtained
end of the
master’s degrees by leading a
ai6th
round of applause. He praised
Commencementthe
in Annapolis,
college’s “democratic”
Nancie and Bill Lee
education,
of Mi I i Ian
which
i, he described
Hawaii, hurried to McDowell
as “the sense of a shared expeHall carrying two Banana
rience-what one St. John’s
Republic shopping bags with
alumnus has described to me as
their gifts: 130 purple orchid
an ‘intense commonality.’ ”
leis, one for each new graduate
Appointed by President
and their tutors. In Hawaii a lei
George W. Bush to chair the
is a gift of affection and celebra NEH in 2001, Cole was previ
tion. The Lees, whose son
ously Distinguished Professor
Justin was among the Class of
of Art History and Professor of
aoo8, presented the leis in the
Comparative Literature at
spirit of community that is at
Indiana University in Bloom
the heart of St. John’s College.
ington. He praised the value of
Bruce Cole, chairman of the
a liberal arts education, but
National Endowment for the
emphasized the unique nature
Humanities, touched on this
of St. John’s. “I can say with
spirit when he described his
confidence that the great books
meeting with the students who
education you have received at
visited him at the NEH to invite St. John’s is truly one-of-a-kind.
him to speak at Commence
At this college, you haven’t
ment: “One thing that struck
acquired knowledge in the form
me when I met with some
of textbooks and lectures, pre
members of this graduating
packaged for easy consumption
class in January was how consis like a frozen TV dinner. You
tently all the students spoke in
haven’t absorbed these great
works through the filter of
terms of‘we,’ not ‘I,’ when
discussing their experience
another person’s mind, however
here at the college,” he said.
brilliant that person might be.”
Graduates of
St. John’s, Cole said,
leave the college with
a “moral sense”
acquired through
books and discus
sions. “By their very
nature, most of the
books you have
encountered at
St. John’s have forced
you to constantly ask
yourselves, ‘What
should I do? What
does it mean to live a
good life?’ On too
many campuses
today, these funda
mental questions are
M
{The College-
Above: The Lee family brought leis to help graduates celebrate
(l. to r.): Jessica Lee, Bill Lee, Justin Lee, and Nancie Lee.
left: John Travis Pittman (A08) celebrates. Right: John
LEAVE the college WITH THE TOOLS TO LIVE A “gOOD AND FLOUR
ISHING PRIVATE LIFE,” NEH CHAIRMAN BrUCE CoLE SAID.
Bottom,
nies
left unasked-sometimes, as
incredible as this might sound,
because other questions are
deemed higher priorities; and
often, simply because it is
presumed that ultimately we
cannot find the answers. At
St. John’s, these questions have
guided your whole education,
and for that, you should be
profoundly grateful.”
By educating students
through careful reading and
genuine conversation. Cole
said, “St. John’s has given you
more than just the means to
St. John’s College ■ Summer zoo8 }
make a living-it has also given
you the tools to make a life, a
good and flourishing private hfe
as an individual, as a spouse, as
a parent, as a friend.”
—Patricia Dempsey
PwiZThe College magazine
online at www. stjohnscoUege. edii
to read the commencement
addressesfrom both campuses
and view aphoto gallery ofthe
ceremonies.
�{Commencement}
“Great Books
for a
t the 41st
Commencement
on the Santa Fe
campus, 89
undergraduates
and 30 Graduate
Institute students received their
degrees. Rain was in the fore
cast, hut Saturday’s sky was
clear, and the weather not
unlike a brisk fall day. The
Artemis String Quartet
provided music for the
procession and recession, and
the college Commencement
Choir sang pieces by Palestrina
and de Cristo before and after
the address to the graduating
class given by Richard N. Haass. director of policy planning for
the Department of State and a
Haass is the president of the
principal adviser to Secretary of
Council on Foreign Relations,
State Colin Powell. He has been
an independent, nonpartisan
vice president and director of
membership organization,
foreign policy studies at the
think tank and publisher dedi
Brookings Institution, a senior
cated to helping the public
better understand the world and associate at the Carnegie
Endowment for International
foreign policy. He has authored
or edited 10 books on American Peace, a lecturer in public
policy at Harvard University’s
foreign policy, the most recent
John F. Kennedy School of
of which is The Opportunity:
Government, and a research
America’s Moment to Alter
associate at the International
History’s Course. Prior to
Institute for Strategic Studies.
serving on the Council on
“We were so pleased to have
Foreign Relations, Haass was
Global World”
At left (l. to r.): Joel Klein,
Chancellor of the New York
City Department of Education,
A
{The College-
9
AND
father of
GRADUATE JuLIE
Howard Klein; Commencement
speaker Richard N. Haass;
President Michael Peters.
Bottom, left (l. to r. ): Eliiah
Berry, Louise Blake, Adam
Braus, and Elyse Brejla. Right:
A beaming Abigail Petry,
followed by Jessica Perry, with
their diplomas.
someone of Richard Haass’
stature and experience speak to
our graduates about great
books, great ideas and their link
to global issues and the lives of
our graduates,” said Michael P.
Peters, president of the Santa Fe
campus, who before joining
St. John’s was executive vice
president of the Council on
Foreign Relations.
Haass began with an outline
of the nonpolar nature of
today’s foreign relations,
operating within a world
that has moved from
concentrated power to one
of distributed power. “All
of you-no matter your
career path-will be
affected by nonpolarity.
The world is not Las
Vegas: what happens there
will not stay there.”
He referenced Thucy
dides’ The Peloponnesian
War, with its many exam
ples of hard-headed
analysis. “Through his
exploration of the politics,
diplomacy, and conflicts of
the great powers of his
day, Thucydides provided
foreign pohcy insights that
remain relevant in our
time,” said Haass. He
St. John’s College ■ Summer 2008 }
suggested five books that would
add greatly to one’s knowledge
of foreign policy: Hedley Bull’s
The Anarchical Society, Henry
Kissinger’s A World Restored,
Michael Walzer’s Just and
Unjust Wars, Carl von
Clausewiz’s On War, and
George Kennan’s American
Diplomacy.
“Understanding of the world
is essential not only for your
role as competitors, but also for
your duty as citizens,” said
Haass. “This understanding will
enable you to meet your obliga
tions to society and to live up to
the credo of this wonderful
institution, namely, ‘to make
intelligent, free choices
concerning the ends and means
of public life.’ ”
— Jenny Hannifin
�{The Program}
TALKING ABOUT
Scien ce
CONSIDERING THE CHALLENGES
OE LABORATORY
BY Jenny Hannifin
AND Rosemary Harty
ate April, 9 a.m. Tuesday, senior lab: With Reality
George Doskow, then dean in Annapohs, said: “The lab program
parties behind them and graduation days away, it’s
remains, as it always has been, the most problematic part of the
understandable that the students in tutor Adam
program.”
Schulman’s laboratory have trouble mustering up
The reasons he hsted remain issues today:
enthusiasm for the Lederberg-Tatum experiment. But
• How do you cover such a scope of material in three years and
as the students move away from the table to the laboratory to beginstill allow time for thoughtful discussions and meaningful
agitating E. coli bacteria, even the most serious cases of senioritisexperiments?
are chipped away by the beauty and simphcity of the experiment,
• How do you present difficult material in a way that makes it
which Schulman enticingly touts as “bacterial sex,” This experi
accessible to students and to faculty who lack scientific
ment, demonstrating gene transference in bacteria, is the last one
backgrounds?
these students will do at St. John’s, completing an education in
• How do you make room for new discoveries without dropping
science that began when they read Theophrastus’ Inquiry
foundational works?
Concerning Plants and went outside to carefully observe the
The first question remains open-ended. Neither campus is actively
magnolia trees in Mellon Courtyard.
considering adding more time for laboratory, although some tutors
As with every aspect of the Program, laboratory at St. John’s is a
would hke to see it revisited to slow down the pace and allow more
work in progress. The classic fruit fly experiments of the r95os are
time for biology. The remaining questions can be considered in the
gone; students today work on Einstein’s photoelectric effect and
context of junior and senior laboratories. Though an essential work
Millikan’s oil-drop experiment. Manuals have been revised and re
in junior lab. Maxwell’s Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism is
revised. Study groups have introduced new and interesting material
described variously as a “hard slog” and a “stretch,” especially for
to tutors, who work them into laboratory. Through it all, laboratory
students for whom math does not come easily. And in senior labora
remains grounded in Barr and Buchanan’s basic plan for science at
tory, a lack of experiments and a need to include some of the new
the college. “These laboratories,” Buchanan wrote in the 1937
discoveries in biology have prompted both campuses to think about
Bulletin ofSt. John’s College, “wiU provide a proper pre-professional
including different works and experiments in laboratory.
scientific training, will illustrate the hberal arts in the liveliest
“A Continuing Quest”
contemporary practices, and will focus the past on the present for
the whole course.”
A fundamental question for the college, says Annapohs tutor Nick
Nevertheless, the college has faced challenges in its laboratory
MaistreUis, is “what is the place of science in a hberal arts educa
program over the years. In A Search for the Liberal College,
tion?” That raises other questions, he adds, such as: How should the
J. Winfree Smith recounted how faculty and students in 1948
college accommodate modern science in a curriculum based on the
expressed concerns that science was becoming less integrated with
classics? “That’s the great problem St. John’s has always faced in lab,
the rest of the curriculum and that faculty were employing conven
and it’s a continuing quest,” MaistreUis says.
tional textbooks. The decision in 1976 to reduce the laboratory
When MaistreUis joined the college in r967, lab had already
program from four to three years, so that students could devote more
changed away from the direction set for it by the Program’s founders,
attention to the sophomore music tutorial, was controversial. And in
“Under Barr and Buchanan, lab focused a lot on using scientific
a report he gave to the Board of Visitors and Governors in 1985,
equipment and experiments, on measurement and quantifying
L
{The College-
St. John’s College • Summer 2008 }
�{The Program}
things. It did not follow the normal division of the sciences.”
The change of direction happened under Dean Jacob Klein, who
was urging the college to focus more on the deeper questions of
scientific theory. Maistrelhs has been involved in some of the
changes and improvements to the laboratory over the years. Thanks
to investments made in the laboratories on both campuses-many
funded by grants and gifts to the college-the labs are better
equipped and more functional. Without a doubt, the program is
stronger, more coherent, and more vital, he says. But in his view,
more time is needed for biology.
Back in 1976, Maistrelhs supported the move to reduce the labo
ratory to three years. Students were clearly overburdened and soph
omore lab was a weak part of the program. “It involved dissecting a
lot of animals and tended to be very much hke a standard biology
course,” he says. Now, students have biology in freshman year and in
the last semester of senior year-in all, just 23 weeks for biology. To
accommodate modern developments and allow for a slower pace,
Maistrelhs would hke to see “the question of getting more time for
laboratory raised.”
What we do in biology at St. John’s, we do better than in pastyears,
Maistrelhs says. The program has already improved by shifting away
from “dissecting dead things” to more observations on the biology
of hving things. More freshmen are spending laboratory classes
down at the restored shoreline of GoUege Greek, a hving laboratory.
Students in Santa Fe take advantage of a verticle mile of chmate
zones-including high desert, transitional and sub-alpine—when
learning about classificiation. “New and wondrous things are being
{The College.
Laboratory—IN 1941 and today—is not a history of science or
“physics for poets,” but an integrated part of the Program.
discovered all of the time,” he says. “Biology is a living and progres
sive science and we should always he attentive to what we’re doing.
The very best thing about science at St. John’s, Maistrelhs says, is the
simple fact that “everybody does it all. The students do it, the tutors
all teach it. The way we do it, there’s an emphasis on hands-on
experiments and discussion, making science something to be talked
about.”
How Hard is Too Hard? Considering
Maxwell
For Bruce Perry, who served as archon for junior lab in Santa Fe last
year, the second year of laboratory illustrates how well science
speaks to and draws from other aspects of the Program. “We start
with Galileo, who’s sort of the father of modern science, and it’s
beautifully sequenced with other readings,” he says. “Students do
some Newton in math, they do Newton in lab. They do Leibniz in
math, and Leibniz in lab. So you’re seeing the same author in two
different paths: one as a mathematician, one as a physicist. It’s really
interesting.”
After considering Gilbert, Ampere, Coulomb, and Oersted, junior
lab devotes a month to Faraday. “Everyone knows how magnets
work, but people didn’t know that magnets and electric currents
could interact or that you could have magnetic fields. And then
people noticed that currents could attract. So you start seeing aU
St. John’s College ■ Summer 2008 }
�12
{TheProgram}
these weird overlaps with these phenomena,” says Perry. “Faraday
sorts out all the phenomena, and a way of accounting for them.”
One reason laboratory devotes so much time to Faraday is to set
the stage for Maxwell, who in turn sets the stage for studying
Einstein in senior mathematics. For lo weeks, students read
Maxwell’s Treatise and attempt to translate Maxwell into modern
vector calculus. The material can be frustrating for students, some of
whom find it a “hard slog,” says Perry.
To explore Maxwell, Santa Fe uses a manual originally developed
by tutor Peter Pesic and subsequently revised by tutor Jim Forkin.
Annapolis uses a book by Tom Simpson that comprises three short
papers by Maxwell and many notations by Simpson, supplemented
by further notes by tutor Chester Burke. At i,ooo pages, the Treatise
is “not very approachable,” so Santa Fe juniors read ao to 30 pages
of it along with many pages of tutor notes. Perry says. “There’s a
division about whether we’re going to stay with the Treatise as what
we do here in Santa Fe, or do something like what Annapolis does.”
A faculty study group is meeting this summer in Santa Fe to explore
this issue in depth.
A balance is needed, he suggests, between working out the equa
tions and understanding the process. “The whole idea is to under
stand where the science comes from, why one hne of thought
emerged, why some other path did not. It’s not just theory, it’s not
the history of science; it’s more like seeing what science looks like in
the actual messiness of how it emerges, and the limits of what one
knows or doesn’t,” he says, adding, “that’s one of the things at the
college that’s wonderful.”
In Annapolis, tutor Dylan Casey agrees that Maxwell is difficult
and that students can get frustrated. As a physicist, one of the things
that drew him to St. John’s was the college’s inclusive approach to
science and mathematics-everybody does it all, regardless of their
particular aptitude for math and science. Frustration is only a
problem if students give up, but Casey believes that juniors have
adapted to working through difficult material. “We read the
Republic, we read the Metaphysics, and there are all sorts of things
there that we acknowledge that we find confusing. But we say, ‘let’s
try to understand it.’ I think that works well here at St. John’s.”
The quest to comprehend Maxwell’s equations while following the
development of his ideas, Casey suggests, is similar to memorizing
Ancient Greek paradigms to approach the Meno. “You want to learn
the language, but you’re not there to learn it in itself, to master it,”
he says. “There’s a similar tension in Maxwell. We’re confronting a
very challenging thing, and mathematics that students recognize but
that many are not comfortable with: differential equations and proto
vector calculus. Maxwell is developing what he calls a physical
analogy and he’s presenting it through mathematical work, but
because we are less facile with the mathematics it makes it harder for
us to see the work in a physical analogy.”
Underlying the tension is that at St. John’s, we strive not to take
anything for granted. Casey questions whether this is always
possible. “When we study Euclid and mathematics, we want to
understand the geometry, but a lot of the focus is on trying to under
stand why he is trying to say what he does,” he says. “With Maxwell,
we may have to take some things for granted and then see how his
argument plays out, to look at it in itself.”
{The College-
Perhaps some of Maxwell’s derivations can be taken for granted to
allow for more time to discuss his conclusions. “It’s a little bit hke
understanding how to drive a car without understanding how the car
was built. It might be helpful to understand the physics, but really,
only part of that really matters,” he says. “I think we overestimate
sometimes how much doing the derivation will enhghten us as to
what the final equation means. It’s something we have to work out
every day.”
The college will always grapple with whether there’s too much,
whether the pace is too quick and where precious time is best
invested, but Casey anticipates that “the basic shape of the junior lab
is going to stay the same.”
Brave New World: Senior Laboratory
Senior laboratory, says Marilyn Higuera in Annapolis, has two chal
lenges to address: i) not enough experiments and 2) a need to get
from Darwin and Mendel to beyond Watson and Crick. Both of these
issues speak to heightening the excitement of discovery and wonder
in students.
“For a while now, tutors have thought maybe that the story of the
gene is not as thought-provoking as it once was,” Higuera explains.
“Students already come to the college knowing that Mendel’s factors
are in some way connected not only with the chromosome, but with
part of the chromosome. The articles are still quite interesting but
students already know pretty much what they were looking for.”
Higuera also wants to see more experiments in senior year. The
problem is “evolution, in general, doesn’t lend itself to experi
ments” that can be done in the time allotted for laboratory in senior
year, one month less because of essay writing. Right now, the labora
tory experiments with fast-growing plants that are similar to the
ones Mendel used in his genetic experiment. “After that, we’re a bit
puzzled,” Higuera says. “We do some chemical things with bacteria,
but you can’t see the bacteria until they colonize. So we’re hoping,
eventually, to include more plant work in the lab and maybe in
Annapolis we can take advantage of our wetlands.”
Faculty study groups offer a way for tutors to help shape improve
ments to laboratory. Annapolis faculty members who participated in
tutor Kathy Blits’ 2004 group on ecology and evolution went away
excited by the subject matter, and Higuera later chaired a lab
committee that met to review papers that could be studied in senior
lab. “We began to be aware that there are really philosophically
interesting questions coming up as scientists try to refine their
knowledge of how the gene works. It’s not clear what you want to
identify as its function. We are entertaining the notion that there
might be papers we want to read and ways of raising these questions
in our own classes.”
Higuera is fascinated by the norm of reaction, a phenomenon of
genetic development referring to the fact that organisms with
exactly the same genes do different things when exposed to different
environments. “There are so many interesting questions,” she says
enthusiastically. “How does an ‘organism’ recognize that it’s in a
different environment? What should one call the environment? We
tend to think of it as ‘outside your body’ but genes have an environ
ment and they interact with their environment. Where do you draw
the boundaries? These are wonderful questions that have scientists
St. John’s College ■ Summer 2008 }
�{TheProgram}
13
as Kant thought it was, but it’s really a statistical connection.”
As for second semester, Houser sees it as “a pretty coherent
whole” that starts with Darwin and the issue of inheritance, then
moves to Mendel and the discovery and exploration of the function
of chromosomes, and how those might be related to heredity.
Houser would like to see the college include The Triple Helix, a
book by Richard Lewontin: “That’s the perfect way to end the
semester because he talks about the broad-ranged questions that
come up for us, and lots of new questions as well. But he brings back
the question of the role of reductionism in the question of evolution,
to some extent, what an organism is,” Houser says.
If Houser would suggest one improvement for laboratory, it would
be finding away to better unite the biology of freshman year with that
of senior year. “The larger debate in biology is the debate between
those who take a more holistic view-environmentalists, ecologists,
that sort of thing-and reductionism. Some of the tendency in the
freshman year has been to go in the holistic direction, and yet most
of the work we do in the second semester of the senior year is reduc
tionism. If we’re going to engage in a reductionist enterprise in the
senior year, then maybe we ought to do a httle bit more preparation
in the freshman year.”
Tammie Kahnhauser and Daniel Rekshan (both A08)
THE CLASSIC HeRSHEY-ChASE BLENDER EXPERIMENT.
replicate
Guiding Principles
wringing their hands.”
It always comes down to the question: where do you fit it in?
“It would be tough to get from Darwin to that level, but I think tutors
and students would be really interested in that.”
While he agrees that more time must somehow be made for
biology, Stephen Houser, senior lab archon in Santa Fe last year, is
fairly satisfied with senior lab these days. The first semester of senior
year is particularly exciting he says, because of the questions it raises
through the study of quantum physics about the nature of science
and the human relationship to the world we’re observing. These are
questions that “don’t get asked in other parts of the Program,” he
says. “We just scratch the surface, but certainly the Indeterminacy
Principle is one of those areas that suggest that, in some way, our
minds and the world may not be fully commensurate. There are a
number of different aspects to that. Particle-wave duality is another
example, which is also connected to Heisenberg. That’s just another
place where it seems like our minds are not geared toward what
seems to be a paradox in reality.”
The arrangement of having quantum physics in the first semester
and biology in the second is a “historical accident,” says Houser, but
there some connections. In Santa Fe, students read Shrbdinger’s
What is Life? that helps connect physics to biology. Although
he explores questions of entropy before the discovery of DNA,
Shrodinger suggests “there was some large complex molecule that
did govern the operation of cells,” Houser says. “That’s an inter
esting problem, because living organisms represent a very high level
of order, and it’s hard to understand how they can maintain that
order because they don’t have the statistical basis upon which order
is based in the rest of the world.”
Shrbdinger’s text underscores the discovery in first semester that
“cause and effect turns out not to be a necessary connection.
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The St. John’s way of doing science-no matter how vigorously the
college fine-tunes it-will always have its detractors. One would have
to experience the Program in its entirety to see the beauty and
wisdom of science’s place at St. John’s, says Higuera. “What I love to
see is that aU our students awake to all of these fascinating questions
and they develop a certain kind of confidence in their own ability to
think about them. That’s true for everything in our Program.”
As far as science goes, studying a magnolia leaf, carrying out the
oil-drop experiment, and colonizing bacteria are valuable even
when they don’t work exactly as they should. “We try to see
through the eyes of the scientist, follow his thinking, and see if we
agree. That’s a valuable skill to practice-for science, for any disci
pline. Students are engaging in observing the world and thinking
in a way that one doesn’t if one is just memorizing laws and
working problems,” she says.
Because the goal is to cultivate an ability to ask questions and
consider conclusions with a skeptical eye, experiments have a
different role at St. John’s than they would in an upper-level course
in organic chemistry or developmental biology at another institu
tion. “An experiment is always a work in progress,” says Houser,
more like a “brief encounter with the material world.” Last year in
Santa Fe, Houser’s students were discouraged because their
Millikan experiments didn’t turn out as expected. “That’s one of the
lessons that could be learned in the lab,” he says. “That is the
difficulty and level of frustration you have to live with as a scientist.”
Casey points out that when students discuss Lavoisier and the
problem of naming, the first question they may ask is “why is this
problem important?” For Casey, that’s what sets the college apart.
“We put our hands on things. We ask questions and we try to read
between the lines,” he says. “That’s what made me really interested
in St. John’s.”
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RADICAL INQUIRY
at the heart of the Program prepared them to
explore deep questions in their respective
fields. Graham Redgrave (SF90) uses analo
gies to Homer along with MRI scans in his
work with patients diagnosed with eating
—Francis Bacon, The New Organon
disorders. Cynthia Keppel (A84) divides her
mong the characteristics that time between applied and basic science, work
unite Johnnies, across disci rooted in her fascination with nuclear physics.
plines and time, are these: At the National Institutes of Health, Steven
A burning desire to investi Holland (A79) seeks genetic links to infec
gate theories for themselves. tious diseases. Patricia Sollars (A80) hopes
Boundless curiosity. A will her work in a tiny area of the brain may
clues about the biological clock. And
ingness to doubt even the mostprovide
entrenched
in her
laboratory at the University of Chicago,
doctrines and ideas. Perhaps most
important
is a willingness to doubt themselves, to hold Leslie Kay (SF83) learns more about the brain
their judgments up to a critical light, by studying how rats distinguish one odor
abandon what doesn’t stand up to scrutiny, from another.
In some cases, these determined inquirers
and formulate new ideas.
These are traits shared by the Johnnie scien have more questions than answers. But
tists profiled here, who attribute at least a instead of finding “despair” in their dead
share of their success to their experiences at ends, they draw satisfaction from the contin
St. John’s, not just in the laboratory but in all uing quest.
aspects of the college. The “radical inquiry”
“Byfar, the greatest obstacle to the progress of
science and to the undertaking of new tasks
and provinces therein is found in this—that
men despair and think things impossible. ”
A
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15
Why do people get sick?
Graham Redgrave: Psychiatrist
BY Tom Nugent
When the youthful patient began to describe the alluring
temptation of self-starvation and binge-eating, the
psychiatrist tried a metaphor. “Have you read the
OdysseyV' She nodded. “Do you remember the scene
where his sailors tie him to the mast?” As the two of them
continued to discuss the ways in which her psychological
disorder tempted her to engage in binge-eating, he asked
her: “Are you saying you feel like Odysseus, as you
struggle with the impulse to overeat?”
The patient nodded. “That’s right,” she told Johns
Hopkins University psychiatrist Graham W. Redgrave,
M.D. (SF90), during a recent therapy session atHopkins
Hospital. “I can see that when I’m tempted to start
gorging on doughnuts or cookies. I’m like Odysseus
hearing the music of the Sirens.”
Helped along by Homer’s great epic poem, the discus
sion at the eating disorders clinic continued, as the
patient told the doctor that although the “singing of the
Sirens was beautiful, Odysseus knew he shouldn’t hsten,
because if he got distracted by the music, his ship would
crash on the rocks.” Redgrave listened carefidly-then
used the metaphor to reassure that patient that it was all
right to “give up” the disorder and then “go home” (like
Why does a
the wandering Odysseus) to a healthier way of living-a concept
that the troubled patient had been strugghng to accept.
healthy woman starve herself?
Graham Redgrave
( SF90 ) COUNSELS PATIENTS WHILE CONDUCTING RESEARCH ON THE
NEURAL MECHANISMS INVOLVED IN EATING DISORDERS.
For the 40-year-old Redgrave, who last year won a coveted
NARSAD Young Investigator grant for his groundbreaking
research on the functional neuroanatomy of anorexia nervosa, that
“In the case of that particular patient, the discussion about
recent conversation about Odysseus at the hospital’s nationally
Odysseus was an important part of the dialogue, because it helped
renowned Phipps Psychiatric Clinic in Baltimore was a “fabulous
her achieve some useful insights about the recurring ‘temptation’
example” of how the liberal arts (and especially classical philos
to engage in an eating disorder that was wrecking her life.”
ophy and literature) can often play a helpful role in the practice of
psychotherapy.
During the months that followed that therapy session in the faU
of aooy, Redgrave says his patient “continued to make important
“More than anything else,” says Redgrave, “a psychotherapy
strides in understanding the psychological issues-the areas of
session is a conversation in which both participants are trying to
broken meaning-that had been key factors in causing her episodes
communicate about problems related to what Freud described as
of starvation and overeating.
‘broken meaning.’ ” And so, in one way or another, the challenge
“As a psychiatrist, I feel very fortunate to be able to work in a
is always to persuade patients to lay aside these broken meanings
by gradually bringing understanding and insight to them.
setting where I can study both the physical brain and the ideas that
emerge from it,” the therapist and researcher explained. “More
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''Eating disorders affect millions in this country
and cause immense suffering
Graham Redgrave (SF90)
and more, it’s becoming clear to me-in my [brain] research and
also in my clinical treatment of patients-that knowing how to
patients,” Redgrave recalls. “This doctor was achieving some very
positive results among a highly stressed, inner-city population, and
organize the knowledge you gain in a coherent epistemological
1 was intrigued by that. When he described his approach to patients
framework is absolutely essential to effective psychiatry.”
as ‘based on Dr. McHugh’s system,’ and then as 1 watched him
interact with the patients and saw how effectively he communi
Ask Redgrave to account for his passionate interest in “the hnks
between epistemology and psychiatry,” and he’ll tell you that it
began during his junior year in Santa Fe .., when he agreed to take
on the “marvelously exciting” challenge of analyzing and then
writing an essay on Plato’s Theaetetus.
“That was an extraordinary experience,” he recalls with a
nostalgic smile, “because it forced me to think long and hard about
what knowledge really is. When can you be sure you understand an
idea accurately, and what should you do with the knowledge you’ve
obtained? What’s the best way to think about an idea, if you really
want to grasp its essence?”
cated with them, 1 was struck by how clear-headed and sharply
focused that approach really was.
“After a few months of working with him, 1 realized that the
McHugh approach was a truly deep way of thinking about psychi
atry, and that it was based on an epistemological system that in
many ways seemed to have come straight out of Plato. That was
very helpful for me, because it showed how effective psychiatry
must be built on a clearly focused epistemological framework.”
Born in London in 1968, Redgrave moved with his family to the
Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C., as a fourth-grader, then
More than a decade after his graduation in Santa Fe, Redgrave
landed on the Annapolis campus of St. John’s in the faU of 1986. A
says he was “just amazed” to discover-while en route to an even
tual residency in general psychiatry at Hopkins-that the legendary
JHU psychiatrist and co-author of the classic The Perspectives of
dedicated classics student in high school (he took four years of
Latin and loved it), at St. John’s he liked the way “the education
flowed out of the continuing ‘conversation’ between you and your
Psychiatry, Dr. Paul McHugh, had centered his entire approach to
tutor and your classmates. I remember being blown away by Euchd,
psychotherapy on a carefully thought out epistemological frame
work based in large part on concepts Redgrave had first encoun
and by the elegance of his definitions.
“You got the sense that you were right there at the intellectual
roots of Western civilization,” he says, “and the conversation kept
tered in the Theaetetus.
“During my first year in medical school at Johns Hopkins, 1
wound up ‘shadowing’ a psychiatrist who was treating HIV/AIDS
getting richer and richer. And everything we read was part of that
hving conversation. In many ways, I think the reason I’m so excited
about doing research in psychiatry these days is because I get to
participate in a similar conversation, but now it’s about the brain
and the mind and behavior and meaning.”
After meeting his future spouse, Brooke, in Santa Fe (they’re
now raising three young children in the Baltimore area), Redgrave
spent several years working as a computer programmer in San
Francisco, then opted for med school in 1994. “I found computer
science very challenging,” he says today, “but psychiatry ulti
mately seemed much richer and more complex. What I really like
about my current role at Johns Hopkins is that I’m able to conduct
MRI-based research on brain function in eating disorders, while
also treating illnesses like anorexia and bulimia.
“As our treatment methods continue to get better, it’s a privilege
to find yourself working in both arenas. Eating disorders affect
miUions in this country and cause immense suffering. The stakes
are high, and we need every tool-including the Greek and Latin
classics [-that can help us to better understand these illnesses.”
Redgrave spends many of his afternoons (and more than a few of
his nights) in a speciaUy designed, state-of-the-art “imaging lab” at
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The Johns Hopkins Hospital. His quest: to pinpoint some of the
key changes in hrain function that take place during episodes of
the eating disorder anorexia nervosa-a potentially lethal behav
ioral syndrome in which young women starve themselves as part of
a pathology that often involves several different psychological
factors.
In his role as a chnical psychiatrist, Redgrave treats eating
What are
17
the fundamental
BUILDING BLOCKS OF MATTER?
Cynthia Keppel: Experimental Nuclear Physicist
and Cancer Researcher
BY Rosemary Harty
disorder patients in psychotherapy sessions that explore the
psychological vulnerabihties contributing to anorexia. During
these encounters, the psychiatrist employs the standard tech
niques of traditional psychotherapy to help patients overcome a
disorder that reportedly affects up to one percent of the U. S. female
population (or about 1.6 million American women).
Once he steps into his lab at the Hopkins Hospital’s Phipps
Chnic, however, the chnician puts on a different hat. He becomes a
researcher who’s more interested in the activation of brain regions
At some point, every thinking being looks to the stars and
wonders about the nature of the universe. Where did all of this
come from? What is everything made of? What keeps everything
from flying apart?
“These are probably questions that we all ask ourselves at one
time or another,” says Cynthia Keppel (A84). “Some of us just
become a little obsessed with them.”
Keppel spends her days probing questions that could keep a
than in behavior patterns among struggling patients.
Although the neuroanatomy involved in Redgrave’s studies is
person busy for a lifetime-several lifetimes, perhaps. Most of
complex, the strategy behind them can be easily understood.
By using (MRl) technology to chart the flow of oxygen-carrying
are bound together tvith gluons that form into larger particles
them deal with the behavior of quarks, elementary particles that
such as protons and neutrons. “My approach to physics is very
hemoglobin in the brains of patients with severe eating disorders,
St. John’s-like. I’ve always been most interested in the big
the researcher can monitor the ways in which the neurons (brain
questions,” Keppel says. “There are so many basic, fundamental
cells) respond to anorexia-related “cues” in the behavior of the
test subjects. Hopefully, gaining a better understanding of the
and compelling questions to pursue.”
patterns of activation involved in such disorders will aid
position as University Endowed Professor of Physics at Hampton
Keppel balances many professional roles: She holds a joint
researchers in developing interventions (such as new drugs or
University in Virginia and Staff Scientist at the Thomas
psychotherapy techniques) that will eventually help to reduce or
Jefferson National Accelerator Facility. She also directs the
even prevent them.
Explains Redgrave: “By studying the change in levels of
oxygenation in areas of the brain such as the dorsolateral
Hampton University (HU) Center for Advanced Medical Instru
mentation and a joint medical physics program with the Eastern
Virginia Medical School, where she is leading efforts to develop
prefrontal cortex or the insula, we can measure the activity that’s
advanced diagnostic and treatment tools using nuclear
taking place in neurons in women acutely ill with anorexia and
technology.
compare it to healthy women.
“Studying neural mechanisms of eating disorders is a relatively
Keppel has a fourth job that takes top priority; she and
her husband, Barry Hellman (A84), a pathologist, have three
new frontier in psychiatry, and the rapid evolution of imaging tech
children, ages ar, r4, and 7. It’s not unusual for her to be at
nology makes this an especially promising area of research. I don’t
think we’re going to find a magic bullet for eating disorders
the university laboratory in the morning, return home to
“hang with the kids” in the afternoon, and head back to the
anytime soon, but we are getting closer to understanding the basic
laboratory for late-night research. “I think the greatest advance
building blocks of the disorder, which may one day help relieve the
in my work,” she quips, “has been the development of the
suffering of anorexia patients everywhere.”
home office.”
One of her most exciting endeavors is directing the scientific
and technical aspects of Hampton University’s Proton Therapy
Institute, a $200 million project to treat cancer patients
more safely and effectively. Five proton therapy centers are
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i8
Cynthia Keppel (A84)
currently operating in the
ENJOYS A CAREER THAT
COMBINES THE BEST OF
BOTH THEORETICAL AND
APPLIED SCIENCE,
ALLOWING HER TO WORK
TOWARD BETTER TREAT
MENT FOR CANCER WHILE
PROBING MYSTERIES OF THE
SUBATOMIC WORLD.
United States. Hampton’s
center is under construc
tion and scheduled to
treat its first patients in
August 3010. As the Scien
tific
and
Technical
director, Keppel is respon
sible for machine opera
tions,
nuclear science,
and winter breaks
at
and treatment planning for
St.
the patients.
computer modeling and
“It’s not news that
radiation kills tumors,”
imaging, gained skills in
John’s.
applied
She
did
mathematics,
Keppel explains. “The
and
trick is to kill the tumor
about physics. She chose
read
extensively
side
American University for
effects and increasing
graduate studies prima
while
reducing
safety for those under
rily to work with Ray
going the therapy.”
Traditional radiation
Arnold, who was among
therapy directs a photon
making exciting discov
beam
eries in particle physics
to
the
Keppel says.
the prominent scientists
patient,
As
force
carriers, photons “interact
at the Stanford Linear
Accelerator
Center
all the way through the
(SLAG) in California. At
patient’s body, even some
SLAC, it costs $100,000
times all the way through
a day to run an experi
the table.”
ment on the particle
In contrast, protons
beam
accelerator, but
deposit all of their energy
into a well-defined (tumor) space and interact only minimally
secure time for her experiment on resonance electroproduction,
beforehand with healthy tissue. After careful positioning,
the subject of her dissertation. Resonances are extremely short
patients are exposed to the proton beam for only about a minute,
lived elementary particles (they exist for about 10-33 seconds)
as an intense energy burst is targeted precisely to the tumor.
that are produced in proton scattering experiments.
Keppel
managed
to
“That translates into exactly what you want for battling cancer,”
“When you hit a nucleon, like a proton, they might do elastic
she says.
Her work has had direct and beneficial medical applications,
scattering, like billiard balls striking each other, and stay intact.
Or the electron beam can hit the proton and completely break it
and that has been immensely rewarding for Keppel. But, at the
apart. Another thing that can happen is that the electron hits
Jefferson Lab, she spends her time exploring abstract and
the proton, but the proton absorbs it and goes into an excited
puzzling questions of experimental physics that first captivated
state and grows. The quarks then have to align themselves into
her while she was a student at St. John’s.
different spin structures. That’s a resonance state.”
Keppel first gained experience in scientific research
What Keppel was exploring then and continues to probe
by working at the Naval Research Laboratory during summer
today is the question: how do quarks align themselves to remain
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19
‘7/2 my research, n e re irorkinyon questions we
may not know the answers tofor 20 years.
Cynthia Keppel (A84)
bound in a resonance state? What force holds quarks together,
engineering [at other colleges and universities] have been
and how does it differ from the force that holds nucleons
working so many problems, not in a global sense, but sitting
together?
“The strong force that holds quarks together must somehow
there with paper and a computer, and doing lots of applied
also be the same force responsible for holding protons and
something we don’t do at St. John’s,” she says. “Nevertheless,
neutrons together,” she explains. “For physicists, these are
we make it.”
phenomena on vastly different scales. How do we link these
math. That is a skill on its own and thinking on its own, and it’s
In her sophomore year-when she first settled on a career in
science-Keppel seriously considered transferring to another
things together?”
Scientists understand the force that holds quarks together
institution; instead she listened to a “strong feeling” that she
through quantum chromodynamic (QCD), a quantum field
had a lot more yet to learn at St. John’s. Getting comfortable
theory of the strong interactions based on the exchange of force
with difficult questions in the liberal arts-posed by Hegel and
carrying gluons between quarks and antiquarks. But the force
Aristotle as well as Einstein and Bohr-prepared her to be a tena
holding nuclei together is “fraught with mystery,” Keppel says.
cious and creative researcher, still filled with wonder at the
“It doesn’t fall into any of our fundamental field theories.”
mysteries of the universe.
“In my research, we’re working on questions we may not know
Keppel’s work straddles classical and modern science, prac
physics. “Nuclear physics is like classical mechanics-it works.
the answers to for ao years,” she says. “One of the most valuable
things I learned at St. John’s was to keep at it-to keep ques
We can make MRI machines, smoke detectors, nuclear power
tioning.
tical and theoretical applications, and nuclear and particle
and bombs. On the other hand, we know from a couple decades
of experiment now that quarks and gluons are the fundamental
things that everything should be made of.”
But there’s no bridge between nuclear and particle physics.
Why do people
get infections?
Steven Holland, M.D.: Physician and Researcher
“That’s my little niche,” Keppel says, “trying to find that
bridge.”
Physicists at the JLAB probe these questions about subatomic
After a morning of hospital rounds at the National Institutes of
matter by running experiments in the Continuous Electron
a young boy whose lungs were under attack by a mysterious
Beam Accelerator Facility (CEBAF). The accelerator allows
fungus, a young woman with an unidentified infection causing
Keppel and her colleagues to propel electrons at a nucleus and
painful skin rashes, and a woman in her 30s with a rare genetic
then study the output: data such as energy, wavelength, and
disease that has killed four members of her family.
Health, Dr. Steven Holland (A79) was up to speed on the cases of
geometric patterns. Getting time on the particle beam acceler
As Chief of the Laboratory of Clinical Infectious Diseases at
ator at this national laboratory is extremely competitive, says
NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases,
Keppel, and takes much more time than the actual experiment:
“You describe what the experiment is, who your 50 to 100
Holland devotes much of his time to research. But periodically he
takes his turn as the consulting physician at the Institute’s
collaborators are, and you write this whole thing up and present
hospital in Bethesda, Md. For a month, he works in close contact
it to a Program Advisory Committee composed of internation
with the medical staff who treat the sometimes stubborn, baffling
ally distinguished scientists. The committee approves only a
fraction of the proposals submitted and invites researchers to
and debilitating infections that have brought patients here.
The team began with an update on the condition of the 12-year-
present their experiment.” Her St. John’s education is helpful in
old boy. “He has fungi in his lungs, and we’re working very hard to
that Keppel knows how to state her case succinctly and effec
figure out what his problem is,” Holland explained later. “It must
tively, as well as stand up to prolonged questioning.
be genetic and it must be profound, and we’re desperate to figure
In one way, her analytical skills were sharpened at St. John’s,
it out because he’s got a fatal problem.”
but Keppel notes “there’s no sugarcoating” the disadvantage
Getting to help patients while researching the causes of their
Johnnies may encounter in graduate school in the sciences.
“Most people who find out they want to do math, science, and
disease combines the best of two worlds for Holland. “What I get
to do as a physician is to identify the problem, meet the patient.
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try to understand her illness at a molecular and genetic level, and
Everyone is exposed to mycobacteria in air, water and dirt. Infec
try to treat it with specific, directed therapies,” he explains,
tion is extremely rare except in severe cases of HIV, in patients
adding with a grin: “That’s pretty fun.”
with profound immune defects, and a third group that Holland is
The NIH is like a small city, and Holland’s laboratory has a
investigating: North American and Western European women
hroad charge, studying everything from frightening staph infec
who are post-menopausal, Caucasian, and thinner and taller than
tions and drug-resistant tuherculosis to preparing a defense for
their peers. “This is a new disease we’re studying, and it must
potential hioterrorist attacks. The welfare of each individual
have some genetic basis,” Holland says. “It’s got ethnicity and
patient is at the heart of their work. “It’s a wonderful thing to he
morphological restriction, and we’re very interested in trying to
here because patients come who have rare or undiagnosed prob
definitively characterize it and identify the genes responsible.”
lems, and we get to take a holistic approach that nobody else can
afford to take anymore.”
convinced he would find a genetic defect in their immune system
After graduating from St. John’s, Holland earned a medical
that was responsible for their lung disease. Holland’s newworking
degree from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in
thesis is that these patients have normal immune systems, but
When he first began studying these patients, Holland was
1983. He stayed at Hopkins as an intern, resident, and chief
share some genetic flaw in the lung surface itself. His research
resident in internal medicine, followed by a fellowship in infec
team now includes a lung specialist as well as infectious disease
tious diseases. He joined NIAID in 1989 to study the molecular
and immunology specialists. “Part of the fun in doing science is
biology of HIV, and in 1991 moved to the Laboratory of Host
every now and then being able to say how wrong you were,”
Defenses to study phagocytes and phagocyte immunodeficiencies.
Holland says. That’s why studying science the St. John’s way was
He’s been Chief of the Laboratory of Clinical Infectious Diseases
valuable, he adds: following the thinking of scientists throughout
since 2004.
the ages-even when they were wrong-fosters resilience and
creativity in problem solving.
In medical school Holland developed an interest in working in
the developing world, perhaps speciahzing in tropical diseases or
“Ptolemy is wrong-elegantly, definitively, comprehensively
nutrition. He eventually focused his interest on infectious
wrong,” says Holland. “I was like Ptolemy, but not as smart. The
diseases such as tuberculosis, largely eradicated in the U.S. but
beauty is once you get to realize that you’re wrong, then you stiU
have space to go to find out what’s right.”
still a major killer in the developing world. “With the advent of
HIV, which came up just as I was starting medical school and resi
Holland and other researchers were successful in making
dency, the importance of infectious diseases to global health
really became obvious,” he says.
important discoveries about the genetic cause of a devastating
The research side of Holland’s work is driven by a desire to
often causes painful boils, one of the many trials God inflicted on
understand why human beings are susceptible to diseases. The
more interesting question to think about, Holland suggests, is:
Job. “It’s a fascinating disorder in which one gene is mutated, but
it affects the function of everything, from brain to bone, to
why don’t more of us get sick more often? “It’s been many
immune system to lung, to heart,” says Holland. He led an NIH
millions of years since [humankind] began, and we’ve become the
research team that discovered that Job’s patients had an immune
disease called Job’s Syndrome-so named because the disease
dominant species,” he says. “It isn’t because of antibiotics, it’s
system that was doing part of its work too well, with white blood
because we’ve really become damn good at fighting off infections.
cells in overdrive, attacking systems of the body, but other parts
incompetently.
We have found an accommodation with all the biome in the world
that has, most of the time, for most of us, kept us pretty happy.”
A decade ago, Holland and his collaborators published the first
Holland examines immunodeficiency at the molecular level and
comprehensive paper on Job’s. For the past decade, he and other
at a functional level, seeking to pinpoint the reasons individuals
develop rare diseases. He has a driving interest in genetic causes
researchers hunted the gene that caused the disease, and just last
year, they determined that mutations in the STAT3 gene were
of disease because “so much of immunity is genetic.”
responsible. “We’re still working on how to use those genetic
At any one time, his laboratory runs dozens of clinical protocols
observations to guide us to therapy,” Holland explains. “Finding
dealing with infectious disease. One seeks to find the genetic
a mutation is exciting; understanding exactly what that mutation
cause of mycobacterial infections, which are similar to TB.
does is more complicated.”
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""Part ofthefun in doing science is every now and
then being able to say how wrong you were. ”
Steven Holland {A79)
Not unlike the St. John’s Program, research science calls for
quality of life, and perhaps he can gain knowledge that can help
asking questions and making connections in unfamiliar territory.
her relatives. He admires her courage, and he’s grateful for all his
For the last four years, Holland has been working with a patient in
team has learned from her. “I’m a pretty hopeful guy,” he says,
her 30s, who first sought medical attention for a movement
“but I wouldn’t do this if I didn’t think there’s a chance we can
disorder, but was referred to him because of the infections she
also suffered. Her family history was intriguing: her grandfather,
help her.”
The day that started at 8 a.m. will extend to well after 6 p.m.,
father, sister, and brother all died young of the disease, which also
when Holland will conclude an interview with a fellowship candi
caused infections.
date. His wife. Dr. Maryland Pao, is a child psychiatrist who also
Holland had no answers until he delivered a paper at a confer
has a demanding job as deputy clinical director for the National
ence and providentially decided to stay through the meeting,
Institute of Mental Health. The couple have three daughters
most of which was outside his research area. “Somebody
ranging from rg to 9 years old. For fun, “we stay home,” he says,
presented a case that was exactly this woman,” he says. Back in
although once a week he makes time to play ice hockey.
his laboratory, Holland looked up the gene responsible in that
Holland draws interesting parallels between the college and his
case and arranged to have his patient’s DNA sequenced. He
work at NIH. “St. John’s is about trying to come up with new
discovered a deficiency in the Thyroid Transcription Factor-r
insights about the past in general. It’s wonderful and I loved it.
(TTF-i) gene. “It controls the function of some of the cells in the
I wouldn’t have gone any place else.”
At NIH his work is about “trying to come up with new insights
brain that control movement, the formation of thyroid factors,
some of the lining of the lungs, as well as some of the neurological
about the future. There’s a greater opportunity for failure, but
function of the intestines. It also controls the production of some
there are real opportunities for tangible success. When some
of the immunoglobulins, also called antibodies, which fight off
body gets better, that’s fun. They get up and they do what they’re
infections in the body.”
This woman’s case allows Holland to explore compelling ques
supposed to do.”
As for the answers he doesn’t have yet, “I don’t mind not
tions about genetics and infectious diseases. TTF-r requires two
knowing,” says Holland. “I would mind if someone said you don’t
know and you can’t know. That would be irritating. That’s why I
copies, one each from the mother and the father; only one was
have a laboratory. The beauty of
passed along to his patient, and this
haploinsufficiency is what has made
science is that there’s a reward for
her so ill. What turns this gene on?
both saying, I don’t get it, and then
How could it be stimulated to do its
saying, I want to figure it out. You
don’t get penalized for being igno-
work?
rant-you get penalized for staying
In early spring, the woman had
ignorant. ”4-
already spent three months at the
—Rosemary Harty
hospital, undergoing experimental
treatments to boost proteins in the
TTF-r gene to stimulate it to func
tion better. It’s the first time anyone
has tried any therapy for patients of
this disease, Holland notes. “Now
we’re going in to give her a second
set and see if we can’t push her cells
to finally make enough of this
protein that she has not had all the
Even
modern scientists hit road
years of her life,” he says.
blocks
Perhaps he can make significant
improvements in this patient’s
find
AND dead-ends, SAYS
Dr. Steven Holland, who hopes to
CURES FOR BAFFLING DISEASES
SUCH AS Job’s Syndrome.
{The College St John’s
College • Summer 2008 }
�{Radical Inquiry}
2,2.
What
Patricia Sollars (A80)
regulates
THE body’s internal
studies the
BIOLOGICAL CLOCK THAT GOVERNS CIRCADIAN
RHYTHMS IN MAMMALS; HER RESEARCH MAY
BE HELPFUL IN DEVELOPING REMEDIES FOR
JET LAG AND SEASONAL AFFECTIVE DISORDER.
CLOCK?
Patricia Sollar.s: Neuroscientist
questions related to the brain function,
and Pickard focuses more on anatomical
research.
Located in the hypothalamus, the superchiasmatic nucleus is the primary
in
Sollars eventually completed her
mammals. It cues human heings to the
doctorate at the University of Oregon.
regulator
of circadian
rhythms
sleep-wake cycle, and it tells creatures
She completed a fellowship at the Univer
with seasonal breeding cycles that it’s
sity of Pennsylvania, where she served on
time to get going.
the faculty, then joined her husband at
As a graduate student in neuroscience,
Colorado State University. Until this
Patricia Sollars (A8o) first thought about
year, she was a research scientist at the
the concept of an internal clock in a purely
Department of Biomedical Sciences at
abstract, St. John’s way: “I thought, ah,
Colorado State University; this fall she
temporality-what is time?” she says,
and her husband will move to the Univer
laughing at the memory. “Of course that’s
sity of Nebraska, where they will teach
and conduct research as part of the
not even in the same ballpark.”
university’s new veterinary program.
Sollars was studying at Columbia *
University, rotating through laboratories
In Nebraska, Sollars will continue to
that were studying various questions in
research the SCN and its role in the circa
nucleus (SCN). Although her initial concepts of the internal
dian system. The term “circadian” comes
from the Latin, Sollars notes, for “about a day.” Most human
neuroscience, when she first learned about the superchiasmatic
clock were “naive,” she says, the SCN captured her imagination
beings have a circadian rhythm of about 24 hours-unless some
in the same way in which she once pondered the nature of time
thing knocks it out of balance, for example, shift work or flying
along with Augustine. In one tiny area of the brain, she discov
across time zones. In her research, Sollars has deliberately
ered a rich source of inquiry: Does the SCN alone regulate the
altered the circadian rhythm of mice, hamsters, and rats to try to
internal clock? Is it part of a distributed network in the brain?
demonstrate that the SCN-relying on cues relayed through the
When sight is taken away, how does the SCN continue to regulate
circadian rhythms?
optic nerves-autonomously regulates an important character
istic of circadian rhythms.
“Here was this one little nucleus that sits just on top of the
Sollars devised and carried out an experiment she believed
optic chiasm in the brain,” she says. “It was always there, but
would show definitively if the SCN was the master circadian
people knew so little about what it was doing. There were so
many questions to ask, so many experiments to develop, on a
oscillator. She based her experiment on the knowledge that each
species, and even strains within species, have different endoge
molecular and a behavioral level. All biological creatures have
nous circadian rhythms. “If you keep a mouse in constant dark
the ability to regulate their activity to day/night cycles, and in
ness with no temporal cues, it will run [on an exercise wheel]
mammals that is thanks to the SCN.”
with a period 0123.5 hours, and every day it gets up a half an hour
Sollars met her husband, Gary Pickard, then finishing up a
earlier,” she says. A golden hamster has an endogenous “free-
post-doctorate fellowship in neuroanatomy, in the laboratory at
running” rhythm of 24.06 hours, and a rat, 24.3 hours. Sollars’
Columbia. They have collaborated on research for most of the
experiment involved a little meddling: what would a hamster do
past 35 years, though Sollars is more interested in pursuing
with the SCN from a mouse brain? If the clock was in the SCN,
{The College-
St. John’s College ■ Summer 2008 }
�{Radical Inquiry}
a3
''The best thing about St. Johns was the
chance to get to play with ideas. ”
Patricia Sollars (A8o)
Sollars theorized, the hamster should have the mouse’s circa
other physiological phenomena in your body are out of phase,”
she says. Knowing more about the SCN’s regulatory role may
dian rhythm.
The first step was for her to test her transplant theory from
lead to the development of better remedies for jet lag.
hamster to hamster. “That worked like charm,” she said.
It’s in her nature, Sollars says, to demand to be intrigued,
“When you lesion out a hamster’s SCN and transplant one from
invigorated-even entertained-by her work. After two years of
another hamster, it restores rhythmicity at 24.06 hours.”
studying biology and chemistry at the University of Michigan,
Next, she knocked out a hamster SCN and implanted one from
she started over again at St. John’s. Here she discovered how a
a mouse. When the hamster started running in his exercise
good question, paired with a sound method of inquiry, could lead
wheel, Sollars didn’t know what to expect. Amazingly, the
to discoveries-or at least, new and more interesting questions.
hamster established a reliable rhythm of 23.5 hours-exactly that
“The best thing about St. John’s was the chance to get to play
of a mouse.
“Then,” she says with a sigh, “I made the mistake of taking it
with ideas,” she says. “We’d have these long discussions, and
one step further.” She implanted the SCN of a rat into the
was most important.”
you’d never know where they were leading because the process
hamster, expecting a 24.3-hour cycle to emerge. “When the
“That’s what I loved most about the Program and that’s what I
rhythm was restored, it was 23.5-the mouse again,” she says. “I
carried into the study of neuroscience. When you take on some
transplanted a rat SCN into a hamster, and the rhythm that
thing as vast as the human brain, one of the most important
comes back out is that of a mouse.”
Far from being discouraged, Sollars has an entirely new line of
things is the ability to ask questions from a variety of perspec
inquiry: “One possibility is that this is species-specific. Perhaps
don’t expect.”
tives, to be open to all sorts of possibilities-to look for what you
the mouse and the hamster have autonomous clocks in the SCN
—Rosemary Harty
and the rat could have a distributed clock network. Perhaps when
leaving part of the clock behind.” She published the findings of
How DO WE CREATE OUR INTERNAL
COGNITIVE WORLD?
her experiment in \\\& Journal ofNeuroscience (March 1995).
Sollars had to put this question aside while she devoted more of
Leslie Kay: Neuroscientist
you transplant the SCN from the rat into the hamster, you’re
her time to raising her children: Galen, 23, and Emilia, 17. She
has continued to work with her husband on laboratory experi
Why do people who suffer from Parkinson’s disease lose their
ments at Colorado State that are more concerned with the
sense of smell as the disease progresses? How does a whiff of
anatomical underpinnings of the SCN, several of which may have
Coppertone trigger memories of family beach vacations? And
what exactly is happening in the network of our brains when we
beneficial medical applications.
Among their current projects is an investigation into the
SCN’s role in Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), a debilitating
condition linked to the shorter days of winter. Evidence suggests
that a serotonin deficit makes some people more vulnerable
to the disorder. “With this particular deficit, you’re not as
responsive to the light input from the outside,” she explains.
“You end up having an altered phase relationship, then that
affects hormones, affects mood, and a lot of other secondary
components.”
Another clinical application of her work is the link between
circadian rhythms and jet lag. Is there a way to enhance the way
the internal clock works with other systems in the body to help
individuals adapt to major shifts in time zones? “Your internal
clock, it turns out, will rapidly shift to a new time-hut all the
stop to smell the roses?
Leslie Kay (SF83) can’t answer these questions yet, but she
knows a lot more about how our olfactory system interacts with
other circuits in the brain than when she began conducting
research 17 years ago at the University of California at Berkeley.
As an Associate Professor of Psychology and Director of the
Institute for Mind and Biology at the University of Chicago, Kay
spends her time studying what happens in the brains of rats
when they are faced with the task of distinguishing between two
similar but distinct smells. Her research may someday
contribute to a better understanding of devastating diseases
such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.
Kay came to St. John’s after dropping out of Stanford to take
some time off. She went to Santa Fe with her then-husband, a
{The College. St John’s College
• Summer 2008 }
�2.4
{RadicalInquiry}
Johnnie, sat in on some classes, and soon enrolled
as a January Freshman. The Program, she says,
was a good choice for someone interested in too
many disciplines to choose just one to study. “I
was flipping hack and forth between being a
writer, a scientist or a mathematician. At Stan
ford, I switched my major four times,” she
explains. “The freshman year at St. John’s hooked
me. I love geometry, and studying Euclid, I was in
heaven.”
Between Kay’s junior and senior years, St. John’s
tutor Gerald Meyers helped her secure an intern
ship at Los Alamos National Laboratories with
GenBank, an international repository of known
genetic sequences from a variety of organisms.
At that time, a clerked typed in the sequences, and
Kay and the other students annotated coding
regions and proteins. Still unsettled on her career
path, she ended up working there for two and a half
years after graduating from St. John’s.
Kay went to grad school at UG Berkeley,
dropped out, and worked as a programmer for
several years before returning to the GenBank project, where
she was a scientific reviewer and software designer. With
programmers in great demand, Kay worked in the insurance
industry for a brief time, but the attractive pay wasn’t enough
for her. In search of something fascinating, she returned to
Berkeley, where she studied math, physics, and biology.
Convinced that she had found her niche, she walked into
researcher Walter Freeman’s neuroscience laboratory and asked
to do computational modeling of the brain. “He was a gruff guy,
and said, ‘we’ll see.’ He gave me data to analyze. I came up with
an effect in the data, but not enough to prove it. I had to do
experiments, and the experiments got me excited.” Her “secret
love” of statistics, combined with a desire to test theories for
herself, propelled Kay into serious laboratory research.
For her doctoral thesis, Kay studied how different regions in the
rat’s brain talk to each other when the rats perform an olfactory
task. At CalTech, where she did post-graduate research, she
narrowed her focus to the activity found in single neurons. She
tried to draw conclusions about objective odor responses from her
research, “but it didn’t work.” She did discover, however, that even
at the level of a single neuron, the activity of the first cells in the
central olfactory pathway are strongly modulated both by the
{The College-
Rats
can tell scientists a great deal about circuits in the brain
INVOLVED in
the SENSE OF SMELL. ShOWN ARE (l. TO R.): DoNALD
Frederick; Leslie Kay (SF83), with RG07 perched on her
shoulder; Cora Ames; and Daniel Roias-Libano.
meaning of the odor (whether it suggests a sweet or bitter taste to
the rat) and the behavior the rat is trained to carry out in response.
After her post-doc, Kay had her choice between two positions:
one in New York at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories, and one
in Chicago. “The University of Chicago was the only place I
interviewed where they were excited by the fact that I went to
St. John’s,” she notes.
While her laboratory focuses on the olfactory system and
brains of rats, her findings may some day help scientists learn
more about neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s and
Huntington’s, because the sense of smell is affected early in the
progression of these devastating diseases-sometimes many
years before other symptoms appear.
“The interesting thing in the olfactory system is that you
go directly from the nose to the olfactory bulb in the cortex,”
she explains. Then information is transmitted to the limbic
system, including the hippocampus, amygdala and hypothal
amus, which is important in emotional states and in memory
St. John’s College • Summer 2,oo3 }
�{Radical Inquiry}
formation. The signals are also carried to the basal ganglia,
which is involved in disorders snch as Parkinson’s.
Kay and her students implant electrodes inside the brains of
rats to record brain waves while they perform various odor
discrimination tasks. When animals inhale, the olfactory bulb is
as
It has been shown that part of the olfactory deficit in
Parkinson’s disease is due to difficulty in sniffing, and Kay
showed in a paper in 2005 that sniffing behavior couples the
olfactory bulb with the hippocampus when rats learn odor asso
two to ten cycles per second-are observed. But when a mammal
must distinguish between one smell and another, faster gamma
ciations. “We lose some of our olfactory sense as we age, but
changes seen in Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s are more
pronounced, and the reason is unclear. We also know that if
the olfactory bulb is taken out of rodents, they act depressed,
waves of 40 to 100 cycles are observed in the olfactory bulb.
their eating patterns change, they become more afraid of
However, in some circumstances when a rat has learned the
association for a smell, a different pattern of 15- to 30-cycle beta
frustrating, and not because they can’t smell, but because the
stimulated, and theta waves-slow electrical pulses ranging from
open spaces, and they give up more easily in tasks that are
waves emerges.
Gamma and beta waves are both evoked when rats smell the
odors-but the results change dependent on the behavior
olfactory bulb is missing,” she says. “If they are treated for
involved in the experiment. This breakthrough came when Kay
and her students observed differences in two experiments they
were conducting. One researcher directed her rats to press the
my attention all these years is: how do we create our internal
cognitive world? The olfactory system offers a nice way to study
left lever for one odor, the right for another (a two-alternative
choice task). The other student conducted a “go/no go” task, in
which the rat would press a lever for one odor, and not press the
lever for the other. In the latter experiment, the rats learned the
task faster and displayed enhanced beta oscillations. In the
former, they learned slowly and showed large gamma oscilla
tions when the odors were difficult to discriminate.
It appears the go/no go task was much closer to what an
animal does in its natural environment.
she explains. “When an animal is
foraging around and smells something,
depression, they improve.
“The question I got started on, and the one thing that’s held
that question because it is connected with all these other
systems. And the circuitry is relatively simple-or it was. It’s
turned out we just didn’t know as much as we thought we did.”
A satisfying part of Kay’s work is training graduate students
to interpret data, to look for effects “that aren’t visible to the
naked eye.” This analysis demands patience and skepticism
something philosophy teaches, too. Kay has never been willing
to take anything for granted. “You think you know something
and you go looking for the thing you know. It’s like the hubris of
the Sophists. We have a lot of prejudice
Reading List:
Hume and Descartes, and those guys
it’s either something it eats, runs away
from, or approaches,” says Kay.
Disconnect the link from olfactory
bulb to the higher brain-for example, by
injecting lidocaine into the pathways
and the system only makes gamma oscil
lations, not beta. “Through many
different studies, what we’ve seen is that
beta waves are not isolated; they involve
the entire olfactory system all the way
into the hippocampus,” she says. In this
Particle Physics: A Very Short Introduc
tion, by Frank Close
The New Cosmic Onion: Quarks and the
Nature ofthe Universe, by Frank Close
The Ideas ofParticle Physics: An Intro
ductionfor Scientists, by G. D. Goughian,
J. E. Dodd, and B. M. Gripaios
Don’t Fear the Big Dogs, by Bill Vancil
happening in the higher brain, indi
Naked to the Bone: Medical Imaging in
the Twentieth Century, by Bettyann
Kevles
cating that “the whole system is working
Suggestions from Cynthia Keppel
task the brain wave activity in the olfac
tory bulb correlates with what’s
about what the sensory systems might be
telling the brain. I always go back to
together,” says Kay.
{The College-
St. John’s College • Summer 2008 }
it’s really about constructing our
internal representation of the world.”
“The thing about biology “ Kay adds,
“is that we can make hypotheses, and
almost invariably [the answer] comes out
somewhere in the middle. Then you have
to do to more experiments to understand
that result. We never quite prove
anything. And I find that fascinating.”
—Rosemary Harty
�{Student Voices}
A Work in Progress
BY Kea Wilson (A09)
ost St. John’s students
spend their last night
before freshman year
trying to cram that last
sweater into an over
stuffed suitcase and get
those last 20 pages of the Iliad read. I
spent mine at a $2 million benefit gala in
Miami, where Placido Domingo shook my
hand and Vanessa Williams gave me a kiss
on the cheek. A week earlier, I had flown
to Florida as a finalist in a youth arts
competition to which I had submitted a
short story on a whim. Twelve master
classes, eighteen hotel lunches and one
ridiculous photo-op in a botanical garden
later, I found myself at this surreal party
with a medal hung around my neck, starstruck and eating hors d’oeuvres with the
playwright Sam Shepard. Three hours after
that, I boarded my plane to Albuquerque,
still unsure of what had happened to me.
From the moment when I landed to the
moment I write this now. I’ve been a little
embarrassed about telling
this story. But I’ve been
embarrassed, too, of
calling myself a writer at
all, and especially so since
I first dragged my trunk
onto the Santa Fe campus
and began to call myself a
Johnnie. No i8-year-old
with an ounce of perspec
tive would ever presume to
say she had gained the
experience, insight, or
originality necessary to
call herself an artist by the
time she had finished high
school, no matter how
many awards she had won,
or how much encourage
ment she had received.
No i8-year-old who’s just
finished reading about the
burial of Hector in the
lobby of the Sunport would
even dare to think that she
was an artist, regardless of
where her plane had just
arrived from.
After three years at
St. John’s, I’ve often
wondered just how many
students have had
Laurel Price (A09) makes
TIME FOR MUSIC AND DRAMA
ALONG WITH HER STUDIES AT
St. John’s.
{The College-
St. John’s College • Summer 2008 }
moments like these. While I’ve managed to
write almost every day since coming to St.
John’s-despite my embarrassment and
often my own best efforts to quit-many of
my friends have either banished their
guitars to the dark recesses of their dorm
room closet, or else been too caught up
with Newton to ever take it up in the first
place. From my original 28-student
January freshman class in Santa Fe, at least
six left to pursue some form of a career in
the arts. I’ve been the editor of a literary
magazine, a member of a filmmaker’s club,
and devotee of a dance class that have all
lapsed due to a lack of student interest or
energy. When I first decided to apply to St.
John’s, I was especially swayed by a video of
then-Santa Fe Dean David Levine (class of
1967), posed in front of the Meem Library:
he said that “there should be no realm of
human endeavor that we should feel
ourselves excluded from” once we have
completed the St. John’s education. Why,
then, is the artistic realm of human
endeavor so cut off from many Johnniesand could we make art, even if we
wanted to?
Making Time for Art
Needless to say, I didn’t come to St. John’s
to be a writer-and I’d venture to say that
even fewer students come to the college to
play the clarinet, or act, or more generally,
for any reason other than to read great
books and attempt to understand them in a
community of intelligent people. After all,
I had spent the past four years of my life
learning to be a writer at a fine arts high
school, where I had saddled myself with a
creative writing major at age 14. By the
time I graduated, I had taken enough
English and creative writing credits to
fulfill St. John’s entrance requirements six
times over, not to mention written a port
folio of my own terrible amateur writing
that had a page count roughly equal to that
of War and Peace.
When I applied to college, there was no
doubt in my mind that I knew how to write,
�{Student Voices}
at least insofar as I’d done it, consistently
and with varying degrees of success, every
day for years. When I walked into my first
seminar, I still hoped to pursue my writing
professionally-hut like most young artists.
I’d listened to the advice of my parents, my
guidance counselors, and every successful
writer I’d heen lucky to meet while at arts
school; “Have a hack-up plan.” “Study
something you enjoy.” “Don’t put all your
eggs in one basket.” I ran across St. John’s
and marveled at the Weh site, which adver
tised itself holdly and with QuickTime
video testimonials, as a strong foundation
for any endeavor I might undertake. I
thought I’d found the answer.
I hgured out pretty quickly that many of
my friends had the same idea when coming
to the college. After years of classical piano
training, Sam Richards (SF09) had not
only learned the nuances of his sonata
repertoire, hut also the slim odds of
success in the music world. “I actually
chose St. John’s partly because I was so
interested in playing music,” he says.
“Knowing that it would be hard to actually
have a career as a professional musician,
I figured that it might help me to have a
‘strong liheral arts education’ as a hackup.” Once immersed in the difficult work
of the tutorials, however, Richards found
that there were simply too many “lah read
ings, Newton to figure out, Racine to trans
late, Nietzsche to read... .Part of me feels
really had because just about everyone I
know ends up telling me that I’m a talented
musician, I should keep playing the piano.
I’m good enough to be professional, and so
on. . . but I just don’t feel it anymore.”
It’s no secret that all too often, the
rigorous work of the Program eclipses the
often extraordinary time and energy it
takes to practice and perfect an art form
er, God forbid, produce any new material
yourself. But this argument isn’t enough to
explain why so many Johnnies manage to
find time for week-long rock climbing trips
in Arizona and so few manage to find time
to write a novel. While Eron Wiles (SFio)
doesn’t “find St. John’s to be discouraging
to art in particular” and has even managed
to sustain her own interest in the arts
through a craft club, time in the pottery
studio and small sewing projects, she
misses the sustained community she
enjoyed as an art major at a previous
college. “A big part of going to art school is
a class critique of each other’s work. I
know I was constantly comparing my work
with others.” At St. John’s, students not
only lack the time, but simply the common
vocabulary necessary to critique one
another’s composition or use of a certain
rhyme scheme.
For some, however, St. John’s doesn’t
only lack a common artistic dialect, but
actually demands that we speak about
books, the arts, and everything else
through the rigidly defined analytical
language that we’re taught in seminar-and
in the process, neglect our artistic
impulses entirely. Caitlin Cass (SFog), a
rising senior and prodigious visual artist,
says that she is “constantly blown away by
how apathetic our student body is when it
comes to anything that does not involve
critiquing [or] discussing the work of
others.” While many students are discour
aged by the lack of artistic community at
the college, however, Cass has taken it as a
form of encouragement: she says that her
“frustration with this is probably the only
{The College -
John’s College ■ Summer 2008 }
a?
Fine
arts classes—offered free to
STUDENTS—OFFER AN OPPORTUNITY FOR
STUDENTS INCLUDING SaRA FrY (Alo) TO
EXPLORE THEIR CREATIVE SIDES.
reason I’m even considering a career in the
arts. The one truly useful thing I’ve
learned at St. John’s is that I could never
spend my entire life discussing what other
people have created. I need to create things
myself.”
Like Cass, Simon Tajiri (SFog) came to
the college with a passion for art, but
quickly found himself saddened by “how
much talent people have shelved in order
to do the Program.” A talented poet, blues
guitarist, songwriter, soundtrack composer
and general Renaissance man himself,
Tajiri quickly found himself feeling stifled
by the St. John’s “culture which says that
there’s a certain way of writing, a certain
way of speaking, a certain way of reading,
thinking. If you want to be part of the
conversation, heard by your tutors and your
�2,8
{StudentVoices}
Magdalen Wolfe (A07) portrays
Desdemona in the King William Player’s
Othello production. Tutor Will
Williamson played the title role.
classmates, it’s got to go a certain way. And
there’s room for individuality in that. But
not rehellion.”
Finding A Voice
Like many of the subjects I interviewed,
I’ve neglected my art form for months at a
time while I’ve become embroiled in life at
the college. During my sophomore year in
Santa Fe, I logged countless hours on the
layout computers in the basement of
Peterson Sudent Center, painstakingly
adjusting page margins on the school
literary magazine rather than writing
anything new of my own to submit. I’ve
spent more than a few excruciating semi
nars biting my tongue rather than
commenting on Shakespeare’s use of word
play, if only because I knew that my
comment would be met by a round of
silence if I spoke. And while I am,
absolutely, still dying to understand just
how Shakespeare, as a writer, frames a
sentence or captures Iago’s specific brand
of ego in words. I’ve come to be just as
hungry to understand what Shakespeare,
as a thinker, has to tell me not just about
writing, but about human life.
My freshman language tutor, Cary
Stickney (A75) has always stood out in my
mind as the first person who showed me
what it truly meant to study at St. John’s.
He was the first tutor to tell me, point
blank, in my don rag, that it was not
enough for me to simply love books the
way I had loved books in high school-as
something I wanted to write and the way I
wanted to spend my time-hut that I must
love books as a testament to the infinity of
human perspectives they represent, and
the invaluable mirror they provide for
myself and the species I’m a part of. He
also stands out in my mind as the tutor who
could always be seen on the lower Placita
on Wednesday afternoon, mandolin in
hand, surrounded by students and other
tutors making music.
When I asked him whether or not a
St. John’s student could pursue a career in
the arts, Stickney responded that “insofar
as the chief thing is to love the beauty and
depth of the work that is possible in any
given art so as to be inspired to produce
that kind of work oneself, I do indeed.
Insofar as really getting anywhere with
Kant or Newton requires that same appli-
{The College .St John’s
College ■ Summer 2008 }
cation of the seat of the pants to the seat of
the chair, that same eager, stubborn
persistence that a career in the arts
requires, yes, there again I think so.”
But he was also careful to question
whether or not there had “ever been a
school that knew how to turn out great
artists. It is hard enough to get students to
speak their minds and ask their own ques
tions and listen to one another and to the
texts. If the creative arts are about finding
one’s own voice, then I think St. John’s
may be one of the best places to prepare to
practice such arts.”
And Stickney’s question is, after all, not
a purely rhetorical one. While it remains to
be seen whether or not any school can
guarantee their alumni that specific breed
of creativity, inspiration, sensitivity to
beauty, personal richness and yes, success
that any artist craves and requires, it
cannot be ignored that St. John’s does
produce alumni who go on to successful
careers in all manner of art forms. One
alumnus that I spoke with, David JLidd
(A85), came to St. John’s after abandoning
his dream of becoming an architect, and
ended many years later restoring classical
homes as part of his larger practice as
painter, muralist and restoration artist
with Kidd Studios.
While the road was not a direct one for
Kidd (he also spent several years in the
Navy and had a successful career as the
senior clinical trial researcher for the
neurosurgery department at Johns
Hopkins University), he says that it was his
broad-based education at St. John’s that
taught him the adaptability not only to
draw on the skills he learned from every
fork in his career path, but to eventually
gather the courage to apply those lessons
to his new career as an artist. “I can’t tell
you how many times I’ll be painting a
mural and need to use perspective and I’ve
fallen back on what Winfree Smith taught
me [in freshman math],” says Kidd. “And
�{StudentVoices}
doing clinical trials and helping people
with chronic pain symptoms, it doesn’t feel
hke that was a waste of time at all either,
not in any way... I learned all this stuff
about grant writing and business and
managing people, and there were all these
hfe skills that came with it that even if I
didn’t stay in that career-I took to the
next thing.”
While Kidd makes no pretensions that it
was this adaptability alone that led to his
success as an artist, he cannot help but
credit his education here for providing him
with the foundation not only to pursue any
field he chose, but also to address those
essential human questions that artists, in
particular, explore when they assert their
perspective on the world through paint.
stone, or pencil. “[Program authors] were
able to look at the same thing, the same
group of data and come at it from different
directions and give it a whole new
meaning,” he says. “1 swear that’s what art
is. There are artistic scientists, and there
are pedantic artists on both sides of the
divide. 1 think real art and real creativity
crosses all the disciplines like anything
else.... [The things that Johnnies are
taught] are broadly applicable to every
thing from writing a computer program to
saying ‘1’11 put this element on this
painting here because that’s where it will
look good in the composition...’ Every
thing that goes on around us, as we are able
to understand it, is logical. It may be
chaotic, and maybe we don’t know what the
2,9
process is, but there’s always a process. If
you can bring that to your art, 1 think it
only improves it. That ability to synthesize,
to take a bunch of disparate things and pull
them together into a composition, that’s
what an artist does, and the training here
just gives you practice.”
As 1 stumble through Newton, Kant,
Maxwell, and the other challenges of junior
year-and inevitably, editing whatever stub
born metaphor in whatever short story I’m
writing at the moment-I often find it
difficult to follow Kidd’s advice. It’s hard
sometimes, as I’m trudging through the
electro-magnetic equations, to understand
how my fiction can even fall under the
same umbrella as the vast and brilliant
works of the minds we encounter here, and
how I’ll ever be able to say something as
new, as daring, or as genius as they have
already said. I’m only comforted to know
that generations of St. John’s students
before me have struggled with these ideas
and emerged in awe, with an expanded
faculty to enjoy and marvel at the world
around them, and more courage to express
their reverence and perplexity and excite
ment for those ideas than when they
entered. I’m comforted when I hear the
words of a current St. John’s student,
Simon Tajiri, and to know that they echo
my thoughts exactly:
“I’m pretty sure that I’ll spend my life
creating, whether it be writing, music,
whatever. I don’t know if it’ll be any good
at all, or if people will want to hear what I
have to say. But I want to be responsible
about it. I want to make sure I’m hstening
to the conversation before I jump in. I want
to be honest about what I’m thinking and I
want to be disciplined enough to be loyal to
my beliefs... I don’t want to create more
dogma. I just want to be honest and I want
to be able to tell when what I’m saying is
real. Maybe St. John’s can help me do that.
Here’s hoping, anyway.” ♦
St. John’s
may provide an ideal education
FOR AN ASPIRING WRITER, SAYS KeA WiLSON
(A09), BUT EVEN THE MOST DEDICATED ARTISTS
FIND DIFFICULTY BALANCING CREATIVITY WITH
THE Program.
{The College. St. John’s
College • Summer 2008 }
�30
{Bibliofile}
The End__________________________
Completing The End was a io-year quest
FOR Salvatore Scibona (SF97), who drew on
HIS experiences at St. John’s for scenes in
Salvatore Scibona (SF97)
Graywolf Press, 2008
HIS NOVEL.
BY Rosemary Harty
Salvatore Scibona’s first novel begins on the
Feast of the Assumption, in the fictional
Italian enclave of Elephant Park in
Cleveland, with Rocco, the baker:
He wasfivefeet one inch tall in street
shoes, bearlike in his round andjowlyface,
hulking in his chest and shoulders, nearly
just as stout around the middle, but hollow
in the hips, and lacking aproper can to sit on
(though he was hardly ever known to sit),
and wee at the ankles, and girlish at his tiny
feet, a man in the shape ofa lightbulb.
Having devoted himself to work, Rocco
can’t grasp the latest piece of bad news in
his sad life. Confused and heartbroken, he
finds himself at Niagara Falls, confronting a
deceiver in the guise of an ice cream man
and learning the ultimate truth about
his fife.
The novel ends with the memories of
Costanza Marini, a widow who runs an illicit
but profitable business in her Elephant Park
home. Mrs. Marini harbors a fierce but
oppressive love for those she cares about,
rich memories from her youth and
marriage, and persistent demons:
Fouryears into her widowhood, Satan
visited her in her garden. She was on her
knees, yanking the quack grass out ofthe
spinach. Iridescentflies dappled the carcass
ofa bass in thefurrow. “Egoist, ’’said the
tempter. “Despair!” To despair is a sin.
But, true enough, she had no hope. She could
not remember having hoped. “Die! ” said
the Devil.
Rocco, Mrs. Marini, and many other char
acters, from a menacing jeweler to a restless
and intelUgent young man named Ciccio,
had been hvingwith Scibona for a third of
his life as he worked on his novel. The End.
The characters and the world he created for
them became so real that he was bereft at
leaving them behind when he completed the
novel, published in May. He came to think
of them as individuals with their own will,
an understanding that ultimately made it
easier for him to write. “In the last few
years, I went from thinking of myself as
being the characters’ parent, to being their
peer, to finally being their child,” Scibona
says. “I respected them as elders.”
Throughout the novel, Scibona changes
the point-of-view and plays with time, some
times retreating to the past of one character
and at other times abruptly shifting back to
another character in the present day, which
in the novel is r953. To write genuine char
acters and speak genuinely for them means
“cultivating a human relationship with
someone who’s not really there,” Scibona
explains. Mrs. Marini, for example, can be
“severe, judgmental and nasty,” Scibona
says, but she’s also extraordinary, and he
grew to love her for her independent spirit
and generosity.
A third-generation Italian American,
Scibona grew up in the suburbs, but he
{The College-
St. John’s College ■ Summer 2008 }
spent a great deal of time with his grandpar
ents and enjoyed hearing about the old days
in their old neighborhoods. Their stories
inspired him to create Elephant Park, and
he dedicated his novel to them. “I ate up
their pasts,” Scibona says. “I felt as though
the suburb I grew up in was such a culturally
vacuous place, and the neighborhoods
where they grew up in Cleveland seemed
full, vibrant, awake.”
After graduating from St. John’s, Scibona
went to the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where
he earned a Master of Fine Arts degree.
There he learned to develop a writing habit
to complement the reading habit he formed
at St. John’s. “St. John’s was the perfect
place for me, and I miss it every day. Rut at
the Writers’ Workshop I finally made up
my mind that-out of all the many options
St. John’s allowed me to entertain-I wanted
to write novels. I didn’t want to do anything
else with my time, and I had to make aU
my other work and financial decisions
accordingly.”
Scibona won a Fulbright Scholarship to
study in Italy (where he worked on his
Italian and conducted research for his
novel); held fellowships at the prestigious
artists’ colonies at Yaddo and MacDoweU;
and taught writing at Iowa, Harvard
Summer School, and Boston University. He
won the Pushcart Prize for his short story
“Prairie” in aooo. It was pubhshed in The
Pushcart Book ofShort Stories: The Best
Storiesfrom a Quarter-Century ofthe Push
cart Prize. “The Platform,” a short story
that later became a chapter in The End, was
selected for pubheation in the Best New
American Voices in 2004. Since 2004, he’s
been the writing coordinator at the Fine
Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Mass.,
a part-time job that allows him time to write.
His body of work is relatively small,
Scibona says, because for 10 years, he
devoted himself to the novel, which began to
form in his mind while he was a student at
St. John’s. The first half-dozen drafts went
into the trash, Scibona says, as he struggled
to find an authentic voice. “I learned how to
write by writing this book,” he says. “I
wrote longhand, then typed what I had onto
�{Bibliofile}
a manual typewriter, then marked it up with
pencil, and retyped, over and over, trying to
get the sentences to sound the way I wanted
them. All of the other changes-to plot, to
character, to the book’s ideas-came out
through revision of the sentences.”
St. John’s was an indispensable experi
ence for Scibona, and he creates a similar
experience for his character Ciccio in the
form of a rigorous Jesuit school for boys.
Ciccio endures oral examinations that are
very much patterned on orals at St. John’s,
fielding questions that are “straight out of
sophomore year.” Scibona includes
concepts from Aristotle, Aquinas, and
Kierkegaard in Ciccio’s dialogues with his
teacher, a dying priest. “The book tries to
express its ideas as much as possible in
action and in things. But the boys’ school
resembles St. John’s because I needed a way
to briefly ask certain Johnnie questions in
an overt way,” Scibona says.
Scibona’s girlfriend, Emily Shelton, came
up with the title The End. (He had briefly
considered somehow using “being-at-workstaying-itself,” from Annapohs tutor Joe
Sachs’s translation of entelecheia, but even
tually decided it would be “kind of absurdly
and laughably overblown.”)
The title he settled on reflects a main
premise of his story: that each fife is a
purpose in itself, each fife has an ultimate
end. “It’s the telos end,” he says. “Hope
fully, if our fives have meaning, then they’re
culminating, not just stopping. When we
die, it’s not like someone just pulled
the plug-your end has meaning in the
Aristotelian way.” For the stonemason,
Enzo, his end is a well-deserved rest. For
his son, Ciccio, the end is a departure, a
“coming into being of the potential.”
As he wrote about Ciccio, Scibona
remembered his own departure and begin
ning. “I will never forget the first day I got
out of my car and walked up the steps in
Santa Fe-I thought, ‘now I’m a real person.’
That’s what St. John’s meant to me,”
he says.
Everything Beautiful in the
World
Lisa Levchuk, SFGI05, EC06
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008
BY Deborah Spiegelman
A novel’s journey from inspiration to
fruition can find a short cut or meander for
years, and in the case of Lisa Levchuk
(SFGI05, EC06), the direct path finally was
3^
Studying classic works of the East helped
Lisa Levchuck (SFGI05, EC06) finish her
first novel.
revealed in the Bhagavad-Gita. Freed from
focusing on the result. Levchuck was
inspired through the Eastern Classics
program to complete Everything Beautiful
in the World, which will be published this
fall by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.
Fifteen years in the making, Lisa’s debut
novel began as a short story in her MFA
program at the University of Massachusetts.
During her thesis defense, she was told that
it could be something longer. Degree in
hand. Levchuck decided to settle in Massa
chusetts and by 1993 was teaching English
full time. Meanwhile, the short story
stubbornly refused to take on the shape
of a novel.
Looking for a break from teachingLevchuck admits to a penchant for accumu
lating degrees-she decided to apply to the
St. John’s Graduate Institute. After
completing the Liberal Arts program, she
was drawn to Eastern Classics. “I’d been
working on the book on and off... and I was
blocked up with expectations of what would
happen if I ever finished,” Levchuck
remembers. “Reading Krishna’s words to
Arjuna in the Bhagavad-Gita helped me to
understand that anticipating outcomes is
really deadly to the creative process,” she
says. “I wish I could return to that mindset
now. It’s proven to be quite elusive.”
Studying Sanskrit also played a
supportive role. “Doing Sanskrit taught me
focus,” Levchuck recalls. After sitting in the
library for hours with her Sanskrit
dictionary, writing her own book felt fike a
pleasant distraction. By the time she left
{The College-
St. John’s College • Summer 2008 }
St. John’s, Levchuck had the lion’s share of
her novel completed.
Everything Beautiful in the World is set in
New Jersey, where Levchuck grew up in the
early 1980s, a time “closer to what I
remember [about high school],” she
explains. It is the story of 17-year-old Edna
dealing simultaneously with a gravely ill
mother and with her own relationship with a
teacher. According to advance copy from the
publisher, Edna figures that “the only good
thing about having a mother with cancer is
that people are willing to let [her] get away
with pretty much anything.... But there’s
one thing Edna’s fairly certain even she
can’t get away with-her burgeoning
romance with Mr. Howland, her fourth
period Ceramics teacher.”
While broaching a sensitive subject, the
book “is more about the relationship
between two people who both suffer in the
end,” Levchuck summarizes. “And it is
funny, too,” she adds, suggesting that even
serious subjects can be examined through
the lens of levity. While Levchuck claims
that the idea for the story “just came to
her,” she also acknowledges having been
interested for a long time in issues facing
adolescent girls.
As the novel took shape. Levchuck shared
sections with a few of her creative writing
students at the Williston Northampton
School, where she has taught for 10 years.
“They made really great comments about
making it more realistic to high school.” In
the classroom, she shares both the pleasures
and the frustrations of writing. Not infre
quently a story resists the telling. “Some
times, you just can’t know at 17 years old
[what someone will achieve]... It doesn’t
mean that someone can’t tell the story
later,” she reasons, keenly aware of her
own journey.
Reflecting on her summers in Santa Fe,
Levchuck credits the Graduate Institute
with not only making her a better teacher,
but also changing her approach to peda
gogy. “My emphasis as a teacher shifted
from talking to listening and responding,”
she says, admiring the way her St. John’s
tutors would approach ostensibly familiar
texts “always with a sense that each discus
sion might turn up something new.”
�{Alumni Profile}
3a
The Kid Who Ran Away With The Circus
Buddy Mondlock (A82)
BY Cathi Dunn MacRae
f you listen to legendary folksingers
-particularly Peter, Paul & Mary
and Art Garfunkel-you may have
been caught in the net of a spell
binding song called “The Kid,”
a contemporary classic written
by Buddy Mondlock (A82).
I
I’m the kid who ran away with the circus
Now I’m watering elephants
If you were on the Annapolis campus in
1978 or 1979, Mondlock might have been
sitting next to you in freshman or sopho
more seminar. You couldn’t have missed
the long-haired, blue-eyed, soft-spoken
Mondlock playing guitar on the Quad, but
even he couldn’t have imagined then the
success he would later find as a musician
and songwriter.
Alumni who made it back to Annapolis
for Homecoming in 2007 were treated to a
concert of original music by Mondlockpoetic, punch-packing songs relieved by
humor as gentle as his voice. Introducing
his fifth album, The Edge of the Worldwinner of the Indie Acoustic Project’s Best
Album in 2007 by a male singer-songwriter
-Mondlock sang in the Great Hall about
skin, mud, and the breakup of a marriage,
ending with the affirming “I Count You My
Friend.”
Mondlock’s music features dramatic
lyrics, entrancing melodies, and intricate
guitar. “The Cats of the Colosseum” is
hypnotic, with Roman cats “older than the
ruins.” A sprightly dance down “Magnolia
Street” transforms “a funk/Going ’round
and ’round with thoughts you already
thunk.” Mysterious “New Jersey Sunset”
evokes uneasy flashes of “The Sopranos.”
He first recorded his signature song,
“The Kid,” in 1987 on his debut album.
On the Line. David Wilcox gave it further
exposure on his 1989 album. After Mond
lock recorded it again on his self-titled
1994 album, Peter, Paul & Mary included it
on their 1995 Lifelines album and then
invited Mondlock to sing it with them in
their 1996 TV special. It won the 1996
Kerrviffe Music Award for Song of the Year.
Seeing it “headed for the canon of folk
songs,” Richard Shindell, Lucy Kaplansky
and Dar Williams chose it for their rggB
Cry Cry Cry album. Mondlock recorded it
again with Art Garfunkel in 2002.
Mondlock admits that he’s “the kid”
whose circus is “this life as a
folksinger/songwriter/troubadour. It’s a
romantic notion to be traveling around as a
professional musician, but in real life it has
its ups and downs.” Is it scary without a
net? He laughs. “Itwasn’t scary when I was
younger. It’s scarier now! It’s been a mostly
happy and rewarding life so far. Even
though ‘The Kid’ has never been a big
radio hit, people in the folk world have run
across it, which means a lot to me.”
Growing up in Park Forest, Illinois,
Mondlock heard about St. John’s College
from a neighbor. “The history of Western
thought seemed so fascinating,” he says.
“Part of my goal in going to college was
to figure out what I wanted to do in my
life. St. John’s seemed like a natural
place to start.”
Bonding with fellow Febbies,
he was “into everything
going on in my freshman year,
Aristotle and Homer and all
that really chewy stuff.” As a
sophomore, he found the
Romans and Aquinas “a lot
dryer” than the Greeks, so he
spent more time with his
guitar. He had been playing
since he was 10 years old, when
he wrote his first song. After
listening to Simon &
Garfunkel and the Beatles and
harmonizing with his sisters on
Crosby, Stills, & Nash songs,
songwriting seriously snagged
him at 16.
Writing songs and performing
ARE “inseparable” FOR BUDDY
Mondlock (A8a), who has
recorded albums with legends
INCLUDING Art Garfunkel.
{The College . St. John’s College
. Summer 2008 }
�33
{Alumni Profile}
""My [songwriting]
workshops reflect
what we were doing
[at]St. Johns. ”
Buddy Mondlock (aSs)
Back home for the summer of 1979,
Mondlock was encouraged by his musician
cousin Ray to play open stages at a folk
club, the Earl of Old Town in Chicago.
Instead of returning to St. John’s, he
“jumped into the music with both feet.”
When he was 21, Mondlock opened a
New Year’s Eve show for folk icon Steve
Goodman. “Steve was a big influence on
my style and one of the best performers
I’ve ever seen. He had this impish light
dancing in his eyes; he could totally capti
vate an audience. Getting to open for him
at such an early stage in my career was a
real validation.” Mondlock’s own “No
Choice” appears in the CD of songs
inspired by Goodman that accompanies the
recent biography, Steve Goodman: Facing
the Music by Clay Eals.
“No Choice” also launched Mondlock’s
career. Influential songwriter Guy Clark,
who hosted the open stage at the Kerrville
Folk Festival in Texas, reports: “This kid
in a bathing suit walked up and played ‘No
Choice’ to an audience of 30 to 40 people.
By the time he got to the second verse, he
had 200 people singing along with him.
He blew me away! ”
“Guy walked straight over to me after
ward,” says Mondlock, “and asked for a
tape of the song. I gave him the tape and
didn’t expect anything more. A couple
weeks later, I got this phone message:
‘This is Guy Clark and I hke the songs.
We’ll see if we can get you into the music
business.’ I’m doing back flips in the
kitchen!”
Clark’s recommendation “couldn’t have
been a better calling card,” says Mondlock.
“Guy Clark says listen and people listen.”
Among those who heard was Bob Doyle
from ASC AP, a performing rights organi
zation. “Bob invited me to stay in his spare
room in Nashville, and I thought, wow.
I’m off!”
Mondlock won Kerrville’s 1987 New
Folk Competition for Emerging Song
writers and released his first album. As a
Nashville staff writer, he received “a draw
every month, just enough to live on
without having to work at 7-11. It was an
advance against royalties I might make.”
Collaborating with other songwriters,
“you make appointments and get out your
notebooks and trade ideas back and forth.”
One collaborator was “a fellow from
Oklahoma named Garth Brooks. We wrote
several songs together.” When Brooks
became a country mega-star, he recorded
one of those songs, “Every Now and
Then,” on his 1992 album. The Chase,
which sold about eight million copies.
Mondlock’s share of royalties amounted to
“what a good dentist would make over a
couple years.”
When Mondlock played at Nashville’s
Bluebird Cafe, Janis Ian turned up in the
front row; they ended up writing songs
together. “I brought Janis this raw stuff
from sitting up in one of the writer’s rooms
at EMI, looking out the window writing
down images: ‘Just the pattern of sunlight
on a building, just a flash in a window I
was passing.’”
Wondering where this haunted story was
taking place, “we kicked names around:
Cincinnati, Schenectady. One of us said
Amsterdam.” His images became the first
verse of “Amsterdam,” which appears on
the Buddy Mondlock album and Ian’s
album, Billie’s Bones. Ian played
“Amsterdam” for her friend Joan Baez,
who promptly recorded it herself.
Mondlock’s most intensive collaboration
began in 1999 when producer Billy Mann
invited him to make an album with Art
Garfunkel and Maia Sharp. “The chance to
work with Art was pretty exciting,” says
Mondlock. “We were both a little intimi
dated because the songwriting process was
new territory for Art.” Mondlock found the
germ of their first song, “Perfect
Moment,” in a poem in Garfunkel’s book,
Stillwater. The album. Everything Waits to
Be Noticed, features Garfunkel, Mondlock,
and Sharp performing songs written
together and with others. Mondlock’s and
Garfunkel’s high tenor voices sing in
unison for a double-tracked effect; Sharp’s
harmonies weave around them. After the
album was released in 2002, the trio
toured 25 U.S. cities followed by a month in
Europe, including a thrilling appearance at
the Royal Albert Hall.
Mondlock drives all over the countryand Europe-performing in folk clubs,
house concerts, and festivals. He also
presents songwriting workshops. “Writing
{The College-
a song is like writing a short story or
character study. My songwriting work
shops reflect what we were doing at St.
John’s seminar: asking questions and not
taking things for granted; looking deep
into the words that are appearing in front
of us; thinking things through logically
and then emotionally; and looking at art in
all the ways that it can impact us.”
In Mondlock’s musical epics, Johnnies
will discover an evolutionary song as well
as cameos by Newton and Einstein.
How does the writer in Mondlock
interact with the performer? “Before I was
writing songs,” he says, “I was playing
music and loving it. But then the writing
became such an important part of my art.
To me, they’re inseparable. To write a song
is to want to sing it, too.”
St. John’s College • Summer 2008 }
For more on Buddy Mondlock, visit:
WWW. buddymondlock. com.
Discography:
On the Line. 1987. (Due back in print.)
Buddy Mondlock. Doyle/Lewis
Productions, Inc., 1995 and 2007.
Poetic Justice. Sparking Gap, 1998 and
2007.
Everything Waits to Be Noticed.
Manhattan Records, 2002.
The Edge of the World. Sparking Gap,
2007,
�{AlumniNotes}
34
1946
Along with 200 other “last
simdvors,” PETER WeISS (class of
1946) went to Vienna in May at the
invitation of an organization
sponsored by the Austrian
government, which has put 40,000
high school and university students
in touch with people who survived
the camps or had to flee Austria
after the Anschluss: “I visited both
the high school I attended from
1935 to 1938 and the one to which I
was expelled for reasons of ‘racial
purity.’ Got my grades, could have
been better. Meeting in Parhament
on the theme ‘I was never a child.’
Gave human rights lecture at the
faculty of law. Interesting but
unsettling experience.”
1949
Allan Hoffman continues to be
involved with the college: “I’m an
honorary member of the Board of
Visitors and Governors of the
College and an emeritus member of
the Alumni Association Board.
At BVG meetings, I see Chuck
Nelson (class of 1945) and Ray
Cave (class of 1948). At N.Y. SJC
chapter meetings and seminars, I
frequently see JOHN VAN DOREN
(class of 1947). I stiU ski and enjoy
fishing and swimming. This June
Margie and I will spend about four
weeks touring Newfoundland by car
on our own. We have four
grandchildren; they keep us on our
toes. We are looking forward to the
Class of ’49s 60th reunion in the
fall of 2009 in Annapolis. If any of
you, dear friends, who read this
have any ideas on how to make this
Homecoming as good as possible,
please contact me.”
1959
Patience Garretson Schenck
wants her classmates to start
planning now to attend their
50th reunion in 2009. “Let’s have a
great turnout and opportunity to
see classmates we haven’t seen in
many years.”
Immense Delight
Vowels (A73) shares her “immense delight at
being granted tenure at Washington College, and
being promoted to associate professor. I teach
Management Information Systems in the Department
of Business Management, and I love being part of a
wonderful liberal arts community while being able to
share what I’ve learned in the world of industry. It has been a
great joy to embark on this second career, and I am looking
forward to many, many years of teaching.”
usan A.
1965
Bruce Preston writes: “A couple
of years ago I began to take classes
at the National Cathedral, and
evidently as a consequence, I was
baptized this past Easter. I have just
signed up for a four-year program
given by the University of the South
School of Theology. The program is
called Education for Ministry and
my motives, while not entirely clear
to me, may have something to do
with reconsidering questions raised
by Kyle Smith (and others) in
sophomore seminar: the garden,
the serpent and the apple. In any
event, this may keep me out of
trouble as I begin to wind down my
architectural practice and move
into semi-retirement. I am also
writing when I find the time, and I
have a httle personaf essay coming
out in the Washington Post in
August.”
1966
Christopher Hodgkin has two
new grandchildren to celebrate.
“My identical twin daughters,
having married identical twins,
have within the pastyear each
given us a wonderful grandson to
enjoy. With both daughters living
next door to us, we are able to see
(andbabysit!) the grandchildren
every day. I am continuing to slide
out of my law practice into full-time
retirement. Should be there within
a year or two!”
Sylvia Shapiro is retired and
hving in Mexico: “My husband,
Paul, and I have a lovely house with
a huge yard and swimming pool
with solar heat. We could not even
afford an apartment in California
for the rent we pay. I volunteered at
the Animal Shelter for three years,
acquiring five dogs. Now I am
looking for more intellectual
stimulation, playing Scrabble by
S
e-mail and applying for jobs that
might interest me enough to return
to California.”
moved from an active retirement to
an even more active semiretirement.
1967
1969
Karen Shaven is a doctoral
Mike Anthony (A) writes:
student in Educational Leadership
for Changing Populations at the
College of Notre Dame in
Maryland. She passed her compre
hensive exams and is working on
her dissertation. In a moment of
insanity, she was looking for
another challenge, something
completely different from her
assessment work in beginning
reading at the Maryland State
Department of Education, so she
joined the firm of Keffer Wdhams
Realty in Baltimore. If you are
thinking of buying, seUing, or
investing, contact her. If she can’t
help you, she can find an agent in
your area who can!
“On June i, my daughter, Efspeth
Anthony, wilf be graduated from
Linfield College/Good Samaritan
Hospital in Portland, Oregon, with
a BS in Nursing. In July, Beth will
start work in the ICU at Salem
Hospital.”
1968
Byron Wall (A) writes: “I
recently completed my term as
Master of Norman Bethune College
at York University in Toronto and
am now enjoying the reward of a
sabbatical at Cambridge University.
When I return in the fall, I will take
up a new position as coordinator of
the new Science and Technology
Studies Program at York. Last year
I was also promoted to senior
lecturer in the Department of
Mathematics and Statistics. This
August, my son Alex (A03) will
marry Kristin Ah in Toronto.”
W. R. Alhury (A) writes: After
retiring from full-time employment
at the University of New England in
Armidale, NSW, Australia, at the
end of 2004,1 was able to enjoy a
few years devoted entirely to
research, some consulting work
and family responsibilities. At the
end of 2007, however, I was
appointed Chief University
Ombudsman at UNE, giving me a
new range of duties to fit in with my
previous activities; so I have now
{The College. Sf. John’s
College ■ Summer 2008 )
1970
Rabbi Yehoshua (Jeff)
Friedman (A) sends news from
Israel: “My wife, Janet, and I just
celebrated our sixth wedding out
of eight children. We have 15
grandchildren, aU hving here in
Israel. I teach at Yeshivat Ma’ale
Efraim in Israel’s Jordan Valley.
Anyone planning a visit to Israel
or otherwise interested in
�{AlumniNotes}
conversation can contact me by
e-mail at friedyoy®
netvision.net.il, U.S. phone
216-455-0500 or Israel local phone
oa-994-1965. Discussions of the
Athens and Jerusalem question are
especially welcome.”
Les Margulis (A) writes: “I am
semi-retired now, which means I
consult rather than have a full-time
job working for someone. Just as a
reminder, I am in advertising and
for the last three years hved in Kiev,
Ukraine and Moscow, Russia. I am
now back home in Sydney where
the weather is a bit better. I have
been lucky as far as assignments go.
I spent two months in
Johannesburg (scariest place I ever
lived-everyone lives with violence
every day of their hves). Then I
worked in Israel for a month. I am
going to Dubai for a month and
America for several months. So I
am keeping busy and trying to stay
out of trouble. I hope the rest of the
classmates are all good and I
assume that most are looking at
retirement jobs.”
For the last several years, HUDI
Podolsky (SF) has been teaching
at San Jose State University in a
master’s program for teachers who
are seeking to become adminis
trators and other types of
educational leaders: “I also work
with high schools that are engaged
in restructuring into smaller
learning communities. I volunteer
with a non-profit school for
children with disabUities, and I
tutor in a wonderful middle-school
reading program. After a long
career in high tech. I’m back where
I’m happiest-in education. My
beloved husband, Joe Podolsky,
died of lung cancer in July 2007.”
1972
Barbara Rogan (A72, graduated
from Santa Fe in ’73) invites fellow
alumni to visit her brand new Web
sites and say heUo. Her home site,
www.barbararogan.com, features
her work as a writer, with lots of
information on her eight novels and
other books, a recently revised bio
(why should politicians be the only
ones who get to revise their pasts?),
and “in the writers’ lounge, lots of
useful information for published or
aspiring writers, based on my
checkered career in pubhshing as
an agent, editor, and writer. I’ve
also created a new site that focuses
on my teaching and editing work:
www.nextlevelworkshop.com.”
1973
Michael Aaron (SF) has been
promoted to the role of IBM
Director of Banking and Financial
Markets, Asia-Pacific. In this role,
Michael is responsible for the
Banking and Financial Markets
Industry vertical and joins the IBM
executive team. Michael continues
to hve in Sydney, Australia, with his
wife, Danuta, and his two sons,
Daniel and David.
Richard Cohen (SF) has been a
journalist for more than soyears
and is currently the editor of two
publications in the healthcare field:
Healthcare Marketing Report and
Physician Referral & Telephone
Triage Times', and one in higher
education: Admissions Marketing
Report. “I am also the founder and
chairman of our nation’s principal
annual conference for healthcare
call center managers. I have used
St. John’s educational principles to
great advantage both in journahsm
and in conference planning. I hve
in Decatur, Georgia, am married to
a Unitarian-Universahst minister,
and have a son, Ben, graduating
college this year with majors in film
and history.”
Jon Ferrier (A) retired from the
Family Court a lit tle over a year
ago. “Sadly, I only lasted a couple
months as a gentleman of leisure
before I flunked my retirement and
went back to work, part time,
practicing domestic relations law
with a firm here. It’s been a good
move for all, and my long-suffering
spouse is particularly pleased with
the resumption of my productive
life, given that she has a few years to
go before she takes a crack at
‘retiring.’ I was starting to fear I’d
have to push her out the door to
continue working, had this new
position not come along. It’s been
an adjustment, the sometimes
amusing spectacle of an old dog
trying to learn new tricks, but I’m
deeply grateful for the opportunity
to continue being of use. For those
of my fellow alums burdened with
the disturbing memory of my first
novel, “My Long, Hard Journey to
Enhghtenment,” the encouraging
news is that you must wait a bit
longer for the sequel! One of these
days. I’ll get around to it, however,
so take appropriate precautions.
For now, my only writing will
remain the oxymoronic ‘legal
writing.’ Can it be only 35 years
since we met Walter Cronkite’s
mother at graduation? Reminds
me of sophomore seminar with
St. Augustine on time: when after
about five minutes of preliminary
silence, the seminar leader
(forgotten who) finally remarked,
‘Time passes.’ The ever-sublime
Fred Mattis (A73) replied:
‘Does it?’ That turned out to be the
opening question that evening, and
a good one to ask ourselves. From
my perspective, the answer is yes!
And the only real question is, ‘how
did it pass so quickly?’ ”
1974
Karen Cook (SF) writes:
“I graduated May 10 from the
University of Alabama with my
PhD in Communication and
Information Sciences. My research
was a history of the Mississippi
Freedom Libraries, established by
civil rights activists during the
1960s. Currently I am employed as
the government documents
librarian at the University of
Louisiana at Monroe. My first
grandchild, Moushumi Stella
Huffman, will be one year old on
August 15. (I could go on and on
about my six children and
daughters-in-law, so I won’t start.)”
{The College. St. John’s
College ■ Summer 2008 }
35
“How does anyone ever get
anything done before retirement?”
wonders MARGARET SanSOM
(SFGI). “I have been so busy since
retiring in June 2004 that I can
scarcely believe I ever had time to
work.” She has been traveling,
taking courses, and starting a
foundation, the Friends of Central
High School, to award scholarships
to students who have been out of
school for a few years and have
discovered the desire and/or
necessity for further
education/training to reali2e their
dreams. “Central High is an
alternative high school (where I
taught for 34 of the 38 years of my
teaching career) for those students
who either do not want or are not
allowed to remain in the regular
high school program; therefore,
many either do not graduate or do
not continue their education
beyond high school. Many finally
find out that they do not want to
remain in a dead-end job, but they
often have no clue how to obtain
assistance to become a barber,
welder, chef, nurse, or whatever.
This foundation will not only
provide scholarship money but also
aid in obtaining additional funding.
It’s been exciting to finally realize a
dream that I held for a number of
years. We are in the beginning
stages of fundraising and will kick
into high gear this summer.”
1975
Mary and Peter Kniaz (both A)
continue to live in Hopkinton,
right outside of Boston. “Three of
our children are at, or have
graduated from Thomas More
College in Merrimack, N.H.,”
Peterwrites. “Thomas More
College has a traditional liberal arts
program somewhat similar to the
St. John’s program.” After
spending many years as a director
of information technology, Peter is
now working as a business
development manager for a distri
bution company in New England.
“Mary continues to homeschool
our younger two children.”
�36
{Alumni Profile}
Sting Operation
Melanie Kirby (Sb'gy) Raises Gentle Bees
BY Deborah Spiegelman
queen bees) to other beekeepers and
eing persistent, inquisitive, and
open to various perspectives is
are happy to share their expertise.
a lesson from St. John’s that
Concentrating less on honey produc
tion and more on the propagation of
apphes to many things in life,
quality genetics, Kirby and Spitzig are
says Melanie Kirby (SF97). It’s
involved in a niche within a niche:
especially important in her
sustainable
queen-bee rearing and
work breeding productive and hardy
queen
beekeeping
management techniques.
bees, avocation she discovered through
her
Sustainability in the beekeeping
work as a Peace Corps volunteer.
Kirby joined the Corps after graduating
industry means, among other things,
from St. John’s, pursuing her grade-school
avoiding use of commercial chemical
dream and the path inspired by her mother’s
pharmaceuticals, making sure that
own journey in the late 1960s. “I recall her
honeybees are placed in safe (organi
sharing her stories fondly and I thought I
cally certified) zones, and achieving
would like to serve my country (without
healthy bees through nature’s
carrying a weapon) and immerse myself in a
“survival of the fittest” dictum.
different culture,” Kirby says. Her assign
“Queen bees are the heart of their
ment; agricultural sector beekeeping exten
hives,” Kirby says. “Without them,
sion volunteer, in Calle Mil, Guaira,
there is no colony.”
Paraguay.
Assisted by a grant from Western
“I was probably one of a few who penciled
Sustainable Agriculture Research
in [on the Peace Corps apphcation] that they
Education for the Southwest Survivor
wouldn’t mind working with stinging
Queen Bee Project, Spitzig and Kirby
insects,” she guesses. After her Peace Corps
participate in a rigorous breeding
stint ended, Kirby learned more about
program to produce queen bees that
commercial beekeeping and breeding
thrive in the diverse, challenging
through subsequent jobs with companies on
microclimates of the Rocky Mountain
the Big Island of Hawaii and in Florida. The
regions. Their business caters to clients of aU
“bees found me,” she says. “I also found that
types-from amateur to professional-who
the experience of keeping bees is profound.”
have in common “the strange capacity to
Zia Queenbee Co.-the name honoring her work with stinging insects” and who benefit
pueblo (Tortugas) and southern New
from the bees’ exceptional pollinating
Mexican heritage-is based in Dixon, N.M.
ability, whether the result is a glorious
Partner Mark Spitzig established sister
garden or robust crops.
company Superior Honey Farms on
Beekeepers require freshly mated queens
Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. They sell their
on a regular basis. Kirby and her partner
hardy and productive bees (Rocky Mountain
share stock with other experienced
Reinas and Great Lakes Sooper Yooper
beekeepers, hoping to perpetuate “a quality
genetic pool of honeybees
chosen by beekeepers for
beekeepers.” They also collabo
rate with local research institu
tions, community organiza
tions, and others to develop
B
Top: Melanie Kirby breeds
HARDY queen bees AT A TIME
WHEN honeybees ARE ENDAN
GERED. Bottom: Honeybees are
POLITE AND gentle, SAYS KiRBY,
WHO LEARNED HER PROFESSION AS
A Peace Corps volunteer in
Paraguay.
{The Cxj.l
lege
•
St. John’s College ■ Summer 2008 }
sustainable, environmentally responsible
projects and to inform people about the need
to promote habitats for these beneficial polli
nators.
Honeybees originated in Europe, and
today present as orange, black, eggplant, or
a mix of browns, reds, and grays-not, Kirby
says, the black-and-yeUow cartoon image
which more accurately depicts yellow jackets
or hornets. Worker bees are all female. And
the worst enemies to honeybees, she says,
are human beings.
“Honeybees are quite polite creatures,”
she explains. Kirby prides herself on raising
gentle queens, which involves painstaking
attention to behavior and other traits.
Because keeping aggressive honeybees can
be a liability and requires specialized
management, gentle bees “who respond to
Mother Nature’s dynamic interface are in
high demand,” she says.
For Kirby, beekeeping is a humbling
profession. “It keeps me constantly yearning
to learn more,” she says. “My mind repeat
edly succumbs to the addictive Johnny-esque
inquiries of‘why and what does that mean?’
The mystery is the allure.”
�{AlumniNotes}
K.C. Victor (A), an executive
recruiter for lawyers in Los Angeles
(www.victorls.com), is delighted to
report that her good friend Ed
Bronfin (SF78) has been
appointed District Court Judge for
the Second Judicial District of
Colorado (the City and County of
Denver), effective July i, 2008.
1976
Rick Lightburn (SF) has
become a docent for the Chicago
Architecture Foundation, giving
tours on the “historic” and
“modern” skyscrapers in
downtown Chicago.
Adam Wasserman (A) began
working last March on the National
Security Council’s staff in Iraq.
Dinah Wells (A) has a solo art
show running from June 29-July 23
in Stony Creek, Conn. The 33
paintings in the show are all
watercolor insects.
1979
Marie Toler Raney (A) and
Jon Raney (A74) “are getting
close to our first offshore voyage in
our intrepid steel sloop, Phoenix.
Our plan is to hoist the sails June 16
in Washington state and arrive in
Hilo, Big Island, Hawaii, in early
July. We would spend a month
saihng amongst the islands and
then return to Washington in
August. We are being joined on the
outbound voyage by two good
friends and able sailors: CHUCK
Hurt (A79), who has quite a bit of
offshore experience single-handing
his sailboat based in Florida, and
Warren Buck, who has done many
voyages in the Atlantic tropical
waters. More information can be
found at our Web site,
www.svphoenix.net.”
1980
This year the New York Public
Library is commemorating the
quadricentennial of the birth of the
poet John Milton with a small but
artful exhibition. WILLIAM
Moeck (A) was responsible for
putting together a series of free
lectures on various Milton-related
topics-blindness, heresy, Goethe,
and Norman Mailer, to name just a
few. More information is available
at www.nypl.org/research/
calendar/class/hssl/talks.cfm.
1981
Buffy Bowser (A), now the
Rev. Elizabeth Affsprung, is
serving as pastor of the First
Presbyterian Church in Sunbury,
Penn., an hour up the Susquehanna
River from Harrisburg. Husband
Eric is a psychologist in the
counsehng center at Bloomsburg
University. Their boys, Joe and
Daniel, are into football and
blacksmithing respectively, with
acoustic and bass guitar thrown in.
She writes: “Class of 81: please
mark your calendars for Thanks
givingweekend, come to our
hometown of Lewisburg, and join
us for a big 50th birthday party! ”
Joshua Berlow (SF) is now a
realtor in Baltimore! “Ifyou want
to buy a house in Baltimore, please
e-mail romarkin@gmail.com or
call 443-858-5527. I’m with City
Life Realty on The Avenue in
Hampden. My real estate Web page
is atwww.joshuaberlow.com/
real.htm. I’m also getting back into
acting and recently appeared in a
Heinz Ketchup commercial.
My acting resume, headshot, and
some chps (including the Heinz
commercial) can be seen online at
www.joshuaberlow.com/actor.htm.
If there are Johnnies skilled in Web
design who can suggest
improvements to my Web site,
I’d hke to hear from them. My
daughter Meira is three and a half.
Her favorite philosophers include
Dora the Explorer, Spongebob
Squarepants, and Hannah
Montana.”
Marilynn Smith (SFGI) retired
from pubhc school teaching in
2002, but taught Enghsh part time
at the community college in Palm
Desert, Calif., for three more years.
“In July 2005,1 sold my house in
California and moved to Spring,
Texas, about a mile from where my
daughter and her family live. It’s
much more interesting and fun to
be here to watch three of my
grandchildren grow up. They were
in kindergarten, 4th grade and
7th grade when I moved here, and
it’s wonderful to attend their field
days, hoedowns, concerts, baseball
games, gymnastics practices, etc.
I’m stiU teaching-my
grandchildren, tutoring at my
church, and two online tutoring
sites.”
1982
Phillip E. Bovender (A) writes:
“Despite the divine retribution I
deserve for my own student
mischief (perhaps as a result of it), I
have become a clinical instructor in
Adult Health at the University of
Maryland School of Nursing in
Baltimore. A perpetual student,
I am following the education track
for an MS in Health Services
Leadership and Management. I just
concluded 18 years at bedside in the
multi-trauma ICU at Shock Trauma
in Baltimore and look forward to
being a teaching assistant in
addition to being a student/
instructor this fall. My nephew,
born my freshman year, just
finished his MBA at Duke.”
John (SF) and Elizabeth (SF84)
Bush of Blacksburg, Va., having
nothing major to report to fellow
Johnnies and friends. Summer
gardening and fly fishing are the
two biggest things going on, as well
as some camping and hiking in the
{The College -St. John’s College
. Summer stooS }
37
Blue Ridge Mountains. John is
planning an addition to the house
on 203 Wharton Street and also is
trying to use his grill as often as
possible.
Elizabeth is hoping to be able
attend the reunion this fall in Santa
Fe and also visit with son Salem,
who fives in Vail. “Warm wishes
and summer fight.”
Jonathan Edelman (A) has
reason to celebrate: “I recently
passed my PhD Qualification Exam
in Mechanical Engineering at
Stanford! Now I can go on to
research and write my dissertation.
My work goes under the title:
The Agency ofRepresentation in
Engineering Design. My wife,
Annie, has found work in the Bay
area as both a consultant and an
actress. Our son Liam is nearly
three years old and is a mean
pirate! I would love to hear from
you guys! You can e-mail me at:
edelman2@stanf0rd.edu.”
Peter McClard (SF) writes:
“I’m currently running three
businesses: Gluon.com,
CaptureWorks.com, and
TechneMedia.com, and raising my
darling children: Sohan, 8, and
Karina, 6, with my lovely Russian
wife, Valeriya, in New Jersey. I still
love my guitar(s) and I have an art
persona which is viewable at
www.tracymac.biz. So thanks,
St. John’s, for fostering my inner
Renaissance man! Now let’s hope
our nation can rebirth itself to a
greener, nicer, smarter, and more
hopeful future. Love to all my
actual and potential friends!
pm@gluon.com.”
1984
Peter Green (A) is in New York
where he’s a real estate editor for
Bloomberg News, watching the
U.S. housing market crash and
burn, living la vida local, and
learning Spanish.
MarkNiedermier (A) recently
completed his second year as head
of school at Pacific Northern
�{Alumni Notes}
38
Academy in Anchorage, Alaska.
After serving 15 years as head of
school for Friends School of
Minnesota in St. Paul, he decided a
change was in order and made the
move north. His daughter Sophie
just completed third grade at the
school, and his son Caleb will enter
the school’s early kindergarten this
fall. His wife Karen is a provider at
a pediatric chnic, and together they
enjoy the unique mix of urban
hving and wilderness access of
Alaska’s largest city.
integrating profit with social justice
and environmental care. “Our
daughters, Melissa and Faith, are
now teenagers considering their
own right livelihoods,” writes
Demi. “We’re using our property
for permaculture, developing
resilience in our local
communities, and striving to do
good well.”
1986
Renee Bergland, (A), an
1985
Judy Houck (SF) recently earned
tenure in the departments of
Medical History and Bioethics,
History of Science, and Gender and
Women’s Studies at the University
ofWisconsin, Madison. In 2006,
Harvard University Press pubhshed
her book Hot and Bothered:
Women, Medicine, and Menopause
in Modern America.
News from Demi (A) and Eric
(SF) Rasmussen: Eric finished his
undergraduate work at Stanford
while getting his MD. He was a
Navy physician until 2007, retiring
with 25 years of service as Chair of
the Department of Medicine at
Naval Hospital Bremerton. While
in the Navy, he focused on refugees,
weapons of mass destruction, and
humanitarian assistance, carrying
out the Strong Angel series of
exercises and demonstrations
(www.strongangel.org). He worked
in Iraq in 2003, in New Orleans
after Katrina, and in Indonesia
after the tsunami. Eric is now CEO
of InSTEDD (www.instedd.org), a
nonprofit sponsored by Google and
the Rockefeller Foundation that
focuses on global information
sharing for urgent pubUc health
response. Demi received her MBA
in Sustainable Business in 2007
from the Bainbridge Graduate
Institute (www.bgiedu.org). BGI is
a triple-bottom fine start-up
business school near Seattle, intent
on changing business for good. She
focuses her writing and editing on
English professor at Simmons
College, published a book this
spring: Maria Mitchell and the
Sexing ofScience: An Astronomer
Among the American Romantics
(Beacon Press) tells the story of a
forgotten scientific heroine. “I
couldn’t have written it without the
solid background in history of
astronomy that St. John’s gave me,”
she writes.
Michael Silitch (SF) writes:
“After five years in Switzerland, we
are back in Chamonix, France,
where I run my small mountain
guiding company. I guide people
skiing and climbing around the
Alps and have been developing
spring and fall rock-climbing trips
on Mediterranean Islands like
Kalymnos, Sardinia, and Mallorca.
My wife (Dartmouth ’94) and I have
two boys now: Anders, 2, and
Birken, 4. They are both dabbling
in skiing-the younger one to try to
keep up with his brother.
Chamonix is a nice small town and
a great place for the boys and for my
business. I take the tram up into
the high mountains in the
mornings and am usually home for
dinner.”
1987
From Michael Smith (A): “In
May 20071 graduated summa cum
laude from Wesley Theological
Seminary, receiving my Master of
Divinity degree with a concen
tration on Biblical Interpretation.
I was appointed to serve the
Arkport United Methodist Church
in Arkport, N.Y. My wife, Kristen,
and I took up residence last
summer. We love Arkport, a rural
village in the Finger Lakes region
ofwestern New York. In
September, we added a new
member to our family: a dog named
Baby. We love to stay in touch with
old friends, electronically or in
person. I can be reached on the SJC
alumni site or on Facebook. My email address is msmith@codefu.com. Blessings to all!”
By day, Brett Surprenant (SF)
teaches algebra to D.C. pubhc
school students. At night, he is the
father of three energetic boys, and a
husband, and is pursuing a master’s
degree from George Washington
University in secondary
mathematics.
1988
Rowing Champ
Rachel Ankeny (SF) moved
from Sydney to Adelaide, Australia,
at the end of 2006, to take up a
ike van Beuren (A75) captured the world
position in the history department
indoor title for his age group at the World
at the University of Adelaide,
Indoor Rowing Championships (also known
teaching in a gastronomy (food
as the CRASH-B Sprints) held at Boston
studies) program and continuing
University in February. (CRASH-B stands
her research in the history/
for “Charles River All Star Has-Beens.”)
philosophy of biomedicine and
A lifelong rower and former crew team member and assistant
bioethics. She was promoted to
crew coach, van Beuren covered 2,000 meters in 6 minutes,
associate professor of history in
45.1 seconds, on the ergometer. He won the title for the
2008 and also gave birth to a
men’s 55-59 lightweight division, coming out on top in a field
gorgeous baby boy, Luca De Grazia
of II, and listing St. John’s College as his affiliation.
Ankeny, in March. She and Luca
A denizen of Hartland, Vt,, van Beuren was inspired to give
unfortunately will be in London
the competition a try as he faced the milestone of his 55th
during the class reunion, but she
birthday. He began training in May 2007 and put in some
sends her best and would be pleased
where between two to three million meters on the erg. He
to hear from classmates, especially
was awarded a golden hammer for his achievement, and he
anyone traveling to Australia. Her
listed St. John’s College as his affiliation.
contact details are available on the
For two months every year, van Beuren returns to
University of Adelaide Web page.
Annapolis to work with his old friend. Athletic Director Leo
Pickens (A77), on coaching the St. John’s crew team. Pickens
Shirley M. Banks (SF) writes:
was mightily impressed with his friend’s dedication to the
“I recently earned the credential of
challenge. “In doing it by example, he’s helping me give our
Certified Sexuality Counselor by
rowers a workout,” Pickens told the Valley News, van
the American Association of Sex
Beuren’s local newspaper.
Educators, Counselors, and
For those who want to view van Beuren’s victory, the video
Therapists. I was also named to the
is available on www.youtube.com.
M
{The College ■ St John’s
College ■ Summer 2008 }
�{AlumniNotes}
executive board of the Emory
University President’s Commission
on LGBT Concerns and will serve
as Co-Chair in the aoog-aoro
academic year. Other thrills come
from maintaining hiking trails for
the Benton MacKaye Trail and
American Hiking Society. It has
been a pleasure to re-connect with
a few Johnnies lately via Facebook.”
Ted (A) and Kate (Irvine)
DedDENS (A87) are living in
Owensboro, Ky. They classically
homeschool their four children;
Maris (15), Abby (10), Ted (7), and
Samuel (whom they welcomed into
their family on November ri, 2007)
and just opened Tedtoy’s first retail
store, Tedtoy: Miniatures, Books,
and Toys. The store is a fusion of
Ted’s military miniatures
(www.tedtoy.com) and their small
book business. Boarding House
Books. This summer they are
celebrating 18 years of Tedtoy
Miniatures, almost a decade of
homeschoohng, and their 20th
wedding anniversary. They’d love
to hear from you, so call (370-6894060), e-mail (cmided@aol.com)
or visit them on the banks of the
Ohio River.
Bernard H. Masters (A)
writes: “I can report that I left my
law firm in Dallas after 17 years and
decided to take an in-house
position as associate general
counsel with a company that moved
its international headquarters to
Salt Lake City, Utah. I have been
here for one year and the family
loves the change. I five in
Cottonwood Heights and the really
important news is that I caught a
brown trout in the stream 15
minutes from my front door.
I would love to hear from my
classmates of 1988, particularly if
they are going to be in town. I can
be reached through the SJC
Web site.”
1989
Burke Gurney (SFGI) and his
wife, Deborah, have two children.
He completed his PhD in
physiology/biochemistry from the
University of New Mexico in 3000,
and is currently an associate
professor in the Physical Therapy
Program in the UNM School of
Medicine.
1990
David Long (A) writes: “We have
had a busy year. After turning
around a financially troubled
Chicago-based college, I have left
my career as a corporate executive
to launch Trapped Bee
Productions, an independent film
company. Back in February,
Liz gave birth to our first child,
Benjamin. When not filming or
changing diapers, I consult for
universities and companies seeking
to launch new businesses.
dblong@trappedbee.com.”
David Marquez (SF) has
returned to Santa Fe after nearly a
decade away. “I am currently
studying film editing at the New
Mexico Filmmakers Intensive.
Where Ufe leads at the conclusion
of this five-month program is a
mystery at this point, but no matter
where I end up-New York, Los
Angeles, San Francisco, Vancouver,
or good old Albuquerque-I’ll be
happy to be in contact with any of
my classmates (most of whom seem
to be alive and well on Facebook,
by the way).”
Christopher Newman (A) is
moving to Arlington, Va., this
summer. “I will be starting my new
job as assistant professor of law at
George Mason University School of
Law. I will be teaching Intellectual
Property and Civil Procedure, and
am looking forward to being back
within day-trip distance of the
AnnapoUs campus.”
Joshua Kerievsky (SF) and
Tracy Reppert Kerievsky
(SF91) welcomed their third
daughter, Eva Katherine, on
March 30, 3008, in Berkeley.
Michelle (Baker) Vest (SF) is
happy to say that she and her family
are doingvery well: “My husband.
Matt, started a video editing
company two years ago. Along with
working, he is participating in a
five-month editing intensive
through the NM Film Institute,
along with fellow classmate and
core-group buddy for three of my
four years at St. John’s, David
Marquez (SF90). Our son, Wil,
turns 3 this summer. He keeps us
beyond busy. Thankfully, his energy
is contagious.”
1991
39
1993
Jane McManus (A) writes:
“I was just named the New York
Jets beat writer at The Journal
News, meaning I’ll be covering the
NFL this season, and I am still
working as an adjunct professor at
the Columbia University Graduate
School of Journalism. I have also
joined a roller derby league, and my
alter ego, Leslie E. Visserate, will
be competing all summer long.
Johnnies in New York/Westchester
can e-mail me at janesports@
hotmail.com to check it out
or join.”
James Lank (A) is now General
Counsel of Tesco Corporation, an
international oilfield services
company based in Houston, Texas.
He and his wife, Theresa, have
three children.
Kemmer Anderson (AGI)
John C . Wright (A) has a new
published an essay, “Those
Tenured Tyrants: How Milton’s
Tenure ofKings and Magistrates
Influenced Jefferson’s Dedaraiion
ofIndependence’' in the book.
Milton in France. Last fall at
the Milton Conference in
Murfreesboro, Tenn., he presented
a paper on “How Jefferson Might
Have Read Milton’s Lycidasi”
He win present a paper on
“Gardening by the Book” at the
9th International Milton
Conference in London, celebrating
Milton’s 400th birthday.
novel. Null-A Continuum, in
bookstores now. “This book is a
sequel to another author’s work:
the Golden Age great A.E. van
Vogt. His most famous book, now
sadly neglected, was World OfNullA, first published in 1943. This
book was a seminal attempt to use
science fiction as a vehicle for
exploring the concepts of the ‘NonAristotelean’ Philosophy (or ‘NuUA’) of Alfred Korzybski, a pioneer
in multi-valued logic systems. This
book had a profound effect on my
youth and the development of my
philosophy. It is the book on which
I wrote my entrance exam to get
into St. John’s. Desiring, as an
adult, to write in the background of
the most cherished storybook of my
childhood, I contacted the Uterary
agent representing the estate of van
Vogt. He expressed reluctance: he
said no pubUsher in the field could
handle a new van Vogt book, except
for one David Hartwell. It was with
infinite pleasure that I told him
David Hartwell was my editor. With
that happy coincidence, the deal
was made. It took over five years of
negotiations to hammer out the
JonArno Lawson (A) published
two books this spring. Im Inside
Out: Children’s Poets Discuss Their
Work (Walker Books, London),
he selected 34 different children’s
poets from around the EngUshspeaking world and asked them to
write about the origins of one of
their poems. A VoweUer’s Bestiary
(Porcupine’s Quill, Erin), is a book
of hpograms for children. JonArno
and his wife are also expecting their
third baby in June.
continued
{The College. St. John’s
College ■ Summer zoo8 }
�{Alumni Notes}
40
From Human Services to Social Solutions
Adrian Bordone (AGIq6)
BY Rosemary Harty
altimore native Adrian
Bordone (AGI96) was
eagershows
to leave
hisas
home
Popular television
such
Homi
townhave
behind
when he the
cide and The Wire
dramatized
enrolled
in the Graduate
city’s problems
for a national
audience,
Institute
Fe.how
but Bordone could
see in
forSanta
himself
social problems such as drug use and
unemployment were hurting the city.
It was a little ironic, then, that the
classic texts Bordone read at St. John’s
ultimately led him back to Baltimore,
where he would work for seven years in
human services before helping to launch
a company devoted to helping
nonprofits operate more efficiently.
Bordone attended the Naval Academy
for two years before deciding a military
career wasn’t for him. He studied history
at the University of Baltimore, where he
discovered a desire to read and learn
more. “The first seminar I did at St.
John’s was on Lucretius, and it was every
thing I hoped it would be,” he says. Books
such as Plato’s Republic and Aristotle’s
Nichomachean Ethics inspired him to think
about justice, citizenship and social engage
ment, he says. “I wanted to be a more active
citizen.”
He transferred to the GI in Annapolis and
finished his last semester while working as a
teacher for disadvantaged youth. Later, he
joined an organization called the Learning
Bank, where he developed and implemented
coursework and activities designed to foster
personal accountabifity and other employ
ment-related skills in his students. “It’s
unfortunate that in Baltimore, individuals
and famihes can be beaten down by the chal
lenges they face,” he says. “We were able to
show folks a path through which they could
move with our assistance to a more sustain
able and long-term employment opportu
nity.”
Bordone left the Learning Bank to help
start the Maryland Genter for Arts and Tech
nology (MCAT), dedicated to improving
training and education for Baltimore’s
underemployed residents. Along the way, he
reconnected with Steve Butz, a former
Adrian Bordone
(AGI96)
never
EXPECTED TO BE A SOFTWARE ENTREPRE
NEUR, BUT HIS WORK IN HUMAN SERVICES
LED HIM TO A NEW CAREER.
B
Yspent thefirstyear
working in a coat—and
loving it. ”
Adrian Bordone (AGI96)
colleague from the Learning Bank, who told
Bordone about his efforts to develop soft
ware to help nonprofit agencies better track
their efforts and outcomes.
Bordone had been trying to do the same
thing at MCAT, where he became chief oper
ating officer. He supervised six teachers, five
case managers, a job developer and
fundraisers, and spent much of his time
tracking outcomes and crunching numbers
for reports and grant applications.
Butz and Bordone started out by adapting
off-the-shelf software and from there devel
oped their “Efforts to Outcome” program, a
Web-based application that enables organi
zations to measure the effectiveness of their
programs. They released their first version in
April aooa and today have 25,000 users in
5,500 nonprofit and human service agen
cies. Their clients include the Girl Scouts,
United Way, the New York City Department
{The College.
St. John’s College ■ Summer 2008 }
of Education, and Casey Family Services.
As vice president, Bordone works with
new cfients, customizes the software to
their needs, conducts training work
shops, writes proposals, manages legal
affairs including contracts, responds to
requests for proposals, hires and
manages staff, and does anything else a
small business requires.
Starting a new business just when the
tech bubble was bursting meant Bordone
and his business partner had to work
harder to attract funding and prove their
business model was viable. They
launched Social Solutions in a warehouse
that was leaky, windy, had no air-condi
tioning, and very httle heat. “I spent the
first year working in a coat-and loving
it,” he says. “As a small business that was
entirely self-funded, we’ve remained
lean, and that’s helped us remain close to
our chent base. We’ve always been very
respectful of the few dollars we have.”
Human service agencies typically have
small budgets for administration, so the
company has to demonstrate that their soft
ware will help them serve their clients better.
“We’re a tech firm by default, but more
importantly, we are a firm that has a social
venture,” he says. “Everyone who works
with our cfients is a former practitioner of
human services, and we understand the work
that they do.”
Social Solutions now operates in better
quarters in an emerging technology center in
Baltimore’s Canton neighborhood. In aoo6,
the company was named Maryland Incubator
Company of the Year, and in 2007, one of 50
incubator companies nationwide.
The tough part of Bordone’s job these
days is frequent travel, long hours away from
his family (his wife, Gatina, and three young
children) and building a business with a very
lean budget.
“I’d love to say that I spend my spare time
re-reading my copies of Moby-Dick and the
Brothers Karamazov ” he says. “Right now,
I work a lot.”
�{Alumni Notes}
legal details before all parties were
satisfied, and, at times, the project
seemed dead. I persevered and
eventually prevailed. The book was
written, sold, and is now pubhshed
and distributed. Preliminary
reviews have been positive. To
write in your favorite author’s
background and decide the fate of
your favorite characters from
childhood is a privilege few others
have been granted.
I also converted from atheism and
joined the Roman Cathohc Church
this year. My new name is John
Charles Justin Wright, named after
Justin Martyr, patron saint of
philosophers.”
1994
Jean Holman (A) is pleased to
announce her engagement to
Youngstown, Ohio, native, Clinton
Pavelko: “We will marry next
summer in Erie, Penn. We live in
Washington, D.C., and plan to
settle there after the wedding.
Clinton never went to St. John’s
and never heard of it. Otherwise,
he is handsome, young, and
devoted. Besides a husband. I’ll be
getting a stepson as well, Chris
Pavelko, aged two and half”
Mathieu de Schutter, (SF)
MD, MPH, writes: “Sara
(Roahen, SF94) and I have moved
back to New Orleans from our post
Katrina exile. Her book Gumbo
Tales, about assimilating into the
New Orleans culture while working
as a restaurant critic, should be
released as a paperback by now.”
(Ross) Mosheh Vineberg (SF)
writes: “I have been living in
Jerusalem, Israel, for the last eight
years. My wife, Tamar, is Israeli, we
have a httle girl, Naomi, who is
2 years old, and we are expecting
another baby this June. I am
learning Torah in the mornings in a
koUel, while my wife is finishing a
medical degree in another two
years. I’d love to visit Santa Fe
again with my family. Maybe in a
few years we’ll do it.”
1995
Geoff Giffin (AGI) writes:
“ Life is good in White Rock, B. C.,
just a few kilometers from
Vancouver (the best city in the
world in which to live, according to
many surveys). In my second year
as a beekeeper here, I am
struggling along with aU other
beekeepers to understand what is
happening to this most important
of animals. We are not helped this
year by having had a very long,
cold, wet spring in the Northwest,
but there are larger problems.
Honeybees are responsible for
about 30 percent of all human food
and if they disappear, as they are
increasingly doing, we will add yet
another problem to the global food
crisis. On the positive side, bees are
endlessly fascinating and amazing
stress reducers. I can watch mine
for hours, seeing the foragers come
home with different varieties of
pollen, the guards inspecting
everyone who approaches
(Homeland Security should be so
efficient!) and the signahng
between individuals to pass on
information about nectar
sources, etc.
“When I’m not working with my
bees (which is most of the time), I
am mentoring engineering/physics
students at UBC, getting my 38'
Ericson sailboat ready for summer
cruising, reupholstering furniture
and gardening. I also have a new
job: I am the unpaid assistant to my
wife, Senga, who after a long career
as a teacher and school adminis
trator has taken up a career in real
estate. Anyone who wants to move
to this most incredibly lovely part of
Canada should contact me so that
we can give you insight into what
living here is really like.”
Veronica Gventsadze (AGI)
writes: “This spring I graduated
with a veterinarian degree from the
University of Guelph and two weeks
ago launched a brand new career.
My httle Yaris made it all the way
across Canada to the mountains
north of Vancouver. As I write,
I hear a cat in the background
complaining about the service in
this hospital. I disagree: I think this
hospital is a great place to work,
though at times it feels
overwhelming. The days go by fast,
the learning curve is about as steep
as the surrounding mountains, and
my propensity for muffing things
over is effectively curbed by the
need to make prompt decisions.
At the end of each day I take a miniholiday as I walk or bike the
mountain trails. The mountains are
majestic, the coastal rainforest
must not have changed much since
prehistoric times, and the real
estate prices are obscenely high.
(A popular excuse is that the 2010
Winter Olympics will be just up the
road in Whistler.) There is even a
new university up in the
mountains. Quest University. I
would love to hear from anyone
who remembers me, and to catch
up on our hves since St. John’s.
You can reach me at
vgventsa@telus.net.”
Clara Murray (A) writes:
Wesley and I were married in 2003
in a small but beautiful ceremony
on the Hudson River. Several
Johnnies were in attendance. Ezra
Alexander Beato was born in
December ’04. He’s a total joy
intense, inquisitive, and very
active. Talks nonstop from the time
he wakes up to the time he goes to
sleep. (Future Johnnie?) We are
enjoying family life in Brooklyn,
though occasionally dream of
leaving the city in favor of a
vegetable garden and preschools
that cost less than St. John’s. We
are both working, Wesley as a
business research manager (I’m not
sure what he does either, but
suspect aU these years of
‘civilization’ help). I continue to
work with Early Intervention,
doing verbal behavior-a form of
applied behavior analysis, with
chUdren diagnosed with autism.
I’m also enjoying classes at the Art
Student’s League. Would love to
hear from former classmates and
friends. You can e-mail us at
clmurray@usa.net.”
{The College. 5t. John’s
College ■ Summer 2008 }
4^
Heather Nordloh (AGI)
writes: “CHRIS (AGI96) continues
to serve as CFO for a Chicago
based non profit. Nick is 31/2 and
very into Spiderman. Chris and
Nick Nordloh spent most of the
spring in Hong Kong with
Heather’s job.”
Bethany O’Connell (SF)
writes: “I find myself teaching and
working on the alumnae magazine
at Stoneleigh-Burnham School,
an all-girls’ boarding and day school
in Greenfield, Mass. While
teaching French, I am often
looking out for those young,
inquiring minds who I can
encourage to apply to St. John’s. I
can stiU smell the pinon burning on
a clear winter night! I hope to bring
my family back for a visit soon.”
Kira Zielinski (SF) is taking a
break from flying helicopters and
has turned her attention to learning
the ropes of being a small business
owner. “I bought a coffee shop here
in Mobile, Ala., in March-the
experience has been amazing!
Little by httle my fiance, Nathan,
and I are turning it into the
community crossroad that we’ve
been craving in our fife. Not to
mention I’m enjoying the stress of
syrup and whipped cream
‘emergencies’ to engine
malfunctions over the Gulf of
Mexico any day! Our first addition
to the coffee shop was, of course, a
library. You can catch a glimpse of
our shop at drjava.com.”
1996
Jenny Bates Glaubrecht (A) is
a second grade elementary school
teacher in Palm Beach County. She
earned her master’s degree in
education, has acquired ESOL
Endorsement, Gifted Endorsement
and a real estate Ucense.
J. Stephen Pearson (EC) passed
his dissertation defense and will be
graduating in August from the
University of Georgia with his
doctorate in Comparative
Literature.
�{AlumniNotes}
4^
Teresa Taylor (AGI) and her
husband Steve Bromley gave birth
to Brock Remington Taylor
Bromley on May r, aoo8, at nearly
to pounds. Teresa has been
practicing law as an associate at the
British law firm, Clifford Chance
US LLP, in international white
collar/litigation defense for
financial corporate clients. She will
be leaving the firm this summer
following maternity leave in search
of a law position that does not
require extensive international
travel and extreme hours so she can
enjoy being a new mom. Prior to
Clifford Chance, Teresa was a
federal law clerk in Virginia, and
previously spearheaded a non
profit organization focusing on
international humanitarian law
violations and justice. Steve is also
doing weU, having started a
renovation company in Annapolis.
Teresa would love to hear from
former classmates. The Bromleys
reside at 700 Caleb Lane,
Annapohs, Md 21401.
my PhD in English Literature from
the University of Cambridge.
Living abroad was fantastic.
Cambridge is an international and
vibrant place filled with beautifid
architecture, too many distracting
activities (like rowing and May
Balls), and fascinating and brilliant
people. All the same, it’s good to be
back in the U.S. to catch up with
family and friends and enjoy the
New Mexico culture and scenery.”
Leah Fisch (SE) writes: “I am
working as a reorganizer of
businesses and homes here in NYC,
Massachusetts and the tri-state
area. Beginning in July, I will be
offering workshops in the East
Village to foster community
between those with difficulty with
clutter/efficiency, as well as offer
easy-to-implement tips to
reorganize on their own. If any
Johnnies are interested in attending
the workshops, please e-mail me at
leah@leahfisch.com, or feel free to
call me at 917-678-9634.”
Will Gorham (A) writes:
“Siobhan Boyer (SF99) and I
1997
Amy Ryce Knowles (A) writes:
“1 teach mathematics at Durham
Academy, and recently visited India
to tour schools there. My husband
is wrapping up a PhD at Duke
University in Medieval English
Literature. 1 have a 4-year-old son
named James. I attribute my
appreciation of math to the
St. John’s curriculum. My
encounters with Descartes,
Apollonius, Newton, and Ptolemy
continue to inform my teaching as
well as my perspective. Working
with teenagers is inspiring and
because of them, there is never a
dull day at work.”
1998
Jana Giles (A) is back in the U.S.
“After four years of living in the
United Kingdom, and wishing I’d
taken even more Easyjet and Ryan
Air flights to Italy, I’ve completed
said our first “Hey, baby! ” to
Larkin Rose Kate Gorham on April
23 in our new hometown of
St. Petersburg, Fla., after 25 hours
of... let’s call it ‘gentle coaxing.’
Larkin took in the scene, howled at
the heavens, and began the long
process of learning to love us for
who we are. Other than that httle
7-pound 8-ounce bit of everything,
not too much is new here in
Paradise. Siobhan is bringing home
the big slabs ofveggie bacon as an
environmental biologist. I’m
finishing a novel and also working
for pay as a researcher at the
St. Petersburg Times (where
classmate WILL Van Sant [A98]
also makes news/a hving). Our dog
Hektor has giardia and our cats
Mason and Dixon hate him for it
since it means they can’t come out
to play. Florida and parenthood are
great. Both are tiring and exciting
at the same time. Full of great ideas
and weird, often stinky, results.
We’d be happy to get coffee or
worse with any Johnnies who come
to the Tampa Bay area. We’ll drive
you past ah the fancy mansions for
{The College -
foreclosure and introduce you to
the Most Recklessly Sunburned
Homeless Dude Ever. Ifyou’re here
on a weekend, we’ll do even more.”
Amy Marcetti Topper (A) is
working as a consultant doing
education research, and has
enrolled in Arizona State
University’s PhD program in
Educational Leadership and Policy
Studies. “Claire, my daughter, is
about to turn 3 and doing all those
wonderful and frustrating things
toddlers do at this age,” she writes.
“Love to hear from SJCA friends:
amtopper@hotmail.com.”
1999
Since graduation, Gary Temple
(A) has been splitting time between
China and Easthampton, Mass.,
working variously as a freelance
writer, English teacher, music
producer, mental health counselor
and clothing designer. “These days
I’m narrowing my focus to music
production with a hit of newspaper
writing and clothing design thrown
in. This fall I’ll be starting a
yearlong intensive Chinese
language program in Beijing.
Please let me know ifyou’re going
to be in town, or if you need some
music produced, or an article
written, or some clothing
designed.”
2000
Deberniere Torrey (AGI) is
marrying Nathan Devir on June 27
at Penn. State University. The
couple win move to Vermont in
July, where Nathan will teach
Hebrew at Middlebury College.
Valerie G. Whiting (A) of
Washington, D.C., recently
returned from Antigua, where she
was working to prevent HIV/AIDS
through education as a Peace Corps
Response Volunteer.
The country of Antigua and
Barbuda is located in the Eastern
Caribbean in the middle of the
St. John’s College • Summer 2008 }
Leeward Islands. Whiting was
working with the AIDS Secretariat
to provide assistance in behavior
change communication efforts.
In doing so, she was to assist in the
planning, designing, implemen
tation, and evaluation of national
HIV/AIDS public education and
awareness activities. Whiting
helped produce HIV education and
awareness activities at national
events and developed
educational/promotional materials
for local target groups.
Whiting previously served as a
community organization Peace
Corps volunteer in Panama from
3001 to 3003. Among her
accomplishments, she led a youth
group that took part in national
HIV/AIDS programs and also
organized and succeeded in an
effort to pave the five-kilometer
entrance to her site.
Whiting has begun a master’s
program in international training
and education at American
University in Washington, D.C.
Logan Wink (SF) writes: “I
finally finished medical school and I
am now busy working through my
first year as a psychiatry resident at
Indiana University School of
Medicine. I married Chuck Pate
last June, and we are hving and
working in Indianapolis, Ind. No
babies yet-I spend way too many
nights at the hospital for that.
Chuck finished his MFA in
ceramics in December and is
working on establishing his career
(currently he is teaching kids to
throw pots at the local community
art center). Please look us up ifyour
path leads you through the
heartland! ”
2001
Riana Kettle (SF) is back in
Colorado and getting married this
summer. She also recently finished
a master’s degree in secondary
education in mathematics and has
been teaching math for the past
�{Alumni Notes}
several years. “I’m still singing
opera. Hope everyone is doing
well!"
Eric Maddox (SF) writes: “I just
returned to the States in March
after five months spent conducting
research for my MA in Conflict
Resolution. While based out of
Ramallah and Dheisheh Refugee
Camp in Bethlehem, I traveled
around Israel and the West Bank
filming interviews with elder
Israelis and Palestinians who
experienced the 1948 war that
created the modern State of Israel
and the first Palestinian refugee
crisis, also known as Al Nakba or
‘The Catastrophe.’ The film
footage will be used to produce a
short documentary film project for
Defense for Children InternationalPalestine. Concurrently working on
my master’s thesis, which focuses
on the role that these events have
played in shaping the individual
and collective identities of the Jews
and Arabs who experienced the
events of 1948. Hoping to do future
conflict-documentary work (where
I actually get paid) in the near
future. Looking for opportunities
in Africa, Southeast Asia, or the
Middle East.”
2002
Jessica Godden (SF) and
Peter Speer (A) were married on
A Johnnie Haven
ouisa Griffin Parkinson (SF93) is married and
L
succulents, everywhere I can place
them. I’m also still fiddling with
Web comics, Web pages, and
dashing out strange stories when I
get the chance. So I guess I am still
figuring out what I am supposed to
be doing, but I’m doing well
regardless!”
John Rankin (SF) writes: “This
Justin (A) and Dillon (A05)
Naylor will be serving as dorm
fall I will leave my position as a
spokesman at the U.S. Treasury
Department to enroll in the MBA
program at the University of
California Los Angeles. This means
the end to nearly five years in
Washington, D.C., at various
communications jobs in the Senate,
on political campaigns, and in the
Bush administration. After
business school, I will probably
shift my focus to the private sector.
Johnnies in the Los Angeles area
(or SF for that matter) should
drop me a note at
johnrankin@gmail.com.”
Sean Nelson (AGI) is currently
hving in Cairo, Egypt, and studying
Arabic.
2004
Tatiana Hamboyan Harrison
has two children, Mariana (4), and James (6).
(A) has been busy doing a lot of
They are “living luckily on the Eastern Shore of
writing
(trying to get a picture book
Maryland in Easton, which strangely enough
pubhshed!) and reading (mostly
seems to be a Johnnie haven. Johnnies pop up
books about writing): “I’m also
everywhere: one instructs my children and me in
having surgery on June 30 to get
tennis at the Y, another teaches knitting at the local holistic
my left wrist replaced. I’ve been
arts center, while others still make local news by impeding
doing quite a bit of beUy dancing
airport growth via kick-ass estate planning. And without fail, I
and have been very involved in my
meet people at dinner parties and fundraisers who ‘wished
Quaker meeting. Anyone who
they’d gone to St. John’s’ but nonetheless satisfy their thirst for
wants to contact me can do so by
knowledge by attending some seminars ingeniously offered
e-mail, or by visiting my Web site at
through the college. Their enthusiasm really can make you feel
www.thefunnel.org.”
like a rock star! Anyway, greetings to all my fellow Johnnies in
Santa Fe and Annapolis.”
Conor J. Heaton (AGI), in his
first year of lawyering, is a litigator
in a small civil litigation firm in
Dave Prosper (SF) writes: “As of Mark Stratil (SF) is hvingand
Chicago. “I graduated from Loyola
teaching high school physics in
now I’m still living in Oakland,
University Chicago School of Law
Brooklyn. He and his band. Judge
Calif., and working in IT at Bio-Rad
and had the pleasure of studying
Roy Bean (www.myspace.com/
Laboratories. I’m currently pulhng
under JUDGE Thomas More
judgeroybeanband), are celebrating
double-duty and trying not to burn
Donnelly (SF81). My wife,
the release of their first album.
out doing both as a support systems
Ashley, is four months pregnant
Shovelhead, available on iTunes.
administrator and PC support for
and we just bought our first condo
“If any of you are going to be in
my company’s Hercules, Calif.,
in the Lakeview neighborhood of
New York this summer, come out
location. I’m also gradually turning
Chicago. I was delighted to hear
and
see
a
show!
”
he
writes.
my apartment into a bizarre version
that we defeated the Academy in
of that garden ship from Silent
this year’s non-sanctioned croquet
Running (much to my roommate’s
battle.”
chagrin) with plants, especially
Feb. 29, 2008.
parents at Wyoming Seminary
Preparatory School next year,
where Justin teaches Latin and
math. “We continue to grow
vegetables, teach cooking classes,
and cater private events at our
farmhouse in northeastern
Pennsylvania.Our son, Peter, will
be a year old in July! We have a
guest room and welcome visitors to
the farm.”
43
2003
Aaron M ac Lean (A) was
commissioned as a Second
Lieutenant in the U.S. Marine
Corps on November 30, 2007.
“I’ve just learned that I’ve been
selected to attend the Infantry
Officer’s Course at Quantico, Va.,
this summer, which will put me out
in the fleet as an infantry officer by
this fall. Anyone who wants to is
more than welcome to contact me
at aaron.maclean@gmail.com.”
Jeffrey Zwillenherg (AGI) was
married last August to Jennifer
Goulston: “We now five in our new
house in Baltimore, Md. Most
recently, I accepted a new job in
development for a nonprofit
organization (New Leaders for New
Schools) in Baltimore. On another
note, while snowboarding at Stowe
in Vermont with CoREY HaydEN
(AGI06), we encountered another
Johnnie, owing to my St. John’s
bcense plate. We are everywhere!”
{The College. 5t. John’s
College ■ Summer 2008 }
Kimberly (Bryan) Gaud inski
(A) and Martin Gaudinski (A)
were married on December 29,
2007, at the Shrine of the Sacred
Heart in Baltimore, Md. “Now local
to D.C., we went on a phenomeno
logical honeymoon to a plane of
existing in the District that we will
rarely inhabit until many years
hence,” writes Martin. “We dined
at some of the finest restaurants the
city has to offer. While celebrating
our marriage at Citronelle,
Kimberly met the eidos of black
beans. Martin finally understood
Plotinus after his first sample of the
Chateaubriand. Now firmly back in
our normal fives, Kimberly is
teaching kindergarten at Potomac
Crescent Waldorf School in
Arlington, while Martin is in his
first year of professional training at
Georgetown University School of
Medicine.” ■
Kristi Meador (A) writes:
“I’ve been sojourning these past
two years in the former Soviet bloc
�{Alumni Notes}
44
Gwen Gurley (A) writes:
Happy in Alaska
“I thought I would send an update
letting the school know that I am
receiving my master’s degree in
Italian Studies with a focus on
translation and linguistics from
Middlebury College this August.
I have been in Florence, Italy, for
the pastyear working on my degree
and will be home in July. From
there I’m moving out to the West
Coast, hopefully to Portland, Ore.”
elissa
(Fecht)
Hougland
M
(SFGI06)
moved to
Fairbanks,
Alaska, in aooywith her
husband, Jarrett, to take the
associate director position with
the Fairbanks Arts Association.
“Seven months later, on
November 15, 2007, we were
blessed with a beautiful baby
boy, Blaise Anthony Hougland.
We are all happy here in Alaska, loving both the a4-hour
summer sun and the -40 degree winters!”
country of Belarus. I’ve also been
blessed with visits to the Ukraine,
Lithuania, Russia, Denmark,
Hungary, Egypt, and South Korea.
My time has been focused on
studying Russian, helping
university students wrestle with
important questions in their search
for God and truth, and loving
orphans and foster children.
I’ve been reading a wide range of
Russian hterature and after four
years have found myself immersed
in The Brothers K once again. My
next destination is Kentucky, where
I will be eagerly awaiting the arrival
of my fiitiue niece from Ethiopia!
I’d be glad to hear from Johnnies.
I can be reached at
kristimeador@gmail.com.”
2005
Samantha Buker (A) writes
from Baltimore, Md: “I’ve recently
taken the mantle of associate editor
and managing editor of five
financial pubheations for a fabulous
outfit caUed Agora Financial. In my
spare hours. I’m writing a new
novel-delightfully absent of
murderers, devils, and afterlife
sequences. Think the morally
immoral French novels of Balzac
and Zola meeting the vivid lyricism
of Gatsby in the form of a hardboiled hero of contemporary Wall
Street. Yes, as with Zola, there’s a
courtesan. But unlike Nana, she’s
no fool. Nor are the father whose
mistress she is or his son (who is in
love with her). At bottom, it’s a
critique of the modern American
financial system. And, unlike most
who post to these pages.. .1’11 not
tell you of nuptials or newborns.
I subscribe to Gustave Flaubert’s
style of living: Stay out of the thick
of Paris, and when your lover
barges into your study uninvited:
throw him out! But true, close
friends should plan to visit often:
sam.buker@gmail.com.”
Dwight Knoll (A) has become a
partner at Music Works
Publications (musicworkspubUcations.com). “Also the podcast I
am working on at FAQautism.com
is really starting to take off,” he
writes. “Finally, I’m going to Delft,
Holland, this July to participate in a
servant evangelism event.”
Miranda (Foster) Merklein
(SFGI) is a PhD candidate in
English / Creative Writing at the
University of Southern Mississippi.
Her poetry and fiction have
appeared in many hterary j ournals
and magazines, including The
Columbia Review, South Carolina
Review, Permafrost, and others.
She is currently completing her
first book of poetry.
“I am a certified yoga instructor
registered with Yoga Alliance and
have my own yoga business. Yoga
Edge, teaching privately at studios
and at universities. My Web site is
www.yoga-edge.com.”
Jonathan Coppadge (A) is
finishing up his year as a St. John’s
admissions counselor. He wiU be
returning to Phillips Academy
Andover this summer to teach
philosophy and French before
coming back to Annapolis in
August and beginning at Indian
Creek Upper School in
Crownsville, where he will teach
English. He is happily settled into
fife as an Eastporter, and reminds
his classmates that they always have
an open door and furnished table
when they come back to town.
“I am currently an AmeriCorps
member building houses for
Habitat for Humanity in Raleigh,
N.C.,” writes DEBORAH ManGUM
(A). “Anyone interested in
traveling, experimenting with
different fields, gathering different
experiences after/during/before
college should look them up at
americorps.org.”
Joshua Suich (A) was a youth
Heather Cook (SF) earned her
private pilot license in September
3007, and is enjoying flying around
northern New Mexico in her
Cessna i8a. She also wrote and
published her first book, the
Aviation Scholarship Directory
2008, in October 3007, which is
helping flight students, pilots, and
other aviation professionals to find
and win aviation scholarships.
Heather is stiU living in Santa Fe.
Paul and Anita Fairhanks
(SF) are delighted to announce the
birth of their daughter, Charlotte
Eden, on May 20, 2008: “She has
brought us so much happiness,”
Anita writes. “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 lullabyes and
read great books aloud.”
{The College.
pastor in Florida for a year, then
spent a little over a year teaching
EngUsh in the public school system
of Daigo, Ibaraki, Japan. “Daigo is
the city, Ibaraki is the prefecture,
which is a few hours north of
Tokyo. I climbed Mt. Fuji and saw
the sites and had a great time.
I kept a travel blog of it:
www.jsuich.blogspot.com. Right
now I am back in my home town of
Augusta, Ga., working as the head
swim coach of the Augusta Country
Club and will be going to GordonConwell Theological Seminary in
Charlotte, N.C., in the fall.”
2006
Erin Callahan (A) and Mark
Ingham (A05) married on April
37, 3008. This August the Inghams
move to Santa Fe to do the Eastern
Classics program. Erin writes:
St. John’s College ■ Summer 2008 }
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
section is September 10.
In Annapolis:
The College Magazine
St. lohn’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
�45
{Obituaries}
Chris Colby
Print Shop Manager, Annapolis
Chris Colby, a 30-year member
of the St. John’s College
community, died of cancer on
Thursday, March 27, 2008,
at the age of 58. He joined the
college in 1977 as assistant
manager of the Print Shop and
was promoted to manager in
1979. Earlier this year, he
guided the purchase and instal
lation of a new press that
greatly expands the college’s
printing capabilities. He was
known by those who worked
with him as a gentle and kind
man, a hard-working and
helpful colleague, and a
talented artist and craftsman.
He enjoyed-among many
things-weaving, cooking for
friends, writing short fiction,
and sharing stories of his
adventures in life.
At a memorial service held at
the college in April, friends,
co-workers and students
remembered Colby’s gifts to
the community. John Chris
tensen, the college’s director of
admissions, said Colby missed
vacations and weekends to
finish Print Shop projects on
deadline, but also “gave of
himself’ in many ways outside
of work.
“For some, he built book
shelves in our apartments or
houses; for others he repaired
harpsichords and other musical
instruments; for still others he
built kitchen cabinets and
helped construct decks,” Chris
tensen said. “He loved these
projects for the lasting friend
ships that often resulted, but
also because he simply enjoyed
putting his skills to use for
others in the community. .. .
“I think he was at his
happiest in these activities, but
he was also happy in another
role-that of mentor and surro
gate father for any number of
students, some of whom
worked for him and some of
whom he met in the writing
workshops he attended or
through working with them on
the Gadfly and Energia."
Howard Morsberger worked
alongside Colby since 1981.
“He was so much more than
just a ‘boss,’” he said. “He was
above all a mentor, a friend,
and a companion. Chris was a
passionate, but calm and softspoken man who gave me room
to make mistakes and grow
from them.”
Jack Brown (A08) described
his initial dismay at being
assigned to work at the Print
Shop; as he grew to know Colby
he realized how fortunate he
was. “I had requested a job at
the library, or IT, and did not
relish spending a year standing
in the dark making photocopies
while a vaguely sinister-looking
man looked on from the
shadows,” Brown said. “As you
can probably guess, that atti
tude changed; the Print Shop
quickly became my home away
from dorm-room, and Chris my
St. John’s mentor. It was in the
Print Shop that I learned
unofficially about the college. I
heard the latest news, absorbed
the 30 years of lore Chris had
stored up in him and loved
sharing. . . When I look back on
four years here, Chris will be
one of a few people who really
stand out. He was one of the
people I was most looking
forward to keeping informed
about what I was doing with my
life, and visiting when I came
back.”
Colby became his unofficial
mentor and career adviser.
Brown added. “I will go better
places for having known him,
my experience at this school
was enriched for having known
him, and I cannot express my
profound sadness for the
knowledge that when I leave
here. .. I will be leaving behind
a school, a Print Shop, and a
community that is a lesser
place for having lost Chris
Colby.”
Colby’s wife, Mary-who
worked for 15 years in the
college’s Admissions officepreceded him in death. They
are survived by their daughter,
Yve. Associate Admissions
Director Roberta Gable (A77)
described how St. John’s was
like another home for Colby.
“He loved the college, and he
loved the Print Shop, and he
loved us,” she said. “And I
would say that the Print Shop
was the great love of his life if it
weren’t utterly eclipsed by the
great and steadfast and abiding
love he had for Mary and Yve, a
love which was, I think, the
defining purpose of his life.”
Also Noted
Laurie Fink Colberg, class of
1966, June 21, 2007
IsAiAS Grandes del Mazo,
class of 1955, February 22,
2008
Commander William W.
Grant, class of 1941,
January 4, 2008
Marigene Boyd Hedges, class
of 1958, November 19, 2007
Lawrence Myers, class of
In his 30 YEARS AT St. John’s,
Chris Colby mentored
STUDENTS, SHARED HIS STORIES
AND TALENTS, AND EARNED THE
FRIENDSHIP AND ADMIRATION OF
THE GREATER COLLEGE
COMMUNITY.
{The College.
St. John’s College ■ Summer 2008 }
1951, February 2, 2008
Anjali Pai (SFGI08),
March 30, 2008
Richard H. Pembroke, Jr.,
class of 1932, January 4, 2008
�46
{Obituaries}
Al Toft
He worked quietly at night in a basement work
shop IN Mellon Hall, and laboratory in
Annapolis relied on Al Toft.
BY Mark Daly, Director of
Laboratory
Albert Ritchie Toft, who was a
lab technician at St. John’s
College in Annapolis from i960
to aoo5, died of complications
from Parkinson’s disease April
30 in Annapolis. He was born
August 1,1933, in Pasadena,
Maryland, attended George
Washington University, and
was a scientist at Goddard
Space and Flight Center in
Greenbelt for 35 years.
I heard about Al when I was
hired as director of Laborato
ries at St. John’s in July 1985.
He worked as a machinist along
with a carpenter named John
Cooke in the laboratory’s
physics workshop. The physics
workshop was, and still is,
located in the basement of
Mellon Hall. As Director of
Laboratories, one of my
responsibilities was super
vising the workshop. I would
collect broken equipment,
equipment that needed to be
modified to suit the college’s
needs, and pencil drawings of
ideas from me, students and
tutors, and place them on a
workbench in the empty
physics laboratory during the
day. Al worked evenings and
weekends, so I communicated
with him through notes and
pencil drawings. The next day I
would return to find my equip
ment repaired or modified, and
my pencil drawing coming to
life with a note, “Is this what
you wanted?” Most of the time,
Al would take our ideas and
improve on them. I would push
his creative talents further with
a revised drawing, place it on
the empty workbench, and the
next day the new creation
would take shape. I could
dream, scribble down an idea,
and put it on that empty work
bench, and he, with his gifts of
knowledge and creativity,
would make it happen.
When I finally got to meet Al,
he lived up to the picture I had
painted of him in my mind. I
walked into the dusty old base
ment workshop to be greeted
by a cheerful, “Hello, young
man.” Here was the man who
could make those drawings
come to life. He looked like a
scientist: clean cut, dark
rimmed glasses, and a lab coat.
He was friendly and had an
intelligence that commanded
respect.
Some time later, I visited Al at
the Goddard Space and Flight
Center, and he gave me a tour
of the facilities. I came to
realize the prize St. John’s was
keeping in that dusty physics
workshop. Al was hired at
Goddard as an entry-level tech
nician and worked his way up.
He was now a leading scientist
in the optics laboratory. His
major contributions to the
space program were inventing
a new coating for the mirrors in
space and inventing a way to
coat them uniformly. He was a
distinguished scientist with
published works and his accom
plishments were noted in the
Smithsonian Air and Space
Museum.
Al was a
problem solver
who loved a chal
lenge. His posi
tive outlook and
problem solving
abilities perme
ated his entire
being. As his
Parkinson’s
disease
advanced, he
remained upbeat
and always talked
about the future.
I remember once
he pointed to a
dollar bill on the
bench, and told me, “I couldn’t
reach to pick up that dollar and
put it in my pocket. I took my
pill, sat down for five minutes,
and now I can do it.” He was
fascinated by his affliction; he
looked at it as a scientist.
Al was a caring and compas
sionate man. When his good
friend John Cooke was
approaching 90, he was still
working in the workshop. His
vision was going, and his work
suffered. Al wouldn’t hurt his
friend and tell him to retire, so
he came up with a way to do it
gently. I learned from Al’s
example, and when Al’s
Parkinson’s began affecting his
work, I offered him the same
respect and compassion.
Today as I walk through the
laboratory classrooms in
Mellon Hall, I see Al’s legacy
around me. The equipment
that was repaired, modified, or
created by his hands speaks to
me. Some speak to me of the
brilliant scientist, the problem
solver. Others remind me of his
compassionate, friendly nature.
They just say, “hello, young
man.”
{The College -St John’s
College ■ Summer 2008 }
Rozanne Kramer (SFGI68)
Rozanne Edwards Kramer, a St.
John’s Santa Fe Graduate Insti
tute alumnus and former
manager of the St. John’s
Annapolis bookstore, died
March 31, 3008. Ms. Kramer
was born in Leavenworth,
Kansas, and as a child of an
army colonel, she traveled
extensively throughout her
childhood. She earned a bach
elor’s degree at Oberlin
College and worked on The
Evening Star in Washington,
D.C., and The Evening Capital
in Annapolis.
She joined the St. John’s staff
as manager of the Annapolis
bookstore. When St. John’s
opened its Santa Fe campus,
she moved West with her thenhusband, Clarence Kramer.
After earning her graduate
degree at St. John’s, Ms.
Kramer earned a second
master’s degree in Special
Education and enjoyed a 15year career as a teacher and
drill team coach. She is
survived by three children, five
grandchildren, and three great
grandchildren.
John Droege (A85)
John Patrick Droege, of
Plymouth, Mass., died on
January 38, 3008. He was 46
and was employed as a tech
nical salesman.
After graduating from
St. John’s, Droege earned a
master’s in American History
from the University of Notre
Dame. An avid outdoorsman,
Droege was a member of
the Manomet Center for
Conservation Science.
His parents, John and Aileen
Droege, would love to hear
from classmates and tutors who
knew John; contact them at;
JDroegei@comcast.net.
�{Alumni Voices}
47
The Face of America
BY Christopher Allison (SF97)
was to discern those who planned to follow
uring my years at
the rules from those who did not in the
St. John’s, I never
space of a two- to three-minute interview.
suspected that Thucydides,
In places like India, where wages are lower
Plutarch, and Machiavelli
and poverty more widespread than in the
were secretly preparing me
I am a Foreign Service Officer (FSO)
U.S., this is no simple task. I typically
for a career in diplomacy,
of the U.S. Department of State. FSOs
did 75-roo interviews every day. It was
hut in hindsight it seems so obvious.
compose the U.S. government’s diplomatic
interesting work, though often draining.
corps, staffing embassies and consulates in
At the conclusion of my assignment to
more than 250 cities around the world. As
India, I transferred to Japan to work at
such, we represent the United States to the
Embassy Tokyo. Japan and India could not
governments of other countries and look
be more different, and the abruptness of
out for the welfare of American citizens
this transition left me reeling. Where India
abroad. As my employer frequently reminds
is colorful, noisy, and a trifle chaotic, some
me, I am the face of America overseas. I
people find Japan to be grey, rigid, and
know this may seem strange to some of my
subdued. Despite its recent economic
classmates who haven’t seen me in a few
progress, India is still very much a devel
years, but it couldn’t be a more natural fit.
oping country, where the morning
After joining the State Department in
commute is regularly impeded by ox carts
the spring of 2004,1 was first dispatched to
or free-range cows blocking major thor
interview visa applicants at the U.S.
oughfares. Japan, by contrast, is one of the
Consulate in Chennai, India. One of the
most highly developed economies and most
core functions of American consulates is
orderly societies in the world. While I am
reviewing visa applications of foreign
normally the type of person to enjoy the
nationals who wish to travel to the United
sensory stimulation of the developing
States. Though I joined the State Depart
world, after two years of it, Tokyo’s more
ment as an Economic Officer, adjudicating
muted tones were a welcome change
visas is a sort of rite of passage for FSOs.
of pace.
Every newly hired officer is required to do
The work could not be more different as
at least one year of consular work upon
well. I currently work on the staff of U.S.
joining the department, and this usually
Ambassador to Japan J. Thomas Schieffer,
means working the visa line in a place
helping to keep him informed about a wide
hke Chennai.
array of issues requiring his attention.
(Incidentally, Ambassador Schieffer has a
St. John’s connection: his son Paul gradu
During my two years in India,
I stood at a window much like
one might encounter at the
Department of Motor Vehicles
and listened patiently as people
explained why they needed to
travel to the states. In order to
approve most types of visa, an
officer must be convinced that
the applicant plans to depart
from the states after a short
period of time, regardless of
why they wish to visit. Of
course, there is also a
responsibility to try to keep
out criminals, terrorists,
human traffickers, drug lords,
and other undesirables. My job
D
{The College. St. John’s
College ■ Summer 2008 }
ated from the Annapolis campus in 2007.)
In some ways, I am little more than a stan
dard-issue bureaucrat: I read reports, I go
to meetings, I brief people, I compile
reports, and I push papers-some virtual,
some made of actual paper-from one place
to another.
But that’s only one part of the job. I have
a ringside seat for what former Ambassador
to Japan Mike Mansfield famously called
“the most important bilateral relationship
in the world, bar none.” My boss is on the
nightly news on a regular basis. In the next
couple of months, Japan will host the G-8
Summit, and I’ll be in the middle of it.
I have met cabinet secretaries, members of
Congress, one former and one current
Vice President, and the home run king of
Japan. Not bad for a humble bureaucrat,
if you ask me.
This may seem like a strange career
choice for someone who not that long ago
spent his days playing Frisbee in front of
Meem Library and his nights pondering
Kant, but I can’t imagine doing anything
else. The Foreign Service is, in some ways,
like St. John’s: a small and somewhat
obscure organization with a lot of tradition
and a culture all its own. The variety of
different skills-and different parts of my
brain-that the work requires on a daily
basis is also familiar. I have to speak
persuasively, write clearly, struggle with
foreign languages, and work through
countless situations that lie outside of my
core competencies. If St. John’s
provides the ultimate generalist
education, then the Foreign
Service is the ultimate generalist
career. The longer I do this and
the more I come to understand
the values of the Service, the
more I feel like this is what St.
John’s was preparing me for all
along.
Chris Allison (SF97) shown
HERE WITH HIS WIFE, BeTH
Rollins, at the statue of the
Great Buddha of Kamakura,
Japan, revels in Japanese
culture and traditions.
�{Croquet}
48
IN LOVE WITH
CROQUET
Jennifer Wright (Ao8), a wry observer oflife
at St. John’s, offered this tribute to croquet,
herfavorite time ofthe year, after her last
match as a student.
’ve secretly smuggled a book to every
football game my family has ever
taken me to, raising my head only
sporadically to say things hke, “when
they jump on each other-is that
good?” Usually around that point,
the man sitting next to me spills a plate of
nachos on me, possibly out of rage. 1 fare no
better when it comes to understanding the
rules of croquet.
This is not for lack of trying on the part of
the members of the croquet team, who have
gallantly attempted to explain it to me. But
they start rambhng about wickets and
driving the ball into the ground, and I get
distracted, and end up asking them what
their costumes are going to be for the match
this year. My total lack of understanding of
the rules of the game has proved advanta
for a group of people who don’t particularly
geous, at least during freshman year. I heard
care for sports. Much of our bookishness at
wild cheers from the audience and assumed
St. John’s may stem at least in part from our
we’d won. We hadn’t. 1 went around
inability to compete with our peers on the
congratulating everyone. No one had the
soccer field. While students at other schools
heart to correct me until the next day.
remember their winning touchdown, John
That does not in any way change the fact
nies remember striking out at T-ball.
that croquet day is the best day of the year.
Which makes it even more amazing that
In fact, croquet is the perfect sporting event
we’re good at croquet. In fact, we’re the top
I
ranked team in the country. My assuming
we’d won was a fair assumption, considering
the fact that we usually do. As a result, we’ve
occasionally taken to having the victory
party the night before croquet. And the
party is almost as amazing as croquet day
itself. The big band music plays hard and
fast. And everyone is united in a single,
bloodthirsty. Machiavellian desire to beat
the Navy-though the bloodthirstiness, to be
fair, is tempered by Cole Porter and straw
berries and champagne.
For one week in the spring, we have a
bitter school rival. We chant things about
how we will “sweep” by winning every
round of croquet. I learned after freshman
{The College-
St. John's College ■ Summer 2008 }
year that when members of the croquet team
come up to you and scream “how are we like
a broom?” the correct answer is to scream
back “we sweep! ” and not to meekly reply
“we remove debris?” We enact in essence,
the rituals seen on most Big Ten campuses
that rarely make their way to quaint little
St. John’s.
Because in a way, beating the tough guys
at Navy at any sport seems to make up for
the fact that were always picked last for
dodgeball. Watching the Johnnies sweep on
the croquet field, we feel, as we rarely do,
like wild Spartan warriors. Just for a Uttle
while though, before we go back to reading
our T. S. Eliot for language class.
So, if you haven’t yet made it, venture to
Annapolis for croquet. You’ll be glad you
did. And nobody will judge you for bringing
a book.
�{Croquet}
Heavy rain
49
threatened cancellation of the
CROQUET MATCH, BUT THE COMPETITORS PLAYED ON
AND THE WEATHER IMPROVED.
The result: 3-a St. John’s in a hard-fought and
HONORABLE MATCH. OPPOSITE: IMPERIAL WiCKET
Ian Hanover (A08), sporting a navy “uniform”
BOUGHT online; Jennifer Wright and Jessica
Perry (A09). Clockwise: John Ertle (A84) and
HIS son, David, io, and President Christopher
Nelson (A70); MaryIrene Ruffin Corrigan (A04)
WITH DAUGHTER MACKENZIE; FASHIONABLY ATTIRED
Johnnies: (l. to r.): Sasha Munters (A09), Ellen
Barnhart (Aio), SamYelton (A09), Elizabeth
Fleming (Aio)
and
Elsabe Dixon (Aio).
Todd Grier (Class of 1938) opened
the match by
STRIKING THE CEREMONIAL FIRST BALL; MaRY GiLLMARTEN, MOTHER OF CHARLES (Ao8), OFFERED
CUSTOM-MADE CROQUET COOKIES.
{The College. St John’s College
■ Summer 2008 }
�5°
{Alumni Association News}
accept his Award of Merit. (Mr. Ertegun
continues to contribute to our community
through the Ahmet Ertegun Education
Fund; Led Zeppehn reunited to raise
money for scholarships on the Annapolis
campus as well as several European
schools.)
Our Award of Merit winners represent a
broad spectrum of alumni in many
different fields. Also in the music industry,
there’s Jac Holzman (A52), who started
Elektra Records in 1950 when he was a
student. In journalism, Ray Cave (A48),
editor of Time magazine; in filmmaking,
screenwriter Jeremy Leven (A64) and
cinematographer Tom Stern (SF69), whose
many films include Unforgiven, American
Beauty, and Mystic River, Annapolis tutor
Howard Zeiderman (A67), was honored in
2002 for his work with the Touchstones
Discussion Project. He shared the podium
that year with classmates including
Candace Brightman, who created the light
ast night I saw Martin
shows for the Grateful Dead. Our alumni
Scorcese’s Shine a Light, a
have also made tremendous contributions
concert film of the RolUng
in government, industry, and in not-forStones at New York City’s
profits and non-governmental organiza
Beacon Theatre. The final
tions as well as significant contributions
image of the film is a photo
to the future of St. John’s. We recognize
graph of Ahmet Ertegun, class of 1944;
these at the Homecoming Dinner on
the him is dedicated to his memory.
Saturday night.
Mr. Ertegun, co-founder of Atlantic
Our Honorary Alumni are welcomed
Records, was hackstage at the Beacon on
into our community each year during the
the hrst night of this concert, October 29,
All-alumni Gatherings held during the
2006, when he suffered the fall that led to
day on Saturday of Homecoming. These
his death later that year.
are individuals who have demonstrated
Seeing that tribute from a remarkable
an outstanding commitment to our
hlmmaker to a legend in the recording
educational program and the community.
industry made me think about the ways in
Last year, we gave the award to two
which we honor people. St. John’s, unlike
members of the Annapolis community,
most other colleges and universities,
Robert Hunt and Alton Waldron, each of
doesn’t grant honorary degrees to the
whom has participated in the college’s
distinguished individuals who speak at
community seminars for 50 years. Often,
Commencement each spring. However, the
we honor retiring tutors and long-time
Alumni Association, since r949, has
staff members, recognizing their
honored people in two ways: granting the
Award of Merit to our alumni “for distin
guished and meritorious service to the
United States, or to his/her native state,
or to St. John’s College; or for outstanding
achievement within his/her chosen field,”
and granting Honorary Alumnus/a status
to people who have had such close involve
ment in the St. John’s community that we
want them to join us as “permanent
members of the college.”
Ahmet Ertegun, who shaped the careers
of so many amazing musicians and co
founded Rock ’n Roll Hall of Eame, was
proud to come to Homecoming in 1994 to
From the Alumni
Association
President
L
These are individuals
who have demonstrated
an outstanding
commitment to our
educationalprogram
and the community.
Jason Walsh (A85)
{The College - Sr.
John’s College • Summer 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 (SFGI95)
Mailing address - Alumni Association,
St. John’s College, P.O. Box 2800, Annapolis,
MD 21404, or rr6o Camino Cruz Blanca,
Santa Fe, NM 87505-4599.
impact-people like Barbara Leonard
(HA55) and Brother Robert Smith (HA90).
Last year, we again honored Jeffrey Bishop
(HA87), the long-time vice president of the
college, who died last July. Jeff was one of
the very few Honorary Alumni to also be
recognized with an Award of Merit,
presented posthumously, for his great
contributions to the college.
This year at Santa Fe Homecoming, the
Alumni Association will also single out a
special group for recognition: the Class of
1968, the first students to graduate from
the campus. These men and women
were bold enough to be the pioneers
of an emerging campus and they deserve
recognition.
Complete lists of our Award of Merit
recipients and Honorary Alumni are on
the Alumni Association Web site. Go to
the St. John’s Web site at:
www.stjohnscollege.edu, and click on
Alumni. If you would like to nominate indi
viduals for the Award of Merit or as
Honorary Alumni, contact the Alumni
office on either campus: Jo Ann Mattson in
Annapolis, jamattson@sjca.edu; or
Michael Bales in Santa Fe,
michael.bales@sjcsf.edu. The Nomina
tions Committee of the Alumni Association
will be pleased to consider your sugges
tions.
Jason Walsh (A85)
Alumni Association President
�{Alumni Association News}
Seminars, Croquet and Fun
California Johnnies Enjoy a Lively Chapter
know, the quality of the readings for
week after St. John’s put
seminars, and whether a tutor is leading
away Navy during the
the discussion,” says Miranda. Younger
annual croquet match in
Johnnies, especially those new to the area,
Annapolis, a group of
tend to look for networking opportunities.
Johnnies were carrying on
“This is one of our great challenges, how
the tradition 3,000 miles
to better meet that need,” he adds.
away by taking on some recent graduates
Fortunately, the Northern California
Informal
happy hours for recent alumnifrom the University of California,
Berkeley.
chapter of the Alumni Association also
coordinated by Laura Manion (A04) every
carried on the tradition of winning.
two weeks-have been popular among
Co-Imperial Wickets Jessica Finefrock
younger members of the chapter.
(SF05) and Nathan Stalnaker {A04) led the
Johnnies to a dramatic, down-to-the wire
victory in the first-ever Westside Croquet
Match. Stalnaker hit the winning stroke:
“It went through two wickets-all from one
swing,” he says. About 25 chapter
Reynaldo Miranda (A99)
members and friends attended the match
and a picnic afterward at Lake Merritt in
Oakland. The event could become another
The 2008 season of seminars and
tradition for this lively chapter that
dinners was launched by a January visit
combines social events and seminars that
from Santa Fe tutor Phil LeCuyer, who led
appeal to younger and older alumni alike.
a seminar on Hans Jonas’ essay, “Is God a
“The spirit of the chapter is fun,” says
Mathematician? The Meaning of Metabo
chapter president Reynaldo Miranda (A99).
lism.” Fifteen chapter members attended
Despite the challenges of travel
the seminar, hosted by Neal Allen (SF78)
distances and hectic schedules, chapter
at McKesson Corp, headquarters in San
events are popular draws for alumni of all
Francisco. Then attendees drove an hour
ages. “I think what inspires people to come
to savor more conversation over dinner at
and join in is seeing other Johnnies they
Cafe Zoetrope, a restaurant at filmmaker
A
^The spirit ofthe
chapter isfun. ”
51
Valley. Andrea S. Hines (SF05) hosted the
dinner.
In February, Santa Fe President Michael
Peters led a well-attended seminar on
Shakespeare’s Henry V', about 65 alumni
turned up for a reception afterward.
Tutor Peter Pesic led two seminars on
Heidegger in San Francisco, and many
alumni traveled to nearby Moraga to attend
Pesic’s piano recital at St. Mary’s College.
The chapter also invites local tutor
emeriti and former St. John’s tutors.
For example, Jim Forkin, a former Santa Fe
tutor, delivered a lecture on Shakespeare’s
Tempest and Machiavelli. Former tutor and
Annapolis dean Tom Slakey (HA94) of
Sacramento usually leads one of the semi
nars at the chapter’s annual summer Stag’s
Leap Wine Cellars reunion in Napa, hosted
by Warren and Barbara Winiarkski of the
classes of 1952 and 1955 respectively.
Last year, Howard Zeiderman (A67)
drew a crowd of 49 for a seminar on Jorge
Luis Borges’ stories “The Library of
Babel” and “Pierre Menard, Author of the
Quihote.” Participants filled a long confer
ence-room table and some sat along the
walls, but as big as the group was, the
seminar worked, he says. “I think all the
people participated. Also there was a
wonderful blend of text, experience, and
reflection on the college, so it was never
merely academic.”
Francis Ford Coppola’s winery in Napa
CHAPTER CONTACTS
Call the alumni listed belowfor information
about chapter, reading group, or other alumni
activities in each area.
ALBUQUERQUE
Robert Morgan, SF76
505-275-901^
rim2u@c0mcast.net
CHICAGO
Rick Lightburn, SF76
847-922-3862
rlightburn@gmail.com
ANNAPOLIS
Beth Martin Gammon,
A94
410-332-1816
emartin@crs. org
DALLAS/FORT
WORTH
Paula Fulks, SF76
817-654-2986
puffjd@swbeU.net
AUSTIN/SAN
ANTONIO
Toni Wilkinson,
SFGI87
512-278-1697
wilkinson_toni
@hotm ail.com
DENVER/BOULDER
Elizabeth Jenny SF80
303-530-3373
epj727@comcast.net
BOSTON
Dianne Cowan, A91
617-666-4381
diannecowan@rcn.com
HOUSTON
Norman Ewart A85
713-303-3025
norman.ewart@rosetta
resources.com
MADISON
Consuelo Sanudo,
SGIoo
608-251-6565
sanudoc@tds.net
PHILADELPHIA
Helen Zartarian, AGI86
215-482-5697
helenstevezartarian@
mac.com
SANTA FE
Richard Cowles,
SFGI95
505-986-1814
rcowles2@comcast.net
MINN./ST. PAUL
Carol Freeman, AGI94
6l2r822-32l6
Freem013@umn.edu
PHOENIX
Donna Kurgan, AGI96
623-444-6642
dakurgie@yahoo.com
SEATTLE
James Doherty, SFGI76
206-542-3441
jdoherty@mrsc.org
NEW YORK CITY
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
415-333-4452
reynaldo .miranda@
gmail.com
SAN DIEGO
Stephanie Rico, A86
619-429-1565
srico@sandi.net
SOUTHERN CALIF.
Jan Conlin, SF85
310-490-2749
conlinjani@yahoo.com
FOR MORE ALUMNI
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Ed Grandi, A77
301-351-8411
egrandi@aol.com
SALT LAKE CITY
Erin Hanlon, SF03
916-967-2194
e.i.mhanlon@
gmail.com
{The College. Sf. John's
Providing
OPPORTUNITIES
College ■ Summer 2008 }
WESTERN NEW
ENGLAND
Peter Weis, SF84
413-367-2174
peter_weis@
nmhschool.org
TO CONNECT
MORE OFTEN AND
MORE RICHLY
�52.
{St. John’s Forever}
An Emerging Campus
rider stops to gaze up at the
worked with the architecture firm Holien
St. John’s campus in the
and Buckley on the master plan.
early 1960s. A few years
In a piece he wrote for a college promo
before, St. John’s President
tional brochure, Meem described the
Richard Weigle described
Territorial style and why it was right for
the property-the bulk of
St. John’s. “The buildings of St. John’s
which was a gift from architect John
Gaw
College
in Santa Fe will reflect practically
Meem and his wife. Faith, as “240
acres
of
all the
historical
phases.... Their
pinon- and juniper-studded land on the
terraced, flat-roofed masses recall their
lower slope of Monte Sol.”
ancient aboriginal American origin; the
This was the campus that greeted the
balconies, portales and patios recall the
members of the class of rgGS when they
Spain they came from, and the stuccoed
first arrived in Santa Fe. As Weigle raised
walls with their brick cornices will remind
funds to build the new campus, Meem
us of our Territorial past.”
A
{The College. St. John’s College
■ Summer 2008 }
The campus’ design would be
“completely contemporary and yet
reflecting the rich inheritance of the past,”
Meem wrote. “Perhaps in a small way, this
may be a worthy symbol of the way
St. John’s College looks at its task in the
world.”
Many more buildings have been added to
the campus since, and more will be added
in the next few years: a new residential
center and the Dr. Norman and Betty
Levan Hall, which will house the Graduate
Institute.4"
�{Alumni Events Calendar}
Alumni Calendar
Make plans for Homecoming!
Annapolis^ September 26-28, and
Santa Fe. on October 10-12.
See you there.
Santa Fe Alumni Art Show:
“The Lunatic, The Lover, The Poet”
September 19 - October zi, 2008
A highlight of the fall semester in Santa Fe
each year is the opening of the Annual AllAlumni Art Show, marking its eighth year
in 2008. This year’s theme is inspired by a
passage from Shakespeare’s^ Midsummer
Night’s Dream:
“Lovers and madmen have such
seething brains.
Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend
More than cool reason ever
comprehends.
The lunatic, the lover, and the poet.
Are of imagination all compact...”
Eagerly awaiting the next Homecoming in Annapolis
Opening Reception:
Friday, September 19, 5-8 p.m.
Closing Reception for Homecoming
attendees:
Saturday, October ii, 6-7 p.m.
In Paca Garden, walled and dry
they built the Old World in the New,
and there walked girl and woman, I
with man and boy (remember?), you.
a flash of gold; I wore it round
my neck for days. You wondered why
I prized the broken chain you found;
you feared and could not meet my eye.
As if to keep all life at bay
and shut our eyes to hear a story
we dressed the truth in solemn play:
my quiet house of ancient glory,
We played pretend, but much came true:
our Old World gave us the refrain,
with words dictated by the New.
I have, but never wear, the chain.
linen and tea; your Russian home,
the dying count, a summons back.
Were those bricked streets our sunny
Rome,
or Paris? You spotted in a crack
Like faery queen and knight of old
we lingered in determined bliss:
a string of nonsense, trampled gold,
a small thing, but too bright to miss.
{The College-
St. John’s College ■ Summer 2008 }
—Ruth Johnston (Stayer, A85)
�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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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, Summer 2008
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Volume 34, Issue 2 of The College Magazine. Published in Summer 2008.
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St. John's College
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Santa Fe, NM
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2008
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The College Vol. 34, Issue 2 Summer 2008
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Harty, Rosemary (editor)
Dempsey, Patricia (assistant editor)
Hannifin, Jenny (Santa Fe editor)
Behrens, Jennifer (art director)
Allison, Christopher
Brooks, Ethan
Gassaway, Shane
Johnston, Ruth
Dunn MacRae, Cathi
Nugent, Tom
Spiegelman, Deborah
Stratton, Erica
Wilson, Kea
Wright, Jennifer
Johnson, David
The College
-
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PDF Text
Text
The
St. John’s
^EGE
•
SUMMER
Annapolis • Santa Fe
Dostoevsky
Experiences with Crime
and
Punishment
2OOa
�On Dostoevsky
yodor Mikhaylovich Dostoevsky ’s own life had all the elements
Fof a complex psychological novel. Born in 1821, Dostoevsky
spent his childhood in Moscow. His early years were defined
by the opposing personalities of his parents: the gentle mother
who bore seven children; the cruel, repressive father-a physi
Dostoevsky was educated at home and at a private school. After the death of his
cian who was likely murdered by his own serfs during a quarrel.
parents, undoubtedly following his rational side and the guidance of his elders, Dos
Both died by Dostoevsky’s i8th birthday.
toevsky studied military engineering at a St. Petersburg college. However, by the
time he wa.s in his mid-2os, he had resigned his commission to write novels, the first
two of which were Poor Folk (a success) and Fhe Double (panned by the critics).
In 1846, Dostoevsky joined a secret utopian society. The socialistic tenden
cies of the secret group were not favored by the government, and Dostoevsky
was arrested on April 23,1849 as he read a tract in public. Although Dostoevsky
was sentenced to death, the emperor ordered a reprieve of the sentence. Dosto
evsky wasn’t informed until moments before his scheduled death, after he and
two others had been tied to posts in the prison yard. He served four years of hard
labor at a prison in Omask, Siberia, before being exiled “into the ranks” as a
common soldier. In the solitude of prison, in the suffering of his body and soul,
Dostoevsky began the self-examination that led to his spiritual awakening. He
still professed unbelief, yet, as he wrote in a letter from prison, “Sometimes God
sends me moments in which I am utterly at peace.”
After the stint in prison and the army, Dostoevsky returned to St. Petersburg. He
wrote The ImuliedandIrijuredXri&et^ on his experiences, but the book was so
unpopular he felt compelled to defend his ideas in a public letter. When he was 36,
the struggling writer married Maria Isaev. He worked as the editor of a publication
called Time which was shut down because of its political reporting. Personal crises
culminated with the death of his wife and brother in 1865.
In his middle years, Dostoevsky suffered from frequent epileptic seizures and
spent most of his time in dire poverty which he made worse through obsessive gam
bling. He wrote Notesfrom Underground, Crime and Punisliineru, and The Idiot
within a five-year period during this turbulent time. With his second wife, the young
stenographer Anna Grigorievna, he began to lead a more stable existence, finally
settling in a small provincial town after several years of travel. Proceeds from The
Possessed enabled them to buy a house. There he worked on his final book. The
Brothers Karamozov, and enjoyed a measure of public admiration. Dostoevsky’s
later books were serialized, making him something of a cult figure with his deeply
spiritual voice and commentaries on the state of Russian society.
Dostoevsky’s novels are marked by the dichotomies he himself experienced: gen
tleness and cruelty, faith and unbelief, sin and redemption, suffering and love. He
knew criminals well and had ample opportunity to reflect on their sensibilities. He
had strong political opinions (socialist in his youth, much more conservative later in
life) and explored the social implications of evil and sin in his novels.
In this issue of The College, we look at some views on crime and punishment
formed, like Dostoevsky’s, on the anvil of experience.
SC
STJOHN’S
College
ANNAPOLIS . SANTA FE
The College (usps 018-750)
is published four 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 3800
Annapolis, md 21404-2800
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at Annapolis, md
postmaster: Send address
changes to The College
Magazine, Communications
Office, St. John’s College,
Box 2800, Annapolis, md
21404-2800.
Annapolis
410-295-5554
b-goyette@sjca.edu
Barbara Goyette, editor
Sus3an Borden, managing editor
Susanne Ducker,
art director
Advisory Board
John Christensen
Harvey Flaumenhaft
Roberta Gable
Kathryn Heines
Pamela Kraus
Joseph Macfarland
Eric Salem
Brother Robert Smith
Santa Fe
505-984-6104
classics@mail.sjcsf.edu
Laura J. Mulry, Santa Fe editor
Advisory Board
Alexis Brown
Grant Franks
David Levine
Margaret Odell
John Rankin
Ginger Roherty
Tahmina Shalizi
Mark St. John
Magazine design by
Claude Skelton Design
�{Contents}
PAGE
ZO
DEPARTMENTS
Grime and Punishment
a FROM THE BELL TOWERS
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Five Johnnies-two lawyers, a judge, a
probation officer and a prison librariandiscuss the reality behind the drama of
criminal justice.
PAGE
l6
Commencement 2002
24 BIBLIOFILE
A review of Charles Nelson’s book on Barr
and Buchanan
A military historian and a novelist
known for literary experimentation
sent surprisingly close messages to
graduates in Annapolis and Santa Fe.
PAGE
The New Program seal
Ancient philosophy in Seattle
SJC as international model
News about tutors and students
Homecoming in Annapolis
Santa Fe’s fundraising triumph
Letters
26 THE PROGRAM
Alumni in the corporate world debate how
math is taught at SJC.
20
29 ALUMNI NOTES
Remembrances
Pranks Past
oe
ALUMNI PROFILES
32 Holly Miller (SFGIoi) writes for
Laura Bush.
A short history of senior prank.
PAGE
22
PAGE 16
34 Nathan Wilson (AGIoi) parodies
apocalyptic novels.
41 OBITUARIES
A Buddhist in
THE Bookstore
42 CAMPUS LIFE
Johnnies reclaim croquet superiority.
Santa Fe bookstore manager Andrea
d’Amato brings an awareness of Eastern
thought to her job and her life.
44 ALUMNI ASSOCIATION NEWS
•
•
Minneapolis/ St. Paul tackles tragedy
Election Notices
48 ST. JOHN’S FOREVER
PAGE ao
ON THE COVER
Dostoevsky
Illustration by DavidJohnson
�2.
{From the Bell Towers}
On Liberalism and Liberos
Stringfellow Barr, one of the New Program
founders andpresident of the collegefrom
193'2 to 1947, delivered a series of radio talks
on WFBR in Baltimore. Here are excerpts of
the talk he delivered on June 20, 1938, in
which he tells the story behind the ''books
and balance ” seal that had come to symbol
ize the program. Editor's note: Today we
use inclusive language to translate the
motto: "I makefree adultsfrom children by
means of books and a balance. ”
confronted with a worldwide decline of liberalism.
...Since the New Program is an effort to restore liberal arts edu
cation in American colleges, I should like to speak this evening
about liberalism and what it means to those of us who are still will
ing to fight for it.
Like most liberals today, I am disturbed by the rise in many
parts of the world of government by violence as a substitute for
government by reason and consent. But unlike most liberals I
know, I am much less disturbed by the overthrow of free govern
ment in states that were once democratic than I am by the con
fusing of the liberal mind in states like ours which are still tech
nically free. You may argue that confusion in the liberal mind
disturbs me because I know that such confusion is normally fol
lowed by the overthrow of free government. I agree that this is
what normally happens; but even if you could assure me that “it
can’t happen here,” I should still be disturbed by the present
state of liberalism. Because I agree with those who founded our
Republic that what they and we have called free institutions
cannot alone and of themselves make men truly free. Free insti
tutions are a means to an end, not an end in themselves. The
end is the freedom of individual men and women...
Is ANCIENT
PHILOSOPHY
STILL
RELEVANT?
The original art for the
books and balance seal, used until
1997,
WAS HAND DRAWN. ThE LaTIN PUN WAS WRITTEN BY A FRIEND OF BaRR’s.
The other day an interesting and curious gift arrived at St.
John’s College. It was a design in the form of a circular seal, and
it was the work of a Harvard man who admires the educational
program which this College has undertaken and who chose to
express his admiration by designing this symbolic seal. In the
center of the seal is a pair of scales, or balances. Around it in a
circle are placed seven open books, representing the seven liber
al arts. And around the open volumes is lettered the motto,
“Facio Liberos ex Liberis Libris Libraque.” I suppose the motto
may be fairly translated; “I make free men out of boys by means
of books and balances.” The punning on the stem of the Latin
word for free is a serviceable pun now that liberal education is
{The College.
Is ancient philosophy stiU rele
vant? Such was the theme that
faculty professors, students, and
guest lecturers were invited to
address at Seattle University’s
7th Annual Philosophy Confer
ence held on May 17. Among the
visiting lecturers was St. John’s
tutor Joe Sachs (A68).
I think most of The College
readers would agree, the
answer to the theme question is
a resounding Yes! The distin
guished panel at the conference
shared this opinion and sup
ported it with readings from
their essays. The readings cov
ered topics inspired by the
works of Hegel, Aristotle,
Plato, Husserl, Nietzsche, and
Diogenes.
In his essay “Wholes and
Parts in Human Nature,” Joe
Sachs tackled the tough ques
tions of Who are you? and What
are you? Drawing on the tradi
tion of thought established by
5t. John’s
College ■ Summer 2002
}
Plato, Aristotle, and Hume, Mr.
Sachs put forward the thesis
that our characters are indeed
composed of the parts known as
Reason and Passion, but added
that there is an equally impor
tant third part. Spirit, which
employs Reason and Passion
and creates a whole from the
triumvirate.
Aristotle gave us the analogy
of a syllable in the Nicomachean Ethics to illustrate the
notion of a whole composed of
inseparable parts. A syllable is
visually composed of separate
letters but is considered a
whole when spoken. Take the
first syllable of the word “mem
ory,” for example. If you sound
it out slowly you’ll hear that the
continuity of sound requires
that each utterance be shaped
by the following letter. Sound
ing out each letter individually
does not a syllable make. In this
way the syllable is a whole com
posed of parts that are harmo
niously united.
Mr. Sachs drew on this analo
gy to talk about the soul as
being composed of universal
Reason, generic Passions, and
distinctive Spirit. In a harmo
nious unity of parts, the Spirit
interacts with the Passions as
an impetus to action and uses
�{From the Bell Towers}
3
St. John’s Education
A Model for Myanmar
Seattle University professors Corinne Painter, Bort Hopkins,
AND Christian Lotz
discuss
Ancient Philosophy with Annapolis
TUTOR Joe Sachs (center).
Reason as a guide for action.
The Spirit, then, is the source
of practical judgment in our
daily affairs. Greatness of soul,
brought about by the Spirit’s
dialectic movement in which it
first attains, then disdains, the
rewards of virtue and honor,
becomes the distinctive differ
ence that leads to a correct
sense of one’s own self-worth,
right action, and a happy life.
Readings from other visiting
lecturers and Seattle University
professors and students were
similarly interesting and
informative. For instance. Vil
lanova University professor
Walter Brogan examined the
kinship between practical and
theoretical philosophy as illus
trated with Aristotle’s notion of
friendship. Seattle University
was well represented by several
professors from its Philosophy
department. Licia Carlson pre
sented a holistic picture of
ancient Greek music, and con
cluded with the discovery that
philosophy is a form of music
in itself. Christian Lotz, also a
professor at Seattle University,
simultaneously entertained
and informed with his power
point presentation on the
important example of Dio
genes, who practiced philoso
phy in a wholly public life
(eating, sleeping, and philoso
phizing in the marketplace)
instead of exclusive institutions
and academies.
With these and other fine
expositions, the 7th Annual
Philosophy Conference was
considered a success by its
organizers and attendees.
Several St. John’s alumni were
in attendance to hear Mr. Sachs
speak, including Bill Boon
(A80), Diana Klatt (A89), and
Nina Tosti (A89). The Philoso
phy Club at Seattle University
organized this annual confer
ence to give students and pro
fessors the opportunity to pres
ent their work to an audience
of colleagues, peers, and the
general public.
—wthMinh. Stickford (SFoi)
Educators from Myanmar (for
merly knovra as Burma) visited
the Annapolis campus last
spring, attending sophomore
seminars on Macbeth and
Descartes’s Discourse on
Method, freshman lab, junior
mathematics tutorials, a senior
language tutorial on Flannery
O’Connor, and a senior oral.
“I was asked to help them
understand how we teach and
learn together at St. John’s,”
says tutor John Verdi, who
organized their visit at the col
lege. “They are especially
interested in how tutors help
each other to become better
teachers of discussion classes,
and how students learn to sup
port their positions with rea
soned arguments.” The visit
was coordinated by Dorothy
Guyot, a former tutor who is
currently working with
Burmese educators through a
non-profit organization, the
Myanmar Foundation for Ana
lytic Education.
Myanmar became isolated
from the outside world in
196a, when its military gov
ernment shut off most
exchange in commerce, the
arts, and education. New
books are scarce and those
that arrive are photocopied;
Burmese visitors Khin Maung
Win and Khin Ma Ma
{The College- St. John’s College ■ Summer 2002 }
most academics have not been
able to receive journals for a
long time. The country has
begun to encourage tourism
and other types of interaction
with the rest of the world.
Dr. Khin Maung Win, who
earned his PhD at Yale and
went on to become professor
of philosophy at Yangon Uni
versity and then Minister of
Education and Ambassador to
France and India, came to
observe St. John’s along with
his daughter Dr. Khin Ma Ma,
who earned her medical
degree at Yangon University
and now practices medicine in
Mandalay.
He hopes that what he
learned in his U.S. visit can be
used to lay the groundwork
for new modes of faculty
development in higher educa
tion and a new program to
prepare high school graduates
to study in the U.S. “Seminars
are very important to train
future citizens,” says Dr. Khin
Maung Win. “A modern socie
ty needs people to have dis
cussions... In Myanmar, tradi
tionally teachers are very
highly respected. There is a
saying ‘when the teacher says
the sun rises in the west, it
must be true.’ Students don’t
ask questions.”
Introducing the St. John’s
pedagogy of student-led learn
ing in Myanmar will not be
easy, according to Matthew
Ting, a 200a Annapolis grad
uate of Burmese descent. As
an American, Ting says, “I
have a tendency to open my
mouth and not shut it. But
some of my cousins that were
raised in Burma are quiet.
And a lot of St. John’s educa
tion is just getting people to
talk.” 4—BY
Beth Schulman
�{From the Bell Towers}
4
Announcements
The students
Annapolis rising senior
Aaron McLean received
Honorable Mention for a
paper submitted to the Elie
Wiesel Ethics Essay contest, a
national competition spon
sored by the Elie Wiesel Foun
dation for Humanity. Mr.
McLean’s essay is entitled
“On the Combing of Hair in
Herodotus.” The essay is post
ed on the Foundation’s web
site at WWW. eliewieselfoundation. org.
The Elie Wiesel Prize in
Ethics Essay Contest is an
annual competition open to
undergraduate juniors and
seniors in the U.S. and Cana
da, designed to challenge col
lege students to analyze
urgent ethical issues con
fronting them. Students are
encouraged to write thought
provoking, personal essays.
All submissions are judged by
a committee of scholars, and a
jury that includes Nobel laure
ate Elie Wiesel decides the
winners.
Andrew Hui, of Garland,
Texas, who graduated from
Annapolis in May, received a
Jack Kent Cooke scholarship
for graduate study. The award
covers full tuition, expenses,
travel, and a stipend, and is
renewable for up to six years.
A first-generation immi
grant from Hong Kong, Mr.
Hui came with his family to
America the summer of the
Tienamen Square incident.
His parents operate a retail
aquarium in Garland, where
he has worked over school
vacations. Mr. Hui plans to
study sacred music and com
parative literature, probably
at Yale. He is interested in the
religious influences in Dante,
Milton, and Racine and will
examine how they manage to
encompass Greek mythology
in a Christian worldview.
Officer and Staff
Appointments
Under an administrative change
in the structure of the college,
Jeff Bishop (HA99), formerly
vice president for advancement
in Annapolis, has been appoint
ed vice president for college
wide advancement. He will
coordinate fundraising efforts
and external relations for St.
John’s and will travel between
the two campuses. On the west
ern campus, Michael Franco
Grecian
has been appointed vice presi
dent for advancement, Santa
Fe. Mr. Franco formerly held
advancement positions at
Rhode Island School of Design,
the University of Rochester, and
Boston College. Barbara
Goyette (Ay3) has been
appointed vice president for
advancement, Annapolis. For
the past eightyears, she has
served as director of public rela
tions and publications (aka
communications) in Annapolis.
Jo Ann Mattson (A87) has
been appointed director of
alumni activities in Annapolis.
women, an illustration by the new
Alumni Director,
Jo Ann Mattson, A87 decorated last year’s Homecoming brochure.
{The College. St. John’s College ■ Summer 2002 }
She replaces Roberta Gable
(A78), who is now director of
placement. Ms. Mattson is a
teacher, musician, and artist.
She drew the spoofs of Greek
statues that decorated last
year’s Homecoming and Cro
quet weekend brochures.
Marline Marquez Scally
has been named registrar in
Santa Fe. She formerly worked
at the Santa Fe Waldorf School,
where she played many roles:
Spanish language teacher,
events coordinator, develop
ment coordinator, faculty chair,
member of several boards,
administrative council mem
ber, admissions director, and
college member (comparable to
the SJC Instruction Commit
tee). Ms. Marquez Scally
received her BA from College
of Notre Dame (Calif.) and pur
sued an MAT at Trinity College
in Washington, D.C.
Rosemary Harty has been
appointed director of communi
cations in Annapohs. She held a
similar position at the Universi
ty of Baltimore, and has worked
on public relations and publica
tions at Catholic University
(Washington, D.C.) and the
University of Dayton. She was a
newspaper reporter for to years
prior to working in higher edu
cation. As one of her duties she
will become editor of The
College magazine, replacing
Barbara Goyette.
David Pierotti has been
appointed Entering Director of
Laboratories in Santa Fe. He
will work closely with current
director Hans von Briesen for
the coming year. Mr. Pierotti
has been working in the fields
of environmental science
research and education for the
past 35 years and has also been a
consultant with a number of
governmental and commercial
laboratories. Some of the agen
cies with which he has worked
include the EPA, NASA, the
Cahfornia Air Resources Board,
and the National Academy of
Sciences - National Research
Council.
�{From
Stafford loans______________
As reported in the last issue of
The College, now is a great time
to consolidate student loans.
For alumni with loans from sev
eral different colleges, or from
undergraduate and graduate
study, this option should be
considered, according to Bryan
Valentine, treasurer in Santa
Fe. When student loans are
consolidated, the rate is locked
in, rather than the rate being
re-set each July as it is in the
normal repayment cycle. Rates
for Stafford loans went to
4.625% on July I. Information
on student loan rates can be
found at www.staffordloan.com
(click on “consolidation”).
Changes on the board________
The St. John’s Board of Visi
tors and Governors has a new
chair, new officers, and several
new members. Ray Cave (A48)
is serving as chairman of the
Board. Cave was the editorial
director of Time, Inc., and has
been a long-time member of
the Board and supporter of the
college. He was co-chair of The
Campaign for Our Fourth Cen
tury. Greg Curtis has com
pleted his tenure as chair; he
remains an active member of
the Board. Stewart Green
field (A53) and Jonathan
Zavin (A68) are serving as vice
chairs. Jeremy Shamos,
(SFGI76) is serving as secre
tary. This marks the first time
in memory that all officers of
the Board of Visitors and Gov
ernors are alumni of the col
lege.
New members of the Board
are Jaune Evans (with the Lannan Foundation), Richard
Hoskins (an attorney with the
Chicago firm of Schiff Hardin
& Waite), Roger Kimball
(with The New Criterion),
Mark Middlebrook (A83),
and Theodore Rogers (with
American Industrial Partners).
the
Bell Towers}
Shared Identities in Physics,
Philosophy, andLiteratureyta&
published by MIT Press in Feb
ruary. An article, “Quantum
Identity,” appeared in the MayJune 2002 issue oiAmerican
Scientist. In the article, he
addresses some of the ques
tions that arise when thinking
about quantum mechanicsespecially the unusual conse
quences of “like particles being
completely indistinguishable
from one another.”
“Bacon’s Proof; The Career
and Controversies of Edward
Teller” is a review of Teller’s
memoirs written by Annapolis
tutor Adam Schulman and
published in the spring 2002
issue of “The National Inter
est.” A physicist who worked on
the Manhattan project. Teller
was one of the European theo
retical physicists who “laid the
foundations of quantum
mechanics.” Schulman con
nects the physics involved in
5
the making of the atomic bomb
with Bacon’s notion that scien
tists “would secure and aug
ment their prestige in socie
ty...by the mastery of nature
that their practicable science
would confer on other men.
Bacon predicted that the fruits
of the new science would
include not only inventions for
the relief of human misery but
also weapons of immense
destructive power.”
Annapohs tutor emeritus and
former dean CuRTis Wilson
was honored in April with a
festschrift organized by the Dibner Institute, an international
center for advanced research in
the history of science and tech
nology established in 1992 at
the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology (MIT). Held at
the Annapolis campus, the
festschrift featured talks,
demonstrations, and tributes to
Mr. Wilson, who was honored
for his role as an eminent histo
rian of science. George Smith,
a professor at Tufts, noted that
Mr. Wilson “has done far more
than anyone else to provide all
of us with a deep understand
ing of the three centuries of
orbital astronomy from Kepler
through Simon Newcomb.”
The weekend also featured a
lecture by Noel Swerdlow of the
University of Chicago on “Sci
entific Cosmologies” that
focused on our understanding
of Ptolemy. Other presenters
included Bill Donohue (A67),
of the Green Lion Press, who
spoke about the section in
Kepler’s manuscript where he
comes to the realization that
orbits are elliptical; James
Voelkel of the Dibner Institute;
Dana Densmore (A65), of the
Green Lion Press; and David
DeVorkin of the Smithsonian
Institution. A surprise finale to
the weekend was a musical
presentation by Santa Fe tutor
Peter Pesic.
The Tutors_________________
Santa Fe tutor Peter Pesic has
a new book out. Seeing Double:
Spring tradition
for
GIs: At
the
Graduate Institute dinner
in
Santa Fe,
WEEK ACTIVITIES, MaRY AnN ClEAN TOASTS HER COLLEAGUES AND TUTORS.
{The College. St. John’s College - Summer 2002 }
part of
Commencement
�6
A Congress
OF Johnnies
Homecoming in
Annapolis is setfor
October 4-6.
JoAnn Mattson {A87), the new
Director of Alumni Activities in
Annapolis, will kick off the fes
tivities this fall in a personal
way: she’s hosting a Friday
evening barhecue (with her hus
band Walter Mattson, A87) for
the fifteenth year reunion class,
the redoubtable Class of r987
Annapolis. But then she’ll hus
tle back to campus to preside
over a Homecoming filled with
events not only for reunion
classes but for all and sundry
who return to Annapolis when
they hear a party’s going on.
Eva Brann (HA89) will deliv
er the Class of ’94 Homecoming
Lecture at 8:15 Friday evening
(not that any alumni need to be
reminded of the time for lec
ture), in the newly refurbished
FSK Auditorium. After lecture
alumni will follow their lights,
either to the Question Period,
to a reception in the dining hall
with the Class of 2003, or to the
Boathouse, where a traditional
boathouse rock party will evoke
The Cave, but in a nice way.
Saturday morning brings a
cavalcade of seminars, on read
ings from Plato to Emerson,
from Dostoevsky to Wallace
Stegner. After the big Homecoming Picnic down by the
sycamore trees, all are invited to
the Annual Meeting of the
Alumni Association, where
tutors emeriti John Sarkissian
and Robert Williamson, and
longtime creator of lab equip
ment Al Toft, will be made Hon
orary Alumni. Annapolis Presi
dent Chris Nelson (SF70),
Annapolis Dean Harvey Flaumenhaft, and Alumni Associa
tion President Glenda H.
Eoyang (SF76) will give reports.
{From the Bell Towers}
and the Alumni Association
elections will be held.
After the Annual Meeting
there’s a wide variety of diver
sions around campus: a Mitchell
Gallery Tour (the exhibition
will be “The Sweet Uses of
Adversity: Images of the Bibli
cal Job”), Freshman Chorus
Revisited (led by Tom May), a
Pick-up Basketball Extravagan
za sponsored by the Classes of
1987 and 1988, the traditional
Soccer Classic (us against
them), and a happily crowded
Bookstore Autograph Party,
where ro faculty and alumni
authors will autograph their
wares, from Complexity and
Analysis (Stewart Umphrey) to
The Golden Age: A Romance of
the Far Future (John Wright,
A84), from Strategic Renais
sance: New Thinking and Inno
vative Tools to Create Great
Corporate Strategies Using
Insightsfrom History and Sci
ence (Evan Dudik, A72) to The
Shape ofan Ear (Elliott Zucker
man, HA95).
All reconvene in McDowell at
6:00 for the cocktail party,
which stretches throughout the
first two floors of the building,
with the core party in the Great
Hall, and reunion class gettogethers in classrooms.
Thence to Randall Hall for the
Homecoming Banquet, where
the reunion classes will offer
toasts, and two members of the
class of 1967, Candace Brightman and Howard Zeiderman,
will be given the Alumni Associ
ation Award of Merit.
Those with true virtue and
endurance will then repair to
McDowell, where two parties
will parse them according to
their taste: in the coffee shop,
yet another cave-like rock party,
this one with, more appropri
ately, no water view; in the
Great Hall, a waltz party spon
sored by the class of 197a, with
floral decorations (reminiscent
of Rose Cotillions), and Elhott
Zuckerman at the piano. (Yes,
there will also be swing music
for you swingers.)
Finally, the traditional Presi
dent’s Brunch will be held on
Sunday, with this innovation:
we’re moving the apostrophe
and this year calling it the Pres
idents’ Brunch, since Santa Fe
President John Balkcom
(SFGIoo) will be in town to join
Annapolis President Chris
Nelson (SF70) in hosting the
brunch at his home in Wardour.
Interspersed throughout the
SiDDiQ Khan,
weekend into all these general
events are special shindigs for
the reunion classes, all the
years ending in seven or two:
1937,1942,1947, etc. through
t997- Check the Homecoming
brochure (with McDowell on
the front cover) for details, reg
istration form, everything you
need to know about Homecom
ing and some fine photos
besides.
artist and pottery instructor on the
Santa Fe
CAMPUS, POSES WITH SOME OF HIS CREATIONS. ThE FACULTY AND StAFF
Art Show, held every spring,
features paintings, drawings,
PHOTOGRAPHY AND TEXTILES AS WELL AS POTTERY.
{The C o l l e c, e ■ St. John ’5 College . Summer 2002 }
�{From
Future
Farmer of
Annapolis
As a sophomore, Justin Naylor
(A02) worked in the college
archives processing the papers
of New Program founder
Stringfellow Barr. Among the
hundreds of Barr’s documents
that Naylor indexed were those
that explored world govern
ment, higher education, for
eign policy, and rehgion. And
gardening.
Though it’s not on the pro
gram, Johnnies might be inter
ested to know that Barr is the
author of The Kitchen Garden
Book, written in 1956 when
Barr was teaching at the Uni
versity of Virginia. The book,
subtitled “Vegetables from
Seed to Table,” is part essay,
part instruction manual, and
part cookbook. It covers soil
preparation and garden plan
ning in addition to detailed
sections devoted to 3a different
vegetables, from the humble
turnip to the popular tomato.
“Barr was a lifelong dedicated
gardener,” says Naylor. “His
brother James was a farmer. I
sense Barr was interested in
farming in the Jeffersonian tra
dition-small scale agriculture,
the culture around agriculture,
the kind of citizen it pro
duced.”
Around the time that Naylor
was reading Barr’s book, Masao
Imamura’s (AGI99) wife, Jack
ie, recommended that Naylor
read Ehot Coleman’s The New
Organic Grower and several
other books that fed his interest
in agriculture and environmen
tal sustainability. Interest led to
endeavor. In r999, Naylor took
a year off from St. John’s to
serve a lo-month apprentice
ship on a small-scale, six-acre
organic farm that raised mixed
vegetables in Delaware.
When he returned to the col
lege, he started a gardening
the
Bell Towers}
club. Along with about ten
other Johnnies (including
Librarian Lisa Richmond), he
built seven 25-foot beds and
three ro-foot beds on back cam
pus between the tennis courts
and King George Street. Work
ing mainly on Saturday and
Sunday mornings, the club
members grow spinach, peas,
tomatoes, peppers, melons,
cucumbers, lettuce, marigolds,
cosmos, and sunflowers. At any
given time, between 5 and 10
students are actively involved
in the work-a respectable
showing on a campus of 450.
Naylor likens the appeal of
gardening to that of the gym or
the woodshop: When you spend
so much time thinking, you
need to find an outlet for doing.
“The gardening club meets a
lot of needs,” says Naylor.
“Club members are interested
in working with plants, work
ing outside, growing food, and
working with their hands.”
This spring the gardening
club teamed up with the envi
ronmental club to sponsor a
talk by Brian Halweil, a
research associate at the World
watch Institute (a policy
research organization that
focuses on emerging global
problems and the hnks between
the world economy and its envi
ronmental support systems).
“Halweil focussed his talk
around the two major claims of
biotech companies: that
biotech crops are necessary to
make agriculture sustainable
and that they are necessary for
feeding the world’s growing
population. Both of these
claims are highly emotionally
charged and are difficult to be
against,” explains Naylor.
“Brian’s approach was to look
at what has actually been pro
duced by these biotech compa
nies and to show that there is a
disconnect between their claims
and actual practices. For exam
ple, the few biotech crops
released so far have, if anything,
increased chemical usage and
are thus less sustainable.
{The College.
Sr.
Agricultural
7
sustainability interests
Justin Naylor,
shown
HERE WITH THE COLLEGE GARDEN HERBS.
“Halweil also made the case
for an ecologically-based agri
culture, and used as a case study
a particularly noxious weed in
Africa that has not been dealt
with adequately using conven
tional chemical means. He
pointed out, however, that this
weed is only a problem in
depleted, over-farmed soils. In
soils that have been properly
cared for, this super-weed is
simply not a problem.”
As Naylor learns about mod
ern approaches to agricultural
sustainability, he says that in
some ways, not much has
changed since the publication
of Barr’s book. “He was a
thoughtful advocate of organic
agriculture when it was consid
ered a world of hippies and
freaks,” Naylor says, reading a
relevant passage:
“There is a ferocious war of
words on between organic
farmers and those who depend
on chemicals. The case for
organic gardening has made
great progress; the proof is
that more and more of its
opponents have begun to argue
that both methods are needed.
The case would have pro
gressed even faster if cranks
had not overstated it.”
John ’5 College • Summer 2002 }
Naylor praises The Kitchen
Garden Book and recommends
it to anyone working the earth.
“Even if it weren’t by Barr,” he
says, “it would still be a worthy
book on my shelf.”
Newly graduated, Naylor
continues to pursue his inter
est in agriculture. With the
help of a USDA loan, he is rent
ing four acres on a property
adjacent to the farm he worked
on last summer. His first crops
should be out next spring.
BY SUS3AN
Borden
(A87)
The Garden
Bookshelf
Naylor recommends these books
to all Johnnies with an interest
in gardens:
The New Organic Grower
by Eliot Coleman
Four Season Harvest
by Eliot Coleman
7'he Kitchen Garden Book
by Stringfellow Barr
Heirloom Vegetable Gardening
by William Woys Weaver
Botanyfor Gardeners
by Brian Capon
�{From the Bell Towers}
8
Philanthropia Brings
Reality to Advancement
How many Johnnies does it take to raise
$12, ooo? Fifteen—if they Je juniors
volunteering their services to help out
Reality Weekend.
In the Philanthropia spirit of
alumni working on alumni
fundraising, the Annapolis
Reality archon, Justin Jones
(A03) put together a team of
pre-alumni (St. John’s juniors)
to conduct an advancement
office phonathon. In
exchange for their help,
advancement donated $500
to Reality.
The April 23 phonathon
proved a resounding success,
with 457 calls made in 3 hours
raising $12,691 dollars (so farmore checks continue to come
in). Maggie Griffin, Director of
the Annual Fund in Annapolis,
says that the most impressive
statistic for the phonathon was
the number of gifts made in the
weeks following the phonathon
when messages the students
left on answering machines
were returned by enthusiastic
alumni. Of 331 messages left.
56 have already sent checks.
“That number is absolutely
astounding! ” says Griffin.
“The students delivered the St.
John’s message so effectivelythe alumni really responded to
them.”
By the end of the night, stu
dents were asking about vol
unteering for the next
phonathon and seeking stu
dent aide positions in the
advancement office. “And
they were good,” says
Advancement Officer Mary
Simmons. “There were quite a
few we would have loved to
hire on the spot.”
Another positive effect of
the phonathon will be felt this
coming year as the junior class
begins to form the senior class
gift committee. Perhaps a
repeat of Santa Fe’s senior
class triumph (see page 9) is
in the making.
As PART OF PhILANTHOPIA’s EFFORT TO INSTILL AWARENESS OF ALUMNI
FUNDRAISING IN THE STUDENTS AT SaNTA Fe (wHO ARE, AFTER ALL,
THE ALUMNI OF THE FUTURE) , THE GROUP BROUGHT 6OO KrISPY KrEME
DOUGHNUTS TO CAMPUS THE MORNING BEFORE REALITY. STUDENTS
BLEARY-EYED AFTER A NIGHT OF FINISHING UP PAPERS AND FACULTY
WHO ARRIVED EARLY FOR THEIR CLASSES AGREED—DOUGHNUTS AND
COFFEE MAKE FOR A HAPPY BEGINNING TO ANY DAY, PARTICULARLY THE
FIRST DAY OF “REALITY.”
Letters
Winter Warfare_____________
On page 16 of the Winter/Spring
2002 issue of The College, there
is a winter scene of Annapohs. In
that photo of “Winter Warfare,”
I am off stage left with my friend
Matt. Matt had the good arm.
The targets are Liz Stuck and
Wendy LeWin, both freshmen in
1977-1978, which should date the
picture more accurately. Both
were from Minnesota, I think,
two of three Minnesota girls
(Marian Sharpe, from Pine Gity,
being #3) that started that year,
and therefore impervious to win
ter.
- David Nau, A8i
Liberty Bell________________
Students
delivering the message about the college’s needs were
HEARD LOUD AND CLEAR BY ALUMNI.
Kudos to St. John’s for refurbish
ing the Liberty Bell rephca (Win
{The College - St. John’s College ■ Summer 2002 }
ter/ Spring issue). This symbol of
our democracy has an even
greater significance since 9/11.
As one of the school children who
contributed pennies for the yoke
of the beU 50 years ago, I have
always had a particular fondness
for the beU. I am pleased and
proud of the stewardship the col
lege has provided this great
emblem of our freedom.
-Ron McGuirk , A6o
More Calendar Ids
_______
In the Philanthropia Calendar
for 2002,1 can identify the gui
tar players pictured for Octo
ber. Linda Stromberg was at
SJC (Santa Fe) from 1973 to
1975. Later she attended Anti
och College and earned a
degree in biology, I think. With
her might be Jim Shea (based
on the hair), who began with
the same class.
-Sheri Anderson, SF78
�{From the Bell Towers}
The One
Hundred
Percent
Solution
February, Paula Maynes
{SF77), a member of Pbilanthropia (the alumni group that
encourages financial support
for the college), spoke to the
seniors about life after St.
John’s. The class then dis
cussed what changes they
would like to make at the college-from faculty compensa
tion to scholarship support-if
money were no object. By the
end of the event, they zeroed
in on the film collection as
their gift.
On the day of Commence
ment, the seniors were ready to
celebrate their success. Com
mittee members Emma Wells
and Sara Abercrombie stepped
forward to present Balkcom
with the certificate commemo
rating the gift, as well as their
class’s new record for partici
pation. “There’s one thing
they can be certain of,” says
Santa Fe Annual Fund Director
Ginger Roherty. “It’s a record
that can be equaled, but it will
never be broken.”
The Santa Fe class of
2002 has set a new
standardfor giving.
Who J next to meet
the challenge?
On the wall of President John
Balkcom’s Santa Fe office
hangs a certificate he
received at Commencement:
“The Senior Class Gift: on
behalf of eighty-seven gradu
ating seniors, each of whom
made a contribution,” it
reads. The certificate com
memorates not just the gift,
but the story behind the gift.
The class is the first to
achieve 100% participation
in a St. John’s fundraising
effort. Each of the graduates
contributed to the nearly
$3000 collected so far for the
gift-a classic film collection
for the Meem Library.
Work on the project began
early in the year when seven
seniors- Sara Abercrombie,
Erik Barber, Jessica Godden,
Maria Goena, Katherine
Greco, Matt Reiter, and Emma
Wells-stepped forward to form
the Senior Class Gift Commit
tee. The kickoff event was a
party at the Cowgirl Hall of
Fame, a local hang-out, where
committee members explained
the annual fund. In December,
before the winter ball, seniors
were invited to a reception at
the president’s house, where
the committee provided
eggnog and appetizers and
repeated the message of the
role of alumni in the financial
workings of the college.
At a Valentine’s Day party in
Exciting times
in the mailroom:
Renzo BrundelRe, Michael Sullivan, and Michael Tereby held
COVETED STUDENT AIDE POSITIONS IN THE MAILROOM LAST YEAR AS PART OF THEIR FINANCIAL AlD PACKAGE.
Financial Aid Factoids
• Financial aid at St. John’s is
admissions bhnd and need
based. Admissions blind
means that students are
admitted to the college
regardless of whether they
apply for financial aid or
not-their family’s financial
status is not a factor in their
admission. Need-based
means that the college con
siders only the family’s and
student’s income in granti
ng aid and does not offer
aid to various categories of
students (trombone-playing
triathletes, perhaps?) to fill
the class with “desirable”
students.
• St. John’s attempts to
offer an aid package that
meets the demonstrated
needs of students. But,
since the college budget is
finite, not every student
can receive 100% of the
funds they need. Applying
early in the cycle helps
assure that students
receive an optimal pack
age. Students are some
times placed on a waiting
list if the money available
for student aid has already
been allocated.
{The College- St. John’s College ■ Summer 2002 }
• Students receive a package
with some or all of the
following components:
St. John’s College grant.
Federal work-study posi
tion (student aide job), and
loan. Many students seek
scholarships and fellow
ships independently.
• In 2001-2003, the average
aid package was $20,762.
(Tuition for the year was
about $25,000.)
• 50 % of students on finan
cial aid last year had an
annual family income of
less than $60,000.
• About 50% of students on
both campuses received
financial aid from the
college last year.
�{Johnnies
on
Justice}
CRIME
and
PUNISHMENT
Five alumni who work in thefield tell the real story behind the drama ofcriminaljustice.
Wi Sus3AN Borden, A87
A woman lies in waitfor her husband who
has just returnedfrom a long trip; she
kills him as he relaxes in the tub. A thief
is sentenced to be chained to a mountain;
each day an eagle devours his newly
regenerated liver.
rom the bloodbath of Clytemnestra to
Prometheus bound, crime and punishment
have long proved inspirational for the
imagination of writers. This ancient well
spring continues to inspire the artists of
our modern world. Literature on crime and
punishment is a mainstay of bestseller lists.
Television-“Homicide,” “Law and Order,”
“The People’s Court”-feeds our hunger
for the subject. Movies-Ziopc, Twelve Angry Afczz-sometimes
offer a more thoughtful examination.
A criminal act is the essence of drama: man opposes man in con
flict’s barest form. The killer stalks his prey. The thief plots
against the land owner. Even after the crime is committed, oppo
sition is at the heart of the system; The defense lawyer fights the
prosecuting attorney. The witness defies the judge. The guard
beats the prisoner.
These are the antitheses through which we’ve learned to view
crime and punishment. But are they valid?
St. John’s alumni who work in the field of criminal justice sug
gest they are not. Far removed from the seminar table and discus
sions of justice, motive, and retribution, alumni who work with
criminals confront these issues directly. As the dramatic interplay
of crime and punishment come together in the province ofjustice,
it is justice’s role to resolve, rather than heighten that drama. Jus
tice is society’s mechanism for placing an irrational act into a
rational context. Once a crime is assigned its proper weight, the
scales of justice return to balance and society is able to function.
Through punishment, the criminal justice system imposes a
rationality on the irrational world of crime. This, for the most
part, is too thoughtful a process to allow for much drama.
The Criminal Mind
A desperate young man plans the perfect
crime—the murder of a despicable pawn
broker, an old woman no one loves and no
one will mourn. Is it notjust, he reasons,
for a man ofgenius to commit such a
crime, to transgress moral law—if it will
ultimately benefit humanity?
—publisher’s copy {Bantam Classics)
Punishment
for Dostoevsky’s Crime and
The idea of the criminal mind-from Smerdyakov to Hannibal
Lechter-both fascinates and repels. What must it be like, we thrill
to imagine, to loose ourselves from the bonds of morals, to think
the unthinkable, to plan the forbidden, to perform the act that
will forever set us apart from our fellow man?
{The College- St. John’s College • Summer 2002 }
�{The College- St. John’s College • Summer 200s )
�T2,
{Johnnies on Justice}
'Td hate to live in a country in which 50 % ofthe
people who are arrested are innocent. ”
-Elizabeth Unger Carlyle(A73)
Criminal
Elizabeth Unger Carlyle (A73), a criminal defense lawyer who
lives in Lee’s Summit, Missouri, has regular and close associa
tion with the criminal mind. She is neither repelled by her clients
nor fascinated by their misdeeds. “I think there’s a group of peo
ple, a sad group, who really perceive themselves as powerless and
at the mercy of circumstances,” she explains. “They get into bad
situations by not thinking more than one step ahead and they end
In “You Can’t Get Away with Murder,” Bogie’s
defense lawyer
“I spend a lot of time reminding people that the people who
get into trouble are just like the people who don’t,” says Car
lyle. “In many ways it’s ‘there but for the grace of God go I.’ If
you took my current clientele and dressed them in suits instead
of prison clothes and took them to some casual restaurant
and interspersed them among the patrons, you couldn’t pick
them out. When people say ‘how can you deal with people who
character seems irredeemable: he’s a thief, douele-crosser, murderer, and blackmailer.
up in the middle of the burglary or the middle of the murder and
can’t tell you how they got there. A lot of people come to me say
ing, ‘I don’t know how this happened. Trouble always finds me.’
They don’t know how not to be found by trouble.”
David Johnson (A68), a probation officer for 30 years who
now teaches in the criminal justice department at the Universi
ty of Baltimore, says that addiction is often a factor: “Some
criminals are what we call sociopaths, but by and large I’ve
worked with people who have exercised bad judgment. A lot
of people who commit crimes have problems with substance
abuse or gambling. That causes them to have problems with the
law because first, their judgment is really poor and second,
they have a need for money. They resort to crime-to stealing or
dealing drugs.”
are guilty?’ I say, ‘don’t you ever make a mistake?’ I’ve got a
client now who managed to get himself ten years for selling
six grams of marijuana. That’s not a bigger mistake than most
people make.”
Order in the Court
Several young girls, caught in a minor
transgression, are unjustly accused of a
capital crime. In a trial poisoned by petty
suspicions, financial disputes, supersti
tion, and lovers' revenge, accusations fly
{The College- St. John’s College ■ Summer 2002 }
�{Johnnies on Justice}
13
and soon eighteen
citizens are brought—
unjustly—before the
court. Eleven of them
are put to death.
When exculpatory
evidence is presented
to the judges they
reject it, fearing it
willplace their earli
er verdicts in doubt.
In the end, seven
more innocentpeople
go to the gallows.
—PLOT SUMMARY, ARTHUR MilLEr’S
THE
Crucible
The scenes are replayed
every week on TV: Corrupt
police arrest the wrong man.
The prosecutor pulls out all the
stops in the relentless pursuit
of a guilty verdict. The jury fol
lows the lead of a misguided
foreman as the judge wearily
shakes her head.
However common these
scenes of injustice are in fiction
and drama, front-line profes
sionals say they are rare in real
life. From arrest through sen
tencing, those involved in the
U.S criminal justice system say
that, despite its flaws, it’s a sys
tem that works.
At first it seems strange when
Elizabeth Carlyle praises the
system hy saying that most of
the clients she defends are
guilty. But then she explains
why this is a good thing: “I’d
hate to live in a country in
which 50% of the people who
are arrested are innocent.” Still,
despite the guilt of most of her
clients, the system is set up to
work in their favor.
Suave detective Nick Charles, played by William Powell,
FOR BAD GUYS IN “AfTER THE ThIN MaN.”
{The College • St. John’s College • Summer 2002 }
looks
“Somebody said it’s better
for a hundred guilty people to
go free than for one innocent
person to be convicted,” says
Carlyle. “That’s the way the
system ought to be. But I don’t
think that guilty people often
sneak through. More than 90%
plead guilty. For those who go
to trial, there is a question of
their guilt. It’s not usually a
question that they’ll get off, but
that they’ll get off with less
than five years.”
Maureen Barden (A70), an
assistant U.S. attorney in
Philadelphia who works on gun
possession cases, says she’s
encouraged by what she sees in
court: “The jury system works.
In my experience of trying
cases, only a very small per
centage of the time do I think
jurors reach the wrong result.
They’re careful, thorough, they
think hard. It’s heartening to
be a part of that,”
Once the verdict is deter
mined, the judge steps in for
sentencing. Johnson, the crimi
nal justice professor, outlines
the aims of that process:
“There are four classic goals of
the corrections system: inca
pacitation, retribution, deter
rence, and rehabilitation. If
possible, the sentence meets all
four goals in the appropriate
measures for the particular
crime and individual. Incapaci
tation gets considered first.
Then, retribution: how much
punishment
the
person
deserves in addition to that.
Next is deterrence, and finally
rehabilitation.”
County Court Judge Pattie
Swift (SF82), who works in
rural Costilla County, Col
orado, finds that the goals fall
in a different order in her court.
She often relies on the deter
rence effect of prison. “There
are people who need the shock
of jail for a short period of time.
�{Johnnies on Justice}
14
''Judgment has two cups, a cup ofJustice and a cup ofmercy.
-David Johnson, A68, probation
I send them in for a week. Our local county jail is benign, but
still, they’re locked up and it’s frightening. This is useful for
some people who have committed DWIs before and didn’t take
it seriously.”
Swift turns to long-term incapacitation only as a last resort.
Her position limits her to passing a two-year sentence. “For
people with whom we’ve tried everything, the last ditch thing is
Peter Falk
is hitman
Abe “Kid Twist” Reles
in the
i960
victim and their families, and gathering information about the
accused’s prior record and social history to make an evaluation
and recommendation.
When he worked in probation, Johnson appreciated this
opportunity to influence the judge’s decision. “I always
remembered that judgment has two cups: a cup of justice and a
cup of mercy. How much of each does the defendant get?”
gangland flick
long-term jail to get them out of society. If they are unable to
change, if they have four DWIs, it’s the only thing you can do to
protect the public.”
Johnson discusses the problem of disparity in sentencing:
“In sentencing there are no rules to speak of and the judge has
virtually complete discretion. Somebody who’s convicted of
bank robbery in Brooklyn might get probation; for the same
crime in Texas he might get ao years. It’s an oddity because
everything is rule-driven up to the point of conviction. Once we
go to sentencing in criminal matters, the judge is supposed to
exercise the wisdom of Solomon.”
In today’s world, fortunately, Solomon has a consultant.
The probation officer conducts a presentence investigation for
the judge, reviewing the crime, interviewing the defendant and
chief
“Murder, Inc.”
Behind Bars
A man is sentenced to two years on a
southern chain gangfor a minor offense.
His rebellious manner is met with psycho
logical torment andphysical brutality.
The guards seem to enjoy their project of
breaking his spirit. In the end, they take
his life.
—PLOT SUMMARY OF THE 1967 MOVIE, CoOL HaND LuKE
{The College- St. John’s College • Summer 2002 }
�{JohnniesonJustice}
15
This is one area where, unfortunately, the movies have it
contraction of prisoner rights. With state budgets in the condi
right. Prison is often a hrutal place and prisoner rights are fre
tion they’re in, programs for offenders will be on hold or
quently disregarded. Even where efforts are made to protect
decreased.”
the inmates hoth physically and legally, the difficulties of man
Carlyle, the criminal defense attorney, shares Booker’s pes
aging a captive population have yet to he satisfactorily
simism and is concerned about how current policy will play out
addressed.
when prisoners return to society: “In my 25 years of practice,
Margaret Booker (SFGI94) directed a state prison library for
there’s been pretty much a complete turn from ‘incarceratefour years. She says that the system she worked in was set up to
punish-rehabilitate’ to ‘let’s show them how mad we are
protect the prisoners and their rights, hut it often didn’t work
and treat them like we’re mad for 20 years and then have them
as planned.
live next door to us.’ ”
“During my training I was told not to
And Justice For All
pay attention to the justice or injustice of
the offender’s act or sentence. Missouri
Criminals go free, justice
Cast of Characters
tells the same thing to all new offenders as
they enter reception and diagnostics:
proves to be not-so blind,
Maureen Barden (A70)
don’t talk about your crime to your peers;
and lawyers andjudges
the staff doesn’t need to know either. But
Assistant U.S. Attorney for the U.S.
that rarely works. Very few can keep their
make deals... exceptfor one
Department of Justice in Philadel
lives private to a degree that would keep
phia. Before becoming a lawyer she
young idealistic lawyer who
them safe or lessen the risks they face in
I worked on the investigation of the
prison.”
bucks the system while rep
Attica prison uprising and the Nison
In her own sphere of influence, Booker
I impeachment.
resenting a ruthless judge
saw real-life practice reveal the faulty pre
sumptions of a legal theory intended to
Maruaket Booker (SGI94)
accused of a brutal rape.
safeguard the inmates’ rights. “While
most offenders use the library for educa
—CAPSULE REVIEW OF THE I979 MOVIE, AnD JUSTICE
Library services coordinator for the
FOR All, from MoviesUnlimited.com
tion, entertainment, and enlightenment,
Missouri Department of Corrections
every offender in Missouri has access to
in Jefferson City from 1998 to 2001.
Unlike the corrupt cop, the cynical
legal materials,” she says. “This is the
She is now manager of the Kansas
lawyers, and the jaded judges that
state’s way of providing ‘access to courts,’
City, Missouri, Public Library, West
are so popular in today’s crime stories,
the requirement that offenders be able to
port Branch.
Johnnies in justice veer to the idealistic.
represent themselves in their appeals. In
When Johnson speaks of his career as a
Elizabeth Unger Carlyle (A73)
other states, access to courts is interpreted
probation officer, he says that the friend
differently,” Booker explains. “Some have
ships he’s maintained with people he’s
Criminal defense lawyer. She handles
attorneys who travel the system or public
supervised over the years are priceless
everything from speeding tickets to
librarians who do research for the inmates.
benefits.
murder trials, doing most of her work
Arizona just sold off a huge amount of legal
Swift treasures the times when defen
< with appeals and post-conviction
material and now provides paralegals who
dants who have complained bitterly about
remedies. She is married to the Rev.
travel a circuit across the state to assist
a sentence of alcohol treatment come
James Carlyle (A72).
offenders.”
back for review and say “thank you, it
Booker has a dim view of Missouri’s
David Johnson (A68)
really opened my eyes to see what was
approach. “I don’t think any sort of justice
wrong.”
is given through the collection of materi
Worked in criminal justice for over 30
Barden, who’s worked as a federal pros
als to those who might be innocent or have
years. Retired as chief of federal pro
ecutor on large scale fraud cases, says her
been tried inappropriately or irresponsi
bation for the state of Maryland, he
work gives her the opportunity to serve
bly. The information and organization is
teaches criminal justice at the Univer
justice. “In many cases, you’re vindicat
too complex, as is the court system, for
sity of Baltimore. He is married to
ing the rights of individuals who’ve been
the offender population on the whole to
Sally Johnson (A65).
defrauded. It’s very good when you can
navigate.”
get justice for somebody who has been
Pattie Swiff (SF82)
Booker is pessimistic about the state’s
stolen from or in another way injured. It’s
inclination to improve the system, given
a chance to do the right thing,” she says.
County court judge in Costilla County,
today’s political and economic climate.
“That’s the luxury of being on this side of
Colorado, and municipal judge for the
“When I started, prisoners were called
the courtroom: the interest of the govern
town of San Luis.
prisoners or inmates. Now they’re called
ment is to do justice. That’s not always
offenders. In the ’80s and ’90s we saw a
simple, but it is the goal.”
{The College -St John’s College • Summer 2002 }
�{Commencement}
COMMENCEMENT
2002
(Santa Fe)
Barbara Goyette, A73 (Annapolis)
BY Marissa Morrison, SFGIoa
AND
he graduating seniors-ioa in Annapolis
and 88 in Santa Fe-chose as their com
mencement speakers a military historian
and a novelist who has produced a series
of literary experiments. Rather than pres
ent opposing viewpoints on life or on the
St. John’s experience, the two gave sur
prisingly close send-offs to the graduates.
Their messages contrasted the education
a St. John’s graduate receives with the vapidness of many aspects
of modern culture, and both saw St. John’s as supplying the back
ground necessary for a beginning to a life devoted to questioning
and thinking.
The Importance of “The Human Thing” - Annapolis
At the 210th commencement in Annapolis, 102 undergraduates
and 36 Graduate Institute students
received their degrees. The day was
sunny and bright, the grass was
green, the air was still and cool as
the parents, family members, and
friends gathered on the front lawn.
Faculty and students processed
from the Great Hall to the click and
whir of cameras and the ceremonial
strains of the Carrollton Brass.
President Christopher Nelson
and Dean Harvey Flaumenhaft
announced the various prizes and
awards, including that for best sen
ior essay, which went to Katherine
Gehlberg for her essay “A Nature
Within and Without; An Inquiry
into the Evolution of the Moral
Sense.”
Seniors had chosen Victor Davis
Hanson, who teaches classics at the
University of California at Fresno
and has published books and
columns on military history, as the
commencement speaker.
Mr. Hanson stressed universal
human truths that are covered in the Program as those that the
graduates will draw upon wherever their lives carry them in the
future. “Most of you will ...enter the professions,” he said.
“Many-I have no doubt of it-shall become rich and powerful. But
I am also equally confident that such success will accrue more
because you shall be deft and experienced about what Thucydides
called ‘the human thing,’ and resigned about the way humans
think and act, rather than because you were simply adept at a par
ticular skill.”
In a perhaps unintended allusion to the famous (among John
nies) admissions proclamation “The following teachers will
return to St. John’s next year; Plato, Sophocles, Kant, Tolstoy,
etc.,” Mr. Hanson said that St. John’s has given the graduates “a
reservoir of learning from great men and women. These are your
intellectual mentors, your friends for life. Each hour, each day
from now to the end they will be there with you-to remind you,
chastise you, and enlighten that what you experience is neither
novel nor unique.”
And considering the great books
authors as mentors, and their
words as universal human truths,
Mr. Hanson suggested, is helpful in
evaluating current situations that
citizens need to understand.
“When others suggest that educat
ed citizens should not profess patri
otism or think of their culture as
unique and worth defending, you
will remind them of Aeschylus at
Marathon and Socrates at Delium.
And when you despair that men
with money, degrees, status, and
fame can be petty rather than
noble, and are as likely as the illit
erate and impoverished to steal and
defame, Juvenal, Dante, and Swift
will laugh along with you.” A St.
John’s education, he suggested,
makes those who have undergone it
“empirical and inductive, open to
truth when it comes from the
uncouth and enemies-and resist
ant to lies when they come from the
{The College- St. John’s College • Summer 2002 }
�{Commencement }
''Open to truth...resistant to lies.
Victor Davis Hanson
Eva Brann
leads the procession to front campus in
Annapolis (left),
while in
Santa Fe, Genevieve Giddings
LIGHTS THE PlACITA WITH HER SMILE (ABOVE).
{The College- St. John’s College ■ Summer 2002 }
17
�i8
{Commencement}
sweet and friends. You will not just pon
der and equivocate, but decide, judge,
and act.”
Mr. Hanson used an extended Homer
ic image to discuss what the future might
hold for the graduates, and what dangers.
He characterized their journey as like
that of Odysseus and referred to “suitors
feasting away at our society’s once ample
social capital and spiritual reserves” as
those the graduates would have to con
front. He warned against the Charybdis
of the Right, which he said “assures that
the university and education itself are
simply to be utilitarian and commercial
certifications of dexterity with spread
sheets, glibness with the law, or mere
master of regulations, tables, charts, and
graphs.” And he identified the Scylla of
the Left as “the idea, now almost univer
sal, that the purpose of education is ther
apeutic, to change what words mean, to deny how people act, to
create absolute equality of results, rather than of opportunity in
the here and now-or else!”
Acknowledging the power of education, Mr. Hanson urged the
audience to use wisdom wisely. He likened knowledge’s strength
to that of Tolkein’s One Ring, whose great power was so alluring
that it ruined lives and threatened races. “Education used foully
for a good cause, is nevertheless foul, and thus the cause not so
good after all. Remember instead the first and oldest command
ments of the humble Greeks-know yourself/nothing too much/
grow old learning.” He suggested that some time spent in smaU
pursuits-away from the bigness of our present age’s government,
corporations, and overriding materialism-is valuable. “Seek out,
or perhaps at least protect and enhance-if only for a year or two of
your odyssey-those sand bars and reefs that are washed over but
not quite, not quite yet
submerged-the love of
Greek and Latin, the
knowledge of the mason
and woodworker, the fami
ly nursery and small farm,
the horseman and the
shoemaker, the town of
2,000, and the art and
music of rural Ameri
ca...Like your Great
Books, these unobtrusive
people, things, and memories-forgotten by WalMart and unknown at
Blockbuster-also possess
wisdom-learning that we
need in our present hour
of peril against enemies
cruel and medieval.”
Mr. Hanson closed with a promise. As a
farmer, student of Latin and Greek, resi
dent of a rural community, writer, and
“as one who at times has failed at all that
and so much more stiU”-he promised to
join the graduates to “keep alive the
ancient education that we still know to be
good and necessary-and can alone keep
the melodious, but deadly. Sirens at bay.”
Points of Departure, Not the Journey’s
End - Santa Fe______________________
By graduation day in Santa Fe on May i8,
the fear and sadness that characterized
the early part of the academic year after
September ii had given way to a feeling of
jubilation. The brilliant sun shining
above the Meem Library Placita and a
lively commencement speech by John
Barth added to the bright spirit of the day.
Barth is a Johns Hopkins University professor emeritus and a nov
elist who delights in literary experimentalism while engaging read
ers with the power of his storytelling abilities.
In a speech titled “The Tragic View of Liberal Education,” Mr.
Barth praised the St. John’s program for permitting discourse
within a shared frame of reference richer and more stable than pop
ular culture-which is perhaps all the students at some departmen
talized institutions have in common. He also presented the down
side to an education based on a hmited selection of Great Books.
While attending Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Mr. Barth
often heard debates over the liberal arts program at nearby St.
John’s College in Annapolis. According to one half-serious opin
ion, “the problem with the Annapolis curriculum was that it left
out not only all the bad books-which, like bad art, may be indis
pensable to defining and
appreciating the good
hut also aU the arguably
great books that happen
to disagree with the ones
in the canon.” He noted
that no four-year under
graduate survey could
include all the books one
ought to read.
To
illustrate how
impossible it is for a stu
dent to actually read
everything, Mr. Barth
referred to one of his fel
low undergraduates who
was said to have done just
that. “To this day,” Mr.
Barth joked, “he is scarce
ly able to complete a sen
{The College- St. John’s College ■ Summer 2002 }
�{Commencement}
tence, much less publish a coherent essay,
because every word he utters sets off so
many synaptic hot-links in his mind that
he has difficulty getting from subject to
verb to object, astray in the hypertextuality of his splendid erudition.”
The tragedy of a liberal education,
according to Mr. Barth, lies in the real
ization that one cannot read-or learneverything. “Since time, attention, ener
gy, and opportunity are all finite, we
must radically exclude and delimit if we
are to learn anything at all well; yet in so
doing we may very possibly leave out
things that, had we discovered them or
they us, might have been keys to the
treasure that we were scarcely aware we
were seeking,” he said.
Mr. Barth lamented that only the books
he has actually read can make an impres Barth the novelist
sion on him. As a fiction writer, he wishes
that he could read every other written work. Without reading every
description of the dawn and the sea that has ever been recorded on
paper, how can he know whether his own descriptions are unique
and valuable? However, he comforts himself with the fact that the
number of possible word combinations, like the number of stars in
the galaxy, is “finite but astronomically large.”
Mr. Barth noted that the St. John’s program list is a good start
ing point for one’s education. The real reason for celebrating com
mencement is not the completion of an education, but rather the
start of a lifetime of exploring new ideas.
Santa Fe president John Balkcom gave an overview of the chal
lenges this academic year had brought, with September ii having
impacted our lives and the nature of our college community. Citing
Virginia Woolf, who wrote, “One of the signs of passing youth is
the birth of a sense of fellowship with other human beings as we
take our place among
them,” Mr. Balkcom noted
that what the faculty and
staff observed this year
was
the
emergence
of a greater sense of com
munity among all of our
learners. “We come to
gether to celebrate these
graduates for the learning
they have shared and the
community they have cre
ated, for their taking a
place now among the
wider community of this
human race.”
He made lighthearted
references to many sen
iors and Graduate Insti
{The College.
19
tute students he had encountered during
the year, and talked about community
events such as the holiday concert, the
presentation of Senior Essays in Febru
ary, and Reality Weekend-when hun
dreds of paper flowers decorated trees
and bushes throughout campus.
The commencement address of Santa
Fe Dean David Levine reminded stu
dents that hberal education is a great
gift. The college gives this gift, he said,
in the hope that its graduates will devel
op proportionally in relation to challeng
ing thinkers; experience inspiration in
their own capacities for original thought;
develop new capacities to ascend to
undiscovered places; become strength
ened in facing the toughest human ques
tions; grow their own sense of responsi
bility; become more self-resourceful; and
achieve a heightened fullness of inde
pendence. “Make us proud,” Mr. Levine urged the graduates.
“Honor this education with lives of distinction.”
The class of aooa included 88 candidates for the Bachelor of Arts
degree and 25 candidates for the Master of Arts in Liberal Arts
degree. The graduates hailed from 33 U.S. states, as well as from
Israel and Canada.
For the first time in the history of the college, the Senior Class
Gift Committee achieved 100% participation from all members of
the Class of 2002. Neither campus had ever accomplished this feat.
Ms. Abercrombie and Ms. Emma Wells presented the senior gift to
the president, accompanied by a swell of applause from the audi
ence, including loud accolades from class members. The class gift
will purchase The Classics Film Collection for Meem Library.
Graduates honored with awards and prizes included Benjamin
Lorch, who received the Medal for Academic Excellence. The
medal is offered by the
Board of Visitors and Gov
ernors and was presented
by board member Dick
Morris. Anna Canning
and
Marie-Monique
Wentzell shared the
Richard D. Weigle Prize
for the best senior essay.
Among the Graduate
Institute graduates, Court
ney Manson was acknowl
edged for her excellent
essay.
St. John’s College . Summer 200Z }
Thefull text ofboth comencement addresses is on
the web: www.sjca.edufor
Annapolis and www.sjcsf.edu
for Santa Fe.
�ao
{Campus Life}
REMEMBRANCES
OF PRANKS PAST
BY Sus3AN
Borden
(A87)
t’s a warm night in early spring.
Students sit in seminar reading
Euripides, Descartes, and Adam
Smith. They work their way
through the text and follow the
conversation closely, hut spirits
are running a little high. They’ve
heard the rumors, they’ve seen
the signs. Their minds occasion
ally drift. Is tonight the night?
As the first hour comes to a close, attention
is drawn outside the classroom. A door slams.
laughter bounces down the hall. A few minutes
later a team of seniors hursts through the door. Books slam shut,
tutors are escorted from the room. Senior prank has begun.
It wasn’t always like this. Senior prank started as a daytime
event; the prank was the seniors’ way of shutting down the col
lege. Over the years it has blossomed into a a4-hour ritual, begin
ning with the nighttime break-in, following with a skit and dance
party, and continuing the next day with games and a campus-wide
picnic for students, faculty, and staff.
For the original prank, pulled in 1964 and talked about to this
day, seniors removed all the chairs from the classrooms and tutor
offices and stored them in the crawl space in the basement of Mel
lon. Tutor Samuel Kutler (A54) remembers it well: “I walked to my
classroom in McDowell with a prospective freshman and her moth
er, who were scheduled to sit in on our mathematics tutorial. As we
entered the room, I told them to please be seated, but when I looked
up the students were sitting on the table. All chairs had been
removed from the entire building. I told the students that we were
behind and I would hold class anyway. Then President Weigle
appeared. He was not amused, and he announced that there would
be no classes until the chairs were returned. I shrugged my shoul
ders, turned to the mother and the prospective student, said that
there were some good liberal arts schools in Ohio, and went home.”
That simple prank unleashed a legacy of mischief that has
driven class after class to put time and energy into creating a
memorable prank.
The class of ’68 distinguished itself with a four-part prank:
all classrooms were locked from the inside, the lobby of FSK
was transformed into a used car lot, a thirty-foot purple flag
reading “Class of ’68” in red letters flew from the flagpole,
and-thepiece de resistance—nearly two dozen steel-belted radi
{The College.
St.
als were stacked on the flagpole, a technical
feat that was as challenging to remove as it
was to install.
The flagpole-tire stunt, explains Alec
Himwich, was the hrain child of David
Roberts. “He devised a contraption with two
wooden Vs oriented perpendicularly to a long
wood pole. One V was at the top of the pole and
the other somewhat helow and opposite the
first. On this pole were fasteners that corre
sponded to those on the rope used to raise and
lower the flag. The device was attached to the
rope and a tire was placed on the upper V.
Guide ropes were attached to the lower V. Then the whole thing
was raised up by means of the flag rope. During the hoisting, the
guide ropes were used for stability. When the tire finally was
above the top of the flag pole the guide ropes were used to orient
the tire so that when the device was lowered, the flag pole would
be inside the tire.
“The whole procedure was complicated by a gusty wind,”
recalls Himwich. “Also, the operators were not the steadiest
since some of them were already imbibing in anticipation of a day
of celebration.”
The class of ’75 produced an elaborate skit-“West Street
Story,” in which Tony sang “Pure Reason” to the tune of “Maria”
and Ben Milner (HA97) was portrayed as the campus’ Officer
Krupke. They also put bookplates that read “Gift of the class of
1975” in all the books in the King William Room.
Jason Walsh (A85) remembers the class of ’8a’s Alice in IForaderland prank: “It was quite remarkable. Amusement rides were
set up on lower back campus, seemingly while we were in semi
nar. Seminars were of course interrupted by the march hare,
Alice, and the hatter, who led us to the rabbit hole (in the audito
rium stage) down into the Wonderland that was set up in the hall
ways of the basement, through the now-deserted Mellon class
room hallways and out by the Planetarium to the waiting
amusements. It was remarkably choreographed and seemed
quite magical.”
“Underclassmen were required to dance the lobster quadrille
in FSK lobby,” recalls Peter Green (A84) of the Alice prank. “The
next day we played croquet using pink flamingoes for mallets.”
The 1984 prank took the Canterbury Tales as its theme. Sem
inars were interrupted by knights, nuns, maidens, monks, a
John’s College ■ Summer 2002
}
�ai
{Campus Life}
jester, and a barmaid wench.
Dan Knight and Duke Hugh
es converted the fireplace
room of the coffee shop into
an English tavern. Grady
Harris, as the Pardoner,
stood on the steps of the
quad presenting students
with penances for the seven
deadly sins. For the sin of
pride, they were told to
dance later that evening with
everyone who asked; for
sloth, they were to dance five
dances in a row. Minstrels
entertained the wayfarers
outside McDowell and lumi
naries lit the path from the
base of the quad to the gym.
There John Ertle presided as
archbishop and head of the
ecclesiastical court, charg
ing each tutor with a sin (see
sidebar).
For the class of ’88’s
Odyssey prank, class mem
bers built in secret an i8-foothigh Trojan Horse of wood,
chicken wire, and papier
mache. John Lavery and Greg
Ferguson constructed the
horse’s frame and shaped its
outlines with chicken wire.
Karin Johns supervised the
papier mache effort, using 75
pounds of flour and endless
reams of newspaper to sculpt
the body. Several dozen sen
iors worked on the project
under Johns’ direction.
Students led out of Mel
lon and McDowell for the
Annapolis’
class of
1988
built a papier mache
Trojan Horse to rule
THE QUAD on PRANK DAY.
Prank Skits: A Retrospective
g
by Chris Denny (Ag^)
I99IA:
“Operation Dorm Storm” Fielding Dupuy’s haunting portrayal of a crazed
army officer shocked 90’s audiences with its stark portrayal of a nuclear apoc
alypse, as well as a campus without Chase-Stone. The special effects of a cam
eraperson running forward while shooting with a Camcorder in order to simu
late a smart-bomb brought the cinematography of SJC Senior Pranks into a
new era of artistic brilliance. Rated PG13 (language, and lots of it).
i99aSF:
“Oscar Night” Matthew Kelty stars in a hilarious parody of Hollywood’s
wildest night of the year. Rated R (language, sexual situations and potty
humor involving large bowel movements).
T993A:
“It’s a Wonderful Life” Starring Tom Lind as Clarence and Millicent Roberts
J as God, this touching story involved Devin Rushing’s horrible nightmare of a
world in which SJC was transformed into an “overpriced basketball school.”
With Walter Sterling, Sr. reduced to Up-synching “Achy-Breaky Heart” at Mar
maduke’s and a demonic Andre Barbera (played by the dashing CoUn Meeder)
J bent on reducing Western Civilization to rubble, only the fearless James Beall
I can rescue SJC, and a terrorized Patricia Locke (Deirdre Crosse), from oblivI ion. Rated SJC (wicked nasty satire and monogrammed female gludii maximi).
{The College- St. John’s College • Summer 2002 }
start of tbat prank were con
fronted with the enormous
beast. Ele Hamburger (A87)
remembers its demise: “A
storm hit after the horse had
been up a few days. I remem
ber it being blown up so it
reared on its hind feet and
then collapsed.” However,
she adds, “I am not entirely
sure this is not a false memo
ry, since it is so cinematic in
my mind’s eye.”
The 2002 prank included
a return to the mischief
making aspect of the tradi
tion. Assistant Dean Judith
Seeger says that the seniors
sent letters to a number of
students saying that the state
of Maryland now required
random urine testing for
drugs. The letters were
accompanied by small paper
cups and recipients were
instructed to bring a sample
to the director of Student
Services by 3 p.m. on prank
day. Seeger reports that no
one showed up at the Student
Services office, but she
heard that several prankees
visited the health center that
day.
Pranksters also ticketed
every car in the college park
ing lots. “After a few calls from
disgruntled drivers, I walked
around and removed them
myself,” says Seeger. “Except
for the one on college presi
dent Chris Nelson’s car.”
�1
2,2
{Campus Life}
A BUDDHIST
IN THE BOOKSTORE
Bookstore manager Andrea dAmato
brings an awareness ofEetstern thought to Santa he.
hat makes a good college
!
bookstore? Surely, as with
t
any other kind of bookstore,
^^k
^^k
t
a comprehensive selection
^^k
!
of books, current as well as
^^k K ^^k !
classic and attractively dis^^k
^^k^
played, ought to be near the
top of anyone’s list. HosY
Y
pitable environment would
also seem a must, encouraging the customer-student or teacherto linger and browse. Then there are the less obvious attributes
such as efficient management practices ... but wait. Shouldn’t the
more relevant question be not what makes a good college book
store but who?
Untold numbers of the St. John’s community in Santa Fe
would have only to point to Andrea d’Amato, who has been man
ager of the bookstore for more than ao years, for the answer.
Personal affection and professional admiration for this
unusual woman-she is a novice Buddhist priest and mother
of an adopted fifteen-year-old girl as well as successful
businessperson-comprise their views in more or less equal
proportion.
“Bookstore people are special people,” says Georgia Knight,
who has been a tutor at St. John’s since 1974. “Andrea personi
fies the best of them. She has been a close friend for many years
and unflaggingly helpful to me. She has made books a real
adventure. She helps me trip over things I wasn’t necessarily
looking for. But what I admire most are her enthusiasm, per
suasiveness, and generosity of spirit. She radiates friendship.”
Ralph Swentzell, who joined the St. John’s faculty 35 years
ago, credits Andrea’s management skills for the “exceptional”
qualities of the bookstore and also declares that the whole East
ern Classics program, which he and a colleague, Bruce Perry,
launched as an experiment only la years ago, “owes its exis
tence” to Andrea. He explains: “I was an amateur at first,
assigned to Chinese language. Andrea began auditing my class
of IO or II students and got very excited. She helped us work out
the language as a computer program. Eventually we had a full
lexicon in front of us and translated Confucius, Lao-tse, Chi
nese poetry, and other works.
“But it was a very tumultuous affair bringing the Eastern Stud
ies program into being. The college was ethnocentric in those
days. In that environment we kept asking ‘How (in this institu
tion of great books) can you ignore Eastern studies?’ The book
store was a not-so-subtle influence on the college’s decision to
adopt the program, with Andrea making sure that there were
great books on Eastern studies available and prominently dis
played on the front table.”
It would seem natural to assume that her close association
with the burgeoning Eastern Classics program directly influ
enced Andrea’s decision to become a Buddhist, although such
was not entirely the case. Working in a bookstore, however, was a
serendipitous situation for her at a time of great personal crisis.
“It was a case of having ready access to books that bore on my
overwhelming need for a way out of my suffering,” she says. “I
was seeking spiritual enlightenment for my pain, for my great
heartache. My heart, in fact, broke open to Buddhism as soon as
I started reading from a list of texts I had encountered through
suggested Eastern Classics texts. I began with the “Acts of the
Buddha” by a second-century Indian writer named Asvaghosa. It
was the first time I had encountered the Four Noble Truths of
Buddhism and as soon as I read those I thought Wow! This is
what I’ve been looking for. This is my medicine. This addresses
exactly what I’m feeling.”
Andrea immersed herself in the great primary sources while
continuing with her job. “I realized that this was not a way out of
suffering but I had to start meditating. If you want to realize it
you have to sit. You have to. I read enough Buddhism to know
that it cannot just be read about. I learned that in order to bene
fit from it you need to practice. One of the main practices is
Zazen, which is sitting practice. So I sought a meditation
teacher.”
After many years of sitting. Buddhism became essential to
Andrea. In December of 2000, she shaved her head to become a
priest, a novice, she explains, in the Zen Buddhist belief, with its
strong traditions of meditation and honoring of ancestors.
{The College- St. John’s College • Summer 2002 }
�{CampusLife}
23
A novice priest carries forward the form of the practice. The tra
three-and-a half months in the making.
Andrea made a pilgrimage to the Chinese temples that Dogen
dition Andrea practices is Japanese Soto Zen, which is based on the
four noble truths. The differences in the forms of Buddhism he in
(the founder of the Japanese line of Buddhism) traveled to in the
the ritual, the services, the practices. The Tibetan tradition is very
13th century. “I was able to sew on my robe in the very room ded
rich iconographically, with colorful temples, painted demons on
icated to Dogen, originally a 900-room monastery Tien Tong.
the walls, and beautiful images. The Japanese tradition is very
This is of deep importance to me because Dogen is part of the
stark, sparse and beautiful,
direct lineage,” says Andrea.
“Dogen found the true dhar
but very simple. “A priest is
ma
again, and brought that
trained in the form-how you
tradition
to Japan. Every
approach the altar, how the
morning
we
put the robe on
incense is offered, which way
you turn from the altar, how
our head, and with our
chants we vow to liberate all
you hold your hands during
human
beings.”
the service. Since I am a
Little in Andrea’s early
detailed person the Japanese
background, except perhaps
tradition suits me well,” says
a youthful restlessness, a dis
Andrea. “It’s all in the details.
satisfaction with the way her
God is in the details. A priest
life was going, would seem to
can transmit and carry the
augur what appears to be its
form to the next generation. I
present happy resolution.
don’t know if I will arrive at
She stopped attending the
that level of service, as I am in
Catholic Church while in
training and will be for many
high school and dropped out
years, but that is what I am
of the University of Massa
doing-paying close attention
chusetts in Amherst (where
to details.”
she worked part-time in a
Andrea has made pilgrim
bookstore) because, she says,
ages to China and Tibet,
“I had too much living to do.”
where she circumambulated
She became active in the
the hohest of mountains. Her
women’s movement and con
hope was to manifest the
sidered for a while opening
dharma more in her life. After
up a feminist bookstore
that experience, she decided
somewhere with a friend.
to become a priest as a way to
During a visit to Santa Fe, she
be more involved in Bud
answered an ad in The Santa
dhism.
Fe New Mexican for an assis
To become a priest in this
tant’s position in the St.
tradition, Andrea had to cre
John’s College bookstore.
ate her own robe by hand,
She became its manager in
though she hadn’t done any
1981.
sewing since home economics
“The bookstore, along
in seventh grade. She also
with
my colleagues and
copied by hand sacred texts
friends,
” she says, “has been
from the 13th century. And,
my
anchor,
the stabilizing
she had to shave her head.
Every stitch is a prayer: Andrea d’Amato wears the robe she made
fact
of
my
life
in Santa Fe. If I
The robe, an okesa, is com
WHEN SHE BECAME A BuDDHIST PRIEST.
am
credited
with
helping to
prised of patches of material
make
it
an
important
part of
that she gathered from family
the college life I’m grateful for what it has given back to me.”
and friends. With an intricate design, it is a personal project. The
She enjoys spending weekends with her daughter Nandita at
pattern derives from the Buddha, who, standing with his disciple,
home in Taos. With this melding of family, career, and belief, it
said he wanted a robe with a pattern after the rice fields. “All the
is no wonder that she considers herself, as she says, not just con
stitching shows on the outside and every stitch is a prayer,” says
tent, but a person on the path of awakening as well. Says Andrea,
Andrea. “Not something that could be done while watching TV or
“At night we say, ‘Let me respectfully remind you...Do not
doing anything else. It took a lot of concentration, time, and effort,
squander your life.’ ’’-i^
accompanied by a candle, incense, and prayer.” The robe was about
{The College.
Sf.
John’s College Summer 2002 }
�{Bibliofile}
^4
BEYOND THE
BARR-BUCHANAN MYTH
Review by John Van Doren, A47
eloquent, the other, quizzical and complex
in all he said. Yet their spirits reflected two
old traditions in America, of Virginia and
Massachusetts, which had met before.
Barr, inclined to history, had graduated
from the University of Virginia; Buchanan
was a philosopher, educated at Amherst
and Harvard, who said he got an under
standing of his subject not from either
school but only afterwards, as assistant
director of the People’s Institute, offering
adult education, in New York.
At Oxford, where they were Rhodes
Scholars, they found they had a common
interest in speculative thought and the dis
verybody connected with St.
cussion of ideas. Buchanan went on to pur
John’s, and many ontside it,
sue both and discovered their sources in
know that Stringfellow Barr
the Great Books, which he took up with
and Scott Buchanan were the
students at the People’s Institute as well as
founders, in 1937, of the Pro
with some of the faculty at Columbia Uni
gram by which the college has since been
versity, among them Mortimer Adler,
known. Some are aware that when they left
Richard McKeon, and Mark Van Doren.
St. John’s, both men worked together on
Barr, with whom he kept in touch, went
other projects, less well defined, having to
back to Virginia, where he was an
do with what might be called the state of
immensely successful but unrepresentative
the world, and that after many wanderings
they came to the Center for the Study of
Democratic Institutions in California,
where both served for a time and where
Buchanan worked until he died in 1968.
But who were they? How did they come
to think they should do the things they did?
What did they seek to accomplish by doing
them, nearly always together as friends and
colleagues in a relationship which, begin
ning at Oxford in 1919, lasted till
Buchanan’s death? These are matters most
people don’t know much about. We are
thus indebted to Charles Nelson (class of
1945) for having written this fine book,
which provides an account of them that will
be instructive, even essential, not only to
those who cannot remember those years,
but also to those who can.
Barr and Buchanan made an unlikely
combination: the one, hot tempered and
Radical Visions: Stringfel
low Barr, Scott Buchanan,
and Their Efforts on Behalf
of Education and Politics in
the Twentieth Century by
Charles A. Nelson. With an
Introduction by William H.
McNeill. Bergin & Garvey,
Westport, CT, 2001
E
{The College- St. John ’5 College - Summer 2002 }
teacher who sat on his desk in a green suit
and purple shirt and talked basic texts with
his students.
By the end of the iqaos, both men had
come to think that American higher educa
tion was badly in need of the kind of reading
and discussion they were carrying on in dif
ferent places. To this end, and notwithstand
ing the failure of an early effort to institute
such activities by Buchanan’s friend Alexan
der Meiklejohn at the University of Wiscon
sin, the two men joined forces at Virginia in
the mid-i93os and formulated a plan for a
college within the college there which antic
ipated the St. John’s Program. But Virginia
never adopted this, and it was only when
they were approached by the trustees of St.
John’s, a school in grave academic and
financial difficulties, that they found an
opportunity which they accepted, not with
out qualms, to practice what they preached.
What happened there is known to every
one at this college, or if it isn’t, Mr. Nelson
will recall it for us. Within four years, the
Program was recognized everywhere in the
country as a striking innovation, supported
in some quarters, disapproved of in others.
The effort seemed to have succeeded. But
then came the war and the student body
went off to fight, while much of the new fac
ulty disappeared. Barr and Buchanan kept
the college going with inadequate funds and
students who had not finished high school,
but the effort was exhausting. They were
further tried by the attempt of the Navy to
acquire the college campus for expansion of
the Naval Academy, a struggle that ended
only in 1946 when the Navy gave up. By then
both men, besides being weary, had soured
on the college’s prospects in Annapolis and
decided to leave, rejecting funds offered for
its continuance there, to the dismay of the
trustees.
In truth the two had come to think that
something more than St. John’s was needed
�{Bibliofile}
2,5
'"The two came to think that something more than St. Johns
was needed to make sense ofthepost-war world..
to make sense of the post-war world they saw
emerging-something perhaps with under
graduate, adult education, and research
facilities combined. Then they realized, or
thought they did, that even this was less than
what the times required, which was a new
politics and a new technological and social
order. Their subsequent involvement in the
Foundation for World Government, their
separate sojourns in Israel and India, and
their last brief interval together at the Cali
fornia Center-years in which they both
wrote interesting and important books and
pamphlets-can be seen as efforts to suggest
ways in which these changes could be real
ized. Nothing they did was successful in
terms of tangible accomplishment, but most
of it was prescient in its focus on what we
now recognize as world realities.
Was there a divide between what the two
did for education and what they tried to do
in other areas later? Superficially, yes, but
in essence, no. From the first, as young men
with intellectual interests and capacities,
they thought the world was in need of a bet
ter understanding of itself than its educa
tion gave it. St. John’s was an attempt to
provide this. But the forces of technological
change and social upheaval that appeared
after the Second World War seemed to
require a different kind of examination,
though with the same objective. Barr and
Buchanan, and the associates they got to
work with them, sought to discover for
themselves and explain to others what the
underlying problems of the world were,
looking foolish to those who thought
“something should be done at once” about
these, but seeming wiser now as we realize
most of them are still there.
All along, both men maintained that
inquiry and discussion were propaedeutic
to action. Every enterprise they started or
tried to start had something of the seminar
about it. Always they found themselves
questioning first formulations and digging
back to the root of things, so far as they
could find it. In that sense they seemed to
live the life of this college wherever they
went, and partly it was so. But in another
sense it was the other way around. That is
the lesson of this book. Unique though it is,
the college imitates something greater than
itself. It is but a station of the active intel
lect, nurturing in its given way an abiding
interest in things brought to it by two who
were bound on a common odyssey, a con
cern that comes only (if I may change my
figure) from those on lean horses and fat
donkeys whose journey never ends.
Short Reviews of
Alumni Books
ters fits well with Bellamy’s other Cleve
land crime books: The Corpse in the Cellar,
The Maniac in the Bushes, and They Died
Crawling.
Phaethon, of Radamanthus House, attends
a party at his family mansion to celebrate
the thousand-year anniversary of the High
Transcendence. There he meets an old man
who accuses him of being an impostor and
then a being from Neptune who claims to be
an old friend. The Neptunian tells him that
essential parts of his memory were removed
and stored by the very government that
Phaethon believes to be wholly honorable.
Phaethon embarks upon a quest across the
solar system to recover his memory and
learn what crime he planned that warranted
such preemptive punishment.
100 Names oe Mary: Stories and Prayers
By the staff of The College
A Priest’s Journal_____________________
Victor Lee Austin (SF^S)
Church Publishing Incorporated
Austin writes about his ministry as a parish
priest in a small town in upstate New York,
about his work as a theologian, and about
the intersection of the ordinary concerns
and profound questions that priest and
parish share and explore.
Anthony F. Chiffolo (AGIg4)
St. Anthony Messenger Press
Calling upon Scripture, the writings of the
early Church, the pronouncements of the
saints, papal statements, and recent bibhcal
and theological scholarship, this book pro
vides historical and theological explanations
of the origins of one hundred of Mary’s most
popular and intriguing names. Each of the
names includes both traditional and newlywritten prayers of intercession to Mary.
OE Cleveland Woe_____________________
The Golden Age: A Romance oe the Far
Future_______________________________
John Stark Bellamy II (Ap)
Gray & Company
This book of Cleveland murders and disas-
John C. Wright (A84)
Tor Books
In this well-received science fiction novel.
Killer in the Attic; And Still More Tales
{The College -St. John’s College ■ Summer 2002
Periodically, The College will list or review
alumni books. Please send notice of books
pubhshed or review copies (which will be
donated to the library’s alumni author col
lection) for consideration to: The College
Magazine, St. John’s College, Box 2800,
Annapolis, MD 21404.
}
�{TheProgram}
a6
STATISTICS VS. PTOLEMY
Has St. John s made the right choicesfor the math tutorial?
Alumni in the corporate world discuss theprogram.
By Sus3AN Borden, A87
igh up in McDowell Hall, math tuto
rials work their way through Euclid,
Ptolemy, Newton, and Lohachevsky.
Meanwhile, in a large corporation
in Washington, D.C., three recent
St. John’s graduates are doing the
work of computer science PhDs.
Was it the symmetry of the spheres,
the ingenuity of the ecliptic, the
lucidity of Newton’s lemmas that prepared them for this demand
ing work?
Their boss, Eric Rosenblatt (A74), says no.
Rosenblatt, a vice president at Eannie Mae, began hiring John
nies in 2000 and currently has a hand in the careers of eight John
nies who work at Fannie Mae, the secondary market enterprise
that makes mortgage money available for lenders. He expects to
hire more Johnnies.
His original decision to take a chance on the St. John’s grads
was in part because of a lingering affection for his alma mater, but
mostly because he thought it made good business sense. “Corpo
rations live and die on good labor. I get paid because people who
work for me make good decisions,” Rosenblatt says. “I decided
that St. John’s would be a filter for employment. The students are
intelligent and motivated. Although Fannie Mae has incredibly
high standards, programming is something that, if you’re smart
and you really want to do it, you probably can.”
Rosenblatt continues to do most of his hiring at the annual
meetings of the Allied Social Science Association; the staff he
finds there are PhDs, which he says are simple to hire because
PhDs tend to meet his criteria. But they’re also expensive and not
always willing to do the simple charts and tables that convey the
most insights. He points with pride to Jon Lawless (Aoo) and
Brian Shea (Aoo), who started working just after they graduated.
“Those two are already competitive with PhDs,” he says. “They
started at around $50,000, but I’ll tell you something: they were
worth more. I’m sending them to grad school and over time their
earnings and opportunities will climb.”
Although Rosenblatt has developed a win-win arrangement for
Fannie Mae and St. John’s, he finds himself frustrated by what he
sees as the limitations of the St. John’s math program.
He says that the program’s lack of emphasis on mathematical
mastery is a significant and unnecessary deficiency in an other
wise fine education. It cuts many graduates off from entering a
{The College
number of careers that would be of interest to Johnnies. “Stu
dents at St. John’s don’t have the typical math background of col
lege graduates entering the social sciences. Sociology, experi
mental psychology, economics-these are all fields Johnnies
would enjoy,” he says. “The prerequisites are a few years of cal
culus, statistics, maybe linear algebra. If they don’t have it, it
seems like a daunting hill to climb, one more thing to keep them
from targeting a career objective they would find satisfying and
do well in. And if you want to go into engineering or the hard sci
ences, you’re just in the hole. You avoid making the decision to
undertake the work that graduate school would require and then
it gets to be too late.”
Recently retired Annapolis placement director Karen Krieger
says that a long-term undertaking of her office was to make sure
that students-from as early as their prospective visit-know that
the St. John’s curriculum must be supplemented by additional
courses for students seeking careers in math and science. “Stu
dents have long known this is the strategy in medicine, and now
there’s a growing understanding that this is the case in other
fields. Once you get your education at St. John’s, you then go back
and pick up your required courses,” says Krieger.
“Getting enough math for careers is easy to do,” says Annapolis
dean Harvey Flaumenhaft. “A number of students go on to careers
in math and science. For example, several recent graduates are
now studying astrophysics at George Mason University. “It’s true
that we don’t do statistics, but our students can go to the commu
nity college and take elementary statistics for a semester. If we did
statistics, we’d have to give up something else. Now don’t get me
wrong. The absence of their treatment does not mean that statis
tics are not important. There are a lot of important things we
don’t study here. Not only things we should do, but things that it’s
an outrage not to do. We can’t do everything-we have to make
choices.”
. Sr. John’s
The Math Gap
A pack of recent Johnnie graduates working at Fannie Mae go
to lunch and-no surprise-a seminar breaks out. They’re dis
cussing Rosenblatt’s ideas and talk turns to Annapolis’ calculus
manual (a brief handbook presenting the rudiments of calculus as
done with more contemporary notation and notions). Using the
manual is one of the few points of universal agreement, but the
concord is not positive. The alumni are frustrated that the manu
al is neither one thing nor another-not an original text, but not a
College • Summer sooa }
�{The Program}
"Distilled modem math alsoprovides excellent mental training, also
integrates and reinforces a variety ofprogram readings and labs. ”
Eric Rosenblatt, A74
St. John’s College Fannie Mae
Misha Hall, and John Lawless
campus:
Eric Rosenblatt,
are a few of the
Johnnies who
WORK FOR the SECONDARY MORTGAGE ENTERPRISE.
{The College- St. John’s College ■ Summer 2002 }
a?
�aS
{The Program}
textbook either, offer
ing just two or three
problems to illustrate
each concept.
John Lawless, now a
Fannie Mae economist
working toward a mas
ter’s of finance at
George Washington University (paid for by Fannie Mae), suggests
pages of additional problems to supplement classroom discus
sion. “The people with me in graduate school are not that smart,”
he says. “The advantage they have is that they’ve seen a lot of this
stuff before. They have a broad exposure to basic math.”
Lawless illustrates his grad-school handicap by bringing up the
simple operation of multiplying exponents as part of an equation.
“Of course I know how to do it. It’s simple. But I always have to
take a second to remind myself how to do it. This makes high level
math that much more difficult, having to translate such small
things each time.”
Rosenblatt knows exactly what Lawless means. He now has a
PhD in finance, which he started working on at the age of 35. “I
was always translating,” he says. “Math never became my lan
guage.”
Flaumenhaft (not at the lunch, but commenting later) points
out the trade-offs St. John’s makes. “I’m not someone who thinks
that the program contains everything that’s important, worth
while, fundamental and deep, but we can’t do everything at once,”
he says. “I took some high-powered math courses early on. I did
well, but I wish that before taking them I’d done something like
what we do here. It might mean you can’t solve some problems as
early in your academic life, but if you’re interested in understand
ing and not immediate facility, if you’re interested in looking at
what makes sense and is simple enough to be seen as harmonious
and clear, something that is fundamental and fruitful enough to
be important when you’re 18 or 19 years old, then this is far more
important than getting what seems to be the most useful item in
your tool kit.”
Rosenblatt says “I understand that math at St. John’s serves a
lot of purposes, including training in a priori thinking and inte
gration with other readings in the program, but distilled modern
math also provides excellent mental training, also integrates and
reinforces a variety of program readings and labs. Beyond that, it
will concretely help Johnnies with their careers. I worry that St.
John’s students are not all finding careers appropriate to their
abilities, and I think
the math gap is part
of the problem. Why
is Ptolemy more ele
gant or better train
ing
for
future
guardians than gen
uine calculus?”
Some of the lunchers point out that the college is not just for
people with strong interests in math, and that the St. John’s
approach can show non-mathematicians the wonder of mathemat
ics, can even turn them into mathematicians. Most determined to
make this case was Misha Hall (Aoo), a data analyst who writes
requirements for and runs tests on the Fannie Mae database.
A Beautiful Paradigm
“The way we go about studying Euclid in the first year is great.
You have the chance to see the beauty of mathematics,” Hall says.
“And Ptolemy is really interesting. By the end of the first semester
you have to catch yourself, because you’ll end up saying that the
earth is really in the center of the universe. Mathematics proves
everything Ptolemy says; this makes you question the things that
you assume, it makes you question numbers and statistics.”
Others in the group were not so fond of Ptolemy, saying that the
amount of time spent studying the Almagest is ridiculous, even
describing the first semester of sophomore year as “the long
death march through Ptolemy.”
Flaumenhaft, however, appreciates Hall’s case for the value of
Ptolemy. “Ptolemy is maybe the primary example of having expe
riences that are puzzling precisely because there’s so much about
them that seems simple, clear, orderly, and beautiful, yet there’s
just enough to bother and annoy. The activity of trying to make
sense of observations given to you, while something within your
self points to an idea-it’s a beautiful paradigm of scientific enter
prise. I regard the study of Ptolemy as an important intellectual
experience. There’s the interplay of the world we see and the
world we think, but it’s also a necessary prerequisite for appreci
ating the absolutely astounding fact that when you start thinking,
you can end up with everything familiar looking altogether differ
ent.”
At lunch’s end, Rosenblatt prompts the Johnnies to repeat a
line he’s heard before and obviously enjoys. Lawless obliges; “If
you want to learn math, go to MIT; if you want to learn why math
is heartbreakingly beautiful, St. John’s is the place for you.”
{The College- St. John's College ■ Summer 200Z }
�{Alumni Notes}
1932
Senior Status, Growing Caseload
1943
J.L. Bean writes: “I hope to make
Peter Kellogg-Smith is still
my 70th reunion.”
making sculpture, writing on edu
cation, and working on a fuel effi
cient internal combustion and
steam engine.
1933
John F. Wager, Jr. writes: “Still
alive at 91 years.”
1935
Richard S. Woodman writes: “My
brother Robert G. Woodman,
class of 193a, died June 2001.1 am
still working at a leisurely pace and
still reside in a small dehghtful vil
lage in central New York state.”
“I’m 88 and still rarin’ to go,”
says Melville L. Bisgyer. “My
best to the alumni and SJC. You
sound wonderful-keep it up.”
1936
Gilbert Crandall writes: “Only
one member of the class of ’36
attended the alumni reunionMarttn W. Rausch. I had planned
to attend but ill health prevented
me from doing so. I have improved
and hope to make the ’03
reunion.”
1939
After 59 years, Malcolm Silver,
DDS, has retired from the practice
of dentistry.
1942
Based on national scores of the
PGA Rules test, Ernest J. HeinMULLER has been appointed a PGA
referee. “This has been a great
experience, following the great
players on great courses and rul
ing on situations as they occur,”
he says.
1945
Lawrence Levin writes: “I’m cur
rently leading discussions of the
news at Seniors’ Community Cen
ters, which I enjoy very much as I
do singing tenor with the local
chorus.”
1947
Steve Benedict writes: “After 50
years behind too many desks. I’ve
repaired to a 1754 farmhouse, with
barn and creek, in Spencertown,
New York-northern Columbia
County. My aim: to sort out and
maybe chronicle a whole bunch of
not very coherent life themes,
helping it all go dotvn with plenty
of tennis and piano. If anyone can
help-or even if you can’t-give a
ring and drop by. It’s 518-392-0487
or Box 16, Spencertowu, NY
12165. E-mail is:
stevebenedict@taconic.net.
Howell Cobb (Class of 1944) writes: “As of March 2001,1 took senior
status as a U.S. District judge. But my caseload is growing as it is
throughout the Eastern District of Texas. My replacement has been
nominated by President Bush, but the Senate Judiciary Committee has
not granted him a hearing. After he is confirmed, I anticipate my case
load will be about 60% of what it is now. Senior judges remain active,
and there are over 200 now with about 650 active judges. About 100
vacancies continue.” Howell and his wife have six children-3 sons and
3 daughters-and a total (as of now) of 18 grandchildren. His grandson,
Andrew C. Cook, starts in the Graduate Institute this fall.
enjoying worshipping in the con
gregation in the 49th year in the
ministry.”
1951
“The college did an exquisite job
in arranging our 50th class oncampus reunion,” writes Dr.
Lawrence Myers. “It was both a
charming and an educational
experience for us. Renewing my
friendships with my classmates
made me feel very fortunate to be
a class member of such a noble,
intelUgent, and interesting group
of men.”
1953
Robert Hazo reports that he is
1949
The Rev. Frederick P. Davis
writes: “We ‘3-D’s’ of the Davis
clan (wife Rita, son David, and
self) are still hanging loose in
sunny southern California. Most
of the time we continue to take
care of each other: Rita tied to
tank-oxygen here at home but
doing most of the inside house
work; David in wheelchair from
compound fracture of both bones
below left knee but doing all the
hot cooking of dinner, and the ‘old
man’ doing all outside house and
garden work while running all
errands for food, etc. Relieved of
most church work; I’m at long last
finishing up 30 years of teaching
St. John’s type seminars at the
University of Pittsburgh. He also
coordinated a lecture series that
featured many prominent speak
ers, including George W. Bush.
He’s now working on a book titled
“Minority Rule.”
1954
A profile of Sydney Porter was
found by Joe Kaufman (class of
1953) in the winter 2001-2002
issue of Radon Reporter. The pro
file recounts highlights of Porter’s
career: He is a founding member
and early president of AARST
(American Association of Radon
{The College. St. John’s College ■ Summer zoos }
Scientists and Technologists), a
Certified Health Physicist, and a
fellow of the Health Physics Soci
ety, the American Nuclear Society,
and the American Association of
Physicists in Medicine. He was one
of the founders of Radiation Man
agement Corporation.
1955
“Maintain imperturbable equa
nimity! ” writes John Joanou.
Harold Bauer is in mid-season of
his 40th year as a conductor of
symphony and opera. He wiU con
tinue as Music Director of New
Philharmonic and DuPage Opera
Theater, two professional organi
zations in the Chicago area,
through the summer of 2004. He
has just concluded conducting
Massenet’s “Werther,” which he
says “shares a quite remarkable
union with Goethe’s novella of 125
years earlier.” In addition to a
concert of Brahms, Bartok, and
Bauer (the premier of his “Cele
bration for Orchestra”), he con
ducted a June production of
Lehar’s “Zigeunerliebe” for Light
Opera Works in Evanston, and a
July production of Floyd’s “Susan
nah” for DuPage Opera.
1957
Thomas Sigman writes: “Henry
Ansell passed away summer 2001.
Hank had been a successful restau
rateur in New York City. He was a
�{Alumni Notes}
lifelong opera buff. In retirement
he volunteered in several impor
tant positions at the New York
Metropolitan Opera. We remem
ber him also as a fine comedian
who could have been a profession
al. I miss him.”
Cornelia Hoffman Reese writes:
“In the aftermath of the tragedy of
9/11 when our stunned senses had
to recreate a semblance of normal
ity and daily living habits, we
decided to go forward with plans
to visit my daughter’s (Angelina
Kleneburgess, A83) friends in
Brussels. On Christmas day after
our celebration with children, we
departed from BWI. We included
myself, Angelina, Edward
Burgess (A79), and my Burgess
grandchildren—Genevieve, Louis,
and Cynthia. Though unable to
visit Mary Sullivan Blomberg in
Sweden as hoped, I was able to
have a most delightful phone con
versation with Mary, our first
voice contact in roughly 30 years.
Mary is living in Stockholm.”
1958
BlakelyLirrLuroN Mechau (also
SFGI70) and Michael K. Mechau
(class of 1959) write: “Both of us
are retired, living on a small farm,
reading books, and entertaining
friends and family.”
few months ago from Bank of
America, where I ran all informa
tion technology engineering activ
ities. Am doing a bit of consulting,
but am basically thoroughly enjoy
ing life. Marie and I are traveling
around, indulging our interest in
orientalia. We’re frequenting auc
tions and estate sales. I’m finding
life is wonderful after many years
of i8-hour frenzied days! ”
1963
Temple Porter has lived in
Raleigh 30 years with Brenda, his
wife of 35 years. After graduating
from Coach University in 1997,
Temple founded Triangle Coach
ing Services, a professional organ
ization that provides coaching,
counseling, and advisory services
to businesses and individuals
nationwide. In its infancy now,
coaching is gaining great credibil
ity as it spreads to all facets of our
culture. Any St. Johnnies interest
ed in exploring this growing field
may contact Temple for informa
tion. Empty nesters now. Temple
and Brenda have three children-a
social worker, a property manag
er, and a photographer-all in
N.C. Their oldest grandchild (of
3) is a teenager now, and is ready
to take scuba diving lessons as
preparation for a career in marine
biology.
David Benfield writes: “We
i960
Col. (RET) John Lane writes:
should all try to make the reunion
this year. Remember the old
advice from Chase and Phillips:
‘The beautiful is difficult.’ ”
“Hi, decided to retire completely
from a full-time job and retired a
Life’s Continuum
Virginia Seegers Harrison (Class of 1964) writes: “I’m continuing
to learn from the elders with whom I work. Even though they are
‘declining,’ they are storehouses of memories. (Many are old lefties
who recall firsthand WWI and so on.) I try to arrange living situations
which preserve or promote quality of life for them. In the meantime,
my eldest son and his wife had another child-a girl this time. It’s won
derful to have a two-year-old grandson and a 6-month-old granddaugh
ter, and to see the continuum of life.
1965
John Hetland is still (since 1973)
directing the Renaissance Street
Singers (www.streetsingers.org).
1966
really enjoying the one-on-one
therapy.”
Charles B. Watson (A) writes:
“#i son, Ivan Watson, now report
ing from Kabul for NPR. Busy life
continues unabated now that we’re
empty nesters and I still only get to
New York City two times a year.
Recently experienced 3rd world
health care as Masha broke her
arm on a boat in BVI.”
Christopher Hodgkin (A) is
Antigone Phalares (SF) writes:
looking forward to retiring this
summer and having time for seri
ous reading for the first time since
leaving the college.
“Our small but longstanding and
dedicated Sacramento SJC semi
nar group chugs along and enrich
es our lives, most of all because we
are lucky to have Tom (HA94) and
Marion Slaeiey who have blessed
us with their culture and refine
ment and warm hearts. I strongly
recommend to each alumni semi
nar that they seek out retired
tutors and nudge them to move
into your area and participate in
your seminars.” She describes the
Slakeys’ renewal of their wedding
vows this past January and notes
that she, Arianne Laidlaw (class
of 1957), and Curtis and Becky
Wilson (HA83 and 82AGI) were
among the Johnnies in attendance.
1967
For Helen Hobart (A), March
through June 3002 was a season
springing with change. She retired
as director (and founder) of the
City of Sacramento’s Alzheimer’s
day program to launch a new pro
gram of peer support groups for
individuals beginning the journey
of memory loss-and in June, unit
ed in marriage with a beloved
friend from her Buddhist Sangha.
“We take heart from the beautiful
renewal of wedding vows that TOM
(HA94) AND Marion Slakey held
here in Sacramento this winter!”
she says.
George Partlow (A) is looking
forward to retirement in June. His
fifth grandchild, Dakota Aragron
Watson, was born on Christmas
morning.
Rick Wicks (SF) was in Alaska
1968
Joy Avery-Balch (SF) writes: “My
email is still joy@tums.org. Let
me tell you about my new career. I
went back to school for three years
and got an associate’s degree in
Health Sciences in 1999 and am a
Certified Occupational Therapy
Assistant. However, there were no
jobs for C.O.T.A.s nationwide
until now. I’ve just been hired by a
national rehabilitation company
and finally earning enough money
to live on (my first non-not-forprofit job) AND still helping peo
ple cope with the problems caused
by strokes, heart attacks, acci
dents, etc. I’m working in two
nursing homes with rehab and
{The College. St. John’s College ■ Summer 2002 }
last summer for the first time in
ten years, where he had a chance
to visit Carl Bostek (SF) and his
fantastic Alaskan lodge. “We visit
ed our land and the kids and 1
caught salmon in the ocean-a
great time!” he writes.
ThomasG. Keens (SF) writes: “I
am a professor of pediatrics, physi
ology, and biophysics at the Keck
School of Medicine of the Univer
sity of Southern California. In
February 3002,1 organized a post
graduate course in Non-Invasive
Ventilation of Children with Res
piratory Failure as part of the 5th
International Congress of Pedi
atric Pulmonology in Nice,
France. I also spoke on Transition
ing CCHS Patients to Non-Invasive Ventilation at the Second
�{AlumniNotes}
About the Four Cats. ..
1970
31
which will be torn down. We
expect to spend winters there once
both boys are in college.”
Marii ynne (Maury Wills) Scott (SF) writes: “My husband David
and I enjoyed to our daughter, Emily’s, May graduation from Sarah
Lawrence College. She has been accepted at Yale Divinity School
where she will pursue a master’s of Art and Religion to combine her
interests in music (trombone) and liturgy. I continue to teach first
grade in a suburban school outside Seattle. This year will be my asth
in public education. The standards/accountability movement has
been discouraging to those of us who prefer to view children as
human beings glorious in their uniqueness. They say life begins
when the dog dies and the last child has left home-both of which
have happened to me. So how did 1 end up with four cats?! ”
International Symposium of Con
genital Central Hypoventilation
Syndrome in Paris, France. I coor
dinate one of the world’s largest
home mechanical ventilation pro
grams for children at the Chil
dren’s Hospital, Los Angeles. We
have sent home 346 children on
part-time or full-time mechanical
assisted ventilation in 34 years.”
Ellin Barret (SF) is a member of
the board of California Revels-a
non-profit performance organiza
tion. Revels groups exist in nine
cities across the U.S. and present
non-rehgious winter solstice pag
eants and other musical events. It’s
a great way to celebrate the winter.
The website is www.revels.org.
1969
Jamie Cromartte (SF), Frances
Burns, and Mark and Linda
Bernstein (all A69) met at the
Trenton Thunder Minor League
game on August 19. A mini-’69
NJ/Phila. Reunion.
Wendy Watson (SF) writes: “I’m
alive and well in Detroit, Michi
gan. I’m running three senior cen
ters and concerned with aging pol
icy development. My daughter
Amy is 15 and interested in theater
and is a good actress. She’s mak
ing her way through Shakespeare.
Peace and justice activities on a
local level are important to me.
Most of my friends are somehow
engaged in these activities too.”
Beth Kuper (SF) has left the cor
porate world and is now working
as a feng shui consultant.
Margaret Gaefney (SF) writes:
“My home is now 30 blocks from
Luther Burbank’s Home and Gar
den. I’m planting roses, tomatoes
and chilies in Santa Rosa, Califor
nia. Ahh! The Sun! Good for baby
boomer bone marrow. There is a
guest bedroom-St. Johnnies are
welcome. I’m doing landscaping,
nutritional-RN triage (cradle to
grave) and photography.
Barhara Mordes Ross (A) writes:
“To all the ones who have ever
known me, loved me, despised
me-I just want you to know that I
held each and every one of you in
my heart as I lay near death after
being broadsided by a truck that
went three feet into my driver's
seat. I was miraculously saved,
first by my good dear little Maxima
that I’ve loved and taken care of
for 17 years because she talks to
me. Second, by the red trauma
team that wanted to beat out the
blue trauma team to rescue me. I
ended up with six broken ribs, a
broken clavicle, a collapsed lung,
and a new love for old friends.
Now, when I say I love you to peo
ple I haven’t talked to for thirty
years, I realize how much I do love
them.” Barbara would appreciate
phone calls (407-493-4047) or let
ters (3913 Autumnwood Trail,
Apopka, FL 33703) from old
friends. Flowers would also be
lovely.
Susan Swartzherg-Rubenstein
(SF) (formerly Susan Wood) is
working as a foreign correspon
dent for public radio while living
in France. She can be reached at
Ssrub@aol.com, or by post at 6,
Impasse Pierre Simon, 93340
Malakoff, Paris, France. She
writes: “The St. John’s College
alumni living in Paris had a
reunion last month in the cafe at
the top of the Pompidou Center
with a magnificent aerial view of
half of Paris, sweeping from Sacre
Coeur to the Eiffel Tower around
to Notre Dame, and looking over
the plan of the city and the Hausmannian mansard rooftops.
“It was a delightful, unrushed
afternoon of fellowship with some
discussion about how we would
like to continue meeting. The five
of us included Bill Randolph
(A75), Nathanael Long (SF90),
Jennifer Donnelly (A96),
Georges Contos (class of 1953)
and yours truly. We have plans to
meet again on June 31, this time at
someone’s home, to discuss the
following list of poems:
Pierre de Ronsard - “Recueil:
Sonnets pour Helene”
Robert Herrick-“To The
Virgins, To Make Much of Time”
W. B. Yeats-“When You are Old”
Jules LaForgue-“Autre
Complainte de Lord Pierrot”
Thosophile Gautier-“L’hippotame”
T.S. Eliot-“The Hippopotamus”
Ronald H. Fielding (A) writes:
“Now in my seventh year with
Oppenheimer Funds, managing
four municipal bond funds with
over $8.5 billion (yes, that’s a B)
and 30 staff. Ron was the subject
of a three-page spread in Barron’s
April 39 issue. Sons Daniel and
Michael are in nth and 9th
grades, so college planning has
begun, and I showed Dan St.
John’s this summer. Also, we’ve
just begun architectural design
work for a new house on the beach
on Kiawah Island, S.C. I bought an
older house on the property from
Archibald Cox three years ago.
{The College . St. John’s College ■ Summer 200Z }
1971
Michael ViCTOROFF (A) has left
his job as medical director for
Aetna and is writing a book on
errors in medicine.
John Stark Bellamy II (A) is
astonished to announce the publi
cation of his fourth book devoted
to Cleveland murders and disas
ters, The Killer in the Attic: And
Even More Tales ofCleveland Woe,
published by Gray & Co. Publish
ers, Cleveland.
1972
Claude F. Martin (A) writes: “30
years? It seems longer! ”
Leslie Starr (A) has played a
third season as substitute second
oboe with the Baltimore Sympho
ny and took part in the orchestra’s
fall 3001 tour of Europe, which
included performances in London,
Paris, Berlin, and Vienna.
1973
Wilfred (Bill) McClay (A) was
nominated by President Bush to be
a member of the National Council
on the Humanities, which is the
governing board of the National
Endowment for the Humanities.
Deborah Achtenberg’s (A) book.
Cognition of Value in Aristotle’s
Ethics: Promise ofEnrichment,
Threat ofDestruction, was pub
lished by State University of New
York Press, May 3003.
Stephen A. Slusher (SF) is prac
ticing intellectual property lawprimarily biotechnology patent
prosecution and litigation, as a
partner at Peacock, Myers &
Adams, P.C. in Albuquerque.
�{AlUMNIPrOFILE}
3a
White House Wordsmith
Two bright September days—onejoyful, one tragic—have
set the tonefor Holly Miller's White House work.
BY SUS3AN
Borden A87
t was a crisp sunny Saturday
in early September when
Holly Miller (SFGIoi), a
new writer on Laura Bush’s
staff, brought her visiting
parents with her to the Jefferson
Building of the Library of Congress
to hear the First Lady speak at
Washington’s National Book Festi
val. “It was a beautiful day and a
great event for the city,” Miller says.
“We heard Mrs. Bush’s remarks,
strolled around, watched children
playing on the lawn, and listened to
Stephen Ambrose speak.”
Three days later, September ii,
was also a beautiful day in Washing
ton, but instead of celebrating.
Miller found herself and her col
leagues from the Old Executive Holly Miller (right) with hoss Laura Bush.
Office Building fleeing their work
space in confusion and fear as a
Boeing 767 struck the Pentagon and the thinking that no matter where you live or
safety of downtown D.C. seemed unimagin who you are, there is a level at which we can
all connect. Even more simply, I was think
ably flimsy.
Despite the somber note that tragic day ing that there are so many good people out
brought to the lives of Washington workers, there.”
Miller says that the excitement of work
it did not mark the end of Miller’s honey
moon with her dream job. “After 9/11 the ing in the White House has not diminished
position definitely had new meaning,” says over time and adds that she’s never met
Miller. “The attacks gave me a greater anyone, no matter how long they’ve
sense for where I worked and why I was in worked there, for whom it had. “Anyone
public service. Having the opportunity to with any interest in history can’t help but
write for someone who is in a position to be thrilled to work here, to walk through
offer comfort to so many people made me these hallways. It’s so humbling, so fasci
realize that I was to contributing to the larg nating. I’m always learning about the his
tory of this place.”
er work of the White House.”
Miller is learning about a lot more than
Shortly after the attacks, Mrs. Bush’s
staff relocated to the East Wing of the the history and lore of 1600 Pennsylvania
White House where Miller now works in a Avenue. An ongoing challenge of her job is
small office next to the Visitors’ Center. to capture the style and sentiments of Mrs.
Over the next few months, a number of fam Bush to use in the writing she does on her
ily members of the 9/ii victims visited the behalf.
“It’s a learning process,” she says. “I
White House. “It was inspiring to meet
them and an honor to have the chance to trained under my predecessor, who had a
express my condolences,” she says. “They good sense of Mrs. Bush’s voice. I’ve read
were so brave and gracious. I remember her old speeches. Sometimes I can go back
{The College -St John's College • Summer 2002 }
and find what I want to write in a
speech she delivered months ago.
Learning to write for her is a matter
of marrying of my style and her style;
her style changes and I evolve with
her.”
Of course in Miller’s potentially
sensitive position, getting the style
right is only part of the challenge.
She discusses policy-related corre
spondence with Mrs. Bush’s direc
tor of policy. When she writes
thank-you letters to foreign heads of
state, she consults the National
Security Council.
And all her work is checked by the
First Lady before she signs it. “My
communication with Mrs. Bush
comes through the written word,
which informs my style,” says Miller.
“She’s the best editor. Her changes,
whether of a word or a sentence,
make everything read just right.”
Miller’s a competent editor on her own.
She notes that all of her jobs-whether in
government, television, or public relations-have been writing jobs. After earning
a BA in English and creative writing from
Denison University in 1995, she began her
career as a writer and legislative aide to Sen
ator Olympia Snow of Maine and enrolled in
the Craduate Institute at St. John’s in 1997.
“What a great time to do it,” she says. “I
was reading texts about early government
and how democracy came about, reading
The Prince while working on the Hill.”
Now Mrs. Bush’s deputy director of corre
spondence, Miller’s literary focus is prima
rily on the words and thoughts of the First
Lady, although she does make time to read
the words of others. “I just finished reading
the David McCullough biography, John
Adams, and I’m trying to read more from
the great collection of books I got at St.
John’s,” she says. First on the list for this
White House staffer? Alexis de Tocqueville’s
Democracy in America.
�{AlumniNotes}
Jon Ferrier (A) writes; “I just fin
ished an introduction to jazz pro
gram at our local public library
where Kayne, my wife, was branch
head.”
Laurie Franklin Callahan’s (SF)
daughter, Erin Callahan, will be a
freshman on the Annapolis cam
pus in the fall.
From Steve and Melissa Sedlis
(both A): “Steve is chief of cardiol
ogy at the Manhattan VA Medical
Center. He is an interventional
cardiologist and associate profes
sor at NYU School of Medicine.
Melissa is a pediatrician in private
practice in Manhattan and on the
faculty of Weill Cornell Medical
College and Mt. Sinai School of
Medicine. Our oldest daughter,
Elizabeth, is graduating from
Barnard College with a degree in
neurosciences. Our second daugh
ter, Jennifer, is a sophomore at
Scripps College studying political
science, and Julia is in high
school.”
School of Architecture. He is also
a painter and is presently design
ing large screens (oil on wood) and
continuing to work in pen and ink.
Cynthia Kirschner Swiss (A)
writes: “My husband and I are
sponsoring a coffeehouse for
singer-songwriters at St. John’s
Methodist Church on Harford
Road in Baltimore the first Satur
day of every month.”
“I’ve largely left newspapering for
longer forms,” writes Eric
Scigliano (SF). “A new book.
Love, War, and Circuses: the AgeOld Relationship Between Ele
phants and Humans was published
by Houghton Mifflin this spring.”
1976
Phyllis P. Goodman (SFGI)
became a great-grandmother on
March 22.
After over ao years as a computer
consultant serving the healthcare
industry, Jan Lisa Huttner (A) is
now devoting herself full time to
her web site FILMS FOR TWO:
THE ONLINE GUIDE FOR BUSY
COUPLES (www.films4a.com
<http://www.films4a.com/>) and
related speaking and writing proj
ects. Alumni who logged on this
summer had an extra treat-a guest
editorial by David Chute (Aya).
Landrun Hardy Mason (A)
writes: “I’m living happily in the
Connecticut countryside with my
wife and daughter. Our son is now
a freshman at MIT, and I’m in my
third career. After 10 years each as
a computer scientist and then a
corporate manager. I’m now an
investment advisor and fund manager-and loving it. Would be
thrilled to hear from any of my
friends from my abbreviated
career at St. John’s.”
1974
1977
Alla and Jeff Victoroff (A) are
pleased as punch to announce the
birth of their beautiful daughter
Maia on February 23, aooi.
1975
In addition to his editorial work at
the University of Miami in NorthSouth Center, Jose Grave de Per
alta (A) is teaching art history at
the Art and Art History Depart
ment and freehand drawing in the
WalterT. Featherly (SF) writes:
“As of July I, 2001,1 joined the
Washington D.C.-based law firm
of Patton Boggs, but I continue to
reside and work in Anchorage,
Alaska.” He’d like to hear from
any Johnnies traveling to Alaska.
Bob Elliott (A) writes: “I have
just started my own investment
banking/securities boutique after
18 years at JP Morgan. I am happy
to discuss careers on Wall Street
with interested students/alumni,
especially those in the Chicago
area where I live with my wife,
Stephanie, and three daughters.”
1978
Victor Lee Austin (SF) writes:
“In the spring of 2002, three
Austins celebrated graduation. I
received my PhD in theology at
Fordham; my dissertation title: A
Christological Social Vision: The
Uses ofChrist in the Social Encycli
cals ofJohn Paul II. But also in the
same season, our son, Michael,
received his BA from Thomas
Aquinas College; and our daugh
ter, Emily, graduated from high
school. My wife, Susan (Gavahan,
SF76), doesn’t quite know what to
think, but is enjoying some physi
cal and mental improvement of
late. (In 1993 she had brain sur
gery. ) A book of my meditations, A
Priest’s Journal, was published in
late 2001 by Church Publishing in
New York.
Peter Buck (SF) continues his
work to set up a year-long rites of
passage workshop in North Caroli
na and continues his work with
Quakers.
1980
Peter Grubb (A) writes: “2002
celebrates 18 years of marriage,
the 8th and nth birthdays of our
two lovely children (Mariah and
Jonah), and 23 years owning my
business ROW (River Odysseys
West/Remote Odysseys World
wide). ROW’S Missouri river
adventures, paddling 34-foot
canoes that replicate those of the
early fur traders along the Lewis
and Clark trail, are selling like hot
cakes. Visit ROW at
WWW. rowinc .com.”
1981
Chris Mark (A) bought a house in
Laurel, Md. in late 2000. “It’s
within earshot of I-95, so any
33
Johnnies passing through the area
are welcome to stop by for a
refreshing beverage. My email
address is cjmark@speakeasy.org.”
Matt Hartzell (A) writes:
“Amongst other fun and frolic. I’m
now on the Board of Directors for
a new bank we helped organize
and start up. The Right Bank for
Texas opened its doors May 13. I’m
still waiting for my Director’s fees,
but I guess I haven’t drawn the
right ‘Chance’ or ‘Community
Chest’ card yet!”
Marilynn R. Smith (SFGI) writes:
“I’m retiring this year from the K12 school district for which I’ve
worked for 27 years. I’ll continue
to teach, though, for the local
community college. Also I’ll have
time to spend with my 4 grandchil
dren!”
1982
Gail Donohue Storey (SFGI), a
novelist, and her husband. Dr.
Porter Storey, bicycled 2400 miles
in seven weeks from Houston,
Texas to Camden, Maine on their
tandem bicycle, fully self-support
ed with four panniers.
Kathi Sue Nash Wilson (SF) has a
daughter, Karina, who graduated
in June from the University of Cal
ifornia at the age of 19. The family,
which includes her husband Wayne,
and seven-year-old son Kennedy,
are relocating this summer.
Patty (Sowa) Rubin (A) is living
on Maryland’s Eastern Shore with
husband Eric and children Anna
(16), Madalen (12), and Alden (8).
“I’m teaching preschool music
(best teaching job I’ve had, for the
worst pay), directing church
choir, singing as soloist and as
member of local choruses. Cur
rent improbable ambitions: to
have my own office and sing Die
Wesendonk Lieder.”
David HershelWeinstein (A) has
lived in Florida since 1985 and is
still the director of research for a
brokerage firm. He’s recently
continued on p-jG
{The College. St. John’s College ■ Summer 2002 }
�{Alumni Profile}
34
Unmasking the Apocalypse
A Johnnie parodies a hest-selling series ofapocalyptic novels.
BY Sus3AN
Borden
(A87)
rebuilt and the sacrificial system reestab
lished as the world prepares for the apoca
lypse) has ridden one wave of popularity
after another since it first showed up in
the 19th century. He says that, not only
does the dispensationalists’ vision rob
Christianity of its depth and meaning, but
its promoters often have another agendato rob Christians of their
worldly possessions.
“Dispensational theolo
gy has always been a rest
ing place for thieves. In
the 1890s they said the
end of the world would be
in ten years. They got peo
ple to sell their homes,
give them their money,”
Wilson says. “Some peo
ple will take on massive
debt, do short term things
like not get married and
go off to work in the mis
sion field for what they
think is the world’s last
few years. There’s nothing
shallower than a Christ
culture with end-of-theworld fever, because
everything’s short-term
thinking.”
As Wilson has reflected
this shallow thinking in
the mirror of parody, he’s
caused a stir among a
number of readers of
the Left Behind series. “I
was expecting far more
anger,” he says, “but I got
a lot of feedback that was
positive and thoughtful. I
heard from people saying
‘thanks for letting people
know that the Left Behind
books are not the only
is sentences are stilted, his ed to demonstrate that historic Christian
nouns too often abstract. ity is much bigger than what Left Behind
His dialogue is plodding presents.”
Wilson says that dispensational theolo
and his reasoning is circu
lar. His characters are gy (the theological position that holds
stereotypes living in a world of cliches. His that God covenants with people in differ
plot is far-fetched and his descriptions are ent ways in different periods of history-in
this case requiring that the Temple be
long and largely irrelevant.
You’d think a graduate of
St. John’s and a lecturer at
New St. Andrews College
would know better.
And you’d be right.
Nathan Wilson (AGloi) is
the author of Right Behind, a
parody of the best-selling
apocalyptic novel Left
Behind. In Left Behind, the
world is confronted with the
sudden disappearance of a
significant portion of its
population as the true
believers are raptured, leav
ing a confused world of non
believers behind to discover
the truth and live out the
Bible’s apocalyptic vision.
In Right Behind, Wilson
mocks every aspect of the
book, from the heavy-hand
ed character development
to the clumsy writing. “I
wanted to imitate the writ
ing style, the thought
process, the plot structure.
I wanted to imitate into car
icature every literary aspect
of the work and its theolo
gy,” he says. But his main
goal was to reveal the perni
cious thinking behind Left
Behind’s theology-and its
success. “[Authors] LaHaye
and Jenkins have created a
Parodist Nathan Wilson with his son, Rory D.
false view of Christ. I want{The College.
St. John’s
College ■ Summer 2002
}
�{Alumni Profile}
option.’ And I heard from people who
have awakened and started reading
those hooks in light of Right Behind.
My goal was not to present a theology,
hut to trigger an investigation of
LaHaye’s and Jenkins’ ideas.”
Readers’ comments on Amazon,
com include: “It’s about time a Christ
ian who is concerned with what the
Bihle actually says writes a hook,” and
“I laughed my evangelical Christian
keister off.” Two self-proclaimed
authorities on dispensational theology
also weighed in, says Wilson: “Tim
LaHaye said my hook was funny hut
Jenkins got really, really mad.”
Those most critical of Wilson’s
book saw him as anti-Christian.
“Some people got really fired up and
thought I was blaspheming against
Christianity and attacking God,” says
Wilson. “But I was most certainly not
doing that. I was attacking a new and
not too long-lived movement in the
evangelical world.”
Far from being prone to take pot
shots at Christianity, Wilson comes
from a Christian background and
takes religion seriously. “My parents
came out of the ‘Jesus People’ move
ment in the ’70s. It was a bunch of hip
pies who moved on from ‘make love
not war’ to somehow find the doc
trines of Christ. My dad became a pas
tor in a Jesus People church in an auto
body shop.”
Wilson’s father is still pastor of
that church, which has become a
Presbyterian church, and Wilson
describes his parents now as oldguard historic Protestants. “I’ve lived
through most of that process,” he
says. “I was born into the body shop
church, and am now currently attend-
From Right Behind
BY Nathan D. Wilson
Buff sat by his window in business class and watched
the sun come up like a single tooth in a bleeding gum.
f He remembered that time in Israel. You know, that
J time when he became a deist and began to think that
I he led a charmed life because he always was, to coin a
phrase, in the right place at the right time.
An old woman sat across the aisle from him, a passed
out drunk next to him. He turned from his window and
looked at the old woman. She had a pair of cotton
nylon blend underpants in one hand and dentures in
the other. She stared at Buff in shock.
“Excuse me mister,” she said.
“Yes?” Buff said.
“He’s gone. My Harold’s gone. He’s just gone, van
ished, disappeared. Could you help me find him?”
“I’m afraid that there is going to be no finding him
Ma’am.”
“Why?”
“Has he left all material things behind him, clothes,
dentures, hairpiece?”
“’Ves.”
“Then he has finally turned his back on this world of
matter and all things evil. He has jumped right out of
the corruption that matter entails. He has taken every
thing essential to his being and left the rest behind. He
has reached the enlightened world of Forms where
there is no jewelry but spiritual jewels, where dentures
cannot go, where everyone is naked. He has been
Raptured.”
“How do you know?” the woman said.
“I write bad apocalyptic fiction. 1 know things.
Endtimes are my game.”
{The College
Sf.
John’s College • Summer 2002 }
35
ing that Presbyterian church.”
In addition to leading the church,
Wilson’s father founded the Logos
School, a K-ia classical school, and
New St. Andrews College, where Wil
son got his BA in 1999. “I came out of
there looking for a graduate liberal arts
program. The only thing that was
appealing was St. John’s. I was already
addicted to great books, having been
boiled in them at an early age. After
experiences with courses in other
schools, I thought St. John’s was ideal.”
Wilson has now returned to New St.
Andrews College as a part-time lecturer
in literature and will teach Euclid’s
geometry and classical rhetoric this
fall. He’s also managing editor of
Credenda/Agenda, a magazine he
describes as “a philosophically and reli
giously Trinitarian cultural journal.”
He’s working on study guides for Par
adise Lost and Faerie Queen for Veritas
Publishing in Pennsylvania and is in the
process of editing a collection of arti
cles comparing Islam and Christianity.
Wilson’s Right Behind publisher.
Canon Press, is thinking of following up
with another parody. Wilson favors a
Christian romance novel.
As for the theology that served as
counter-inspiration for Right Behind,
it’s still out there, more popular than
ever. The Left Behind series has sold
over 50 million books in 2,1 languages.
Left Behind products include 10 nov
els, five graphic novels, a6 children’s
books, several audio tapes, a calendar,
and a movie. For his part, Wilson does
not see its continued influence and
success as an impediment to his beliefs.
“I think the evangelical church is a
mess,” he says, “but I still count myself
part of it.”
�{AlumniNotes}
36
spent some time studying counter
bioterrorism and Joseph Camp
bell.
Jim (A84) AND Tish Heysell’s (A)
daughter, Maria, who was carried
across the graduation stage in
1983 as an infant when Tish grad
uated from St. John’s, has finished
her freshman year. She enjoyed
her year and loves the “great con
versation.”
Elizabeth Colmant Estes (A)
writes: “After nine years climbing
the corporate ladder at AT&T, I
found myself pregnant and ready
for new life. Joined a creative web
firm where I was the oldest
employee. Got bought out by a
bigger firm in moo. Watched the
web business disappear and my
colleagues with it. Took home the
plants and lo-foot giraffes this
week. Setting up my home office
as a business consultant. Helping
companies like the New York
Times and Morgan Stanley Dean
Witter to go paperless. Working
6o-hour weeks but mostly from
home where I can watch two-yearold Olivia play in the garden
below. This May I joined my son
Michael, 17, in Italy where he
spent the year with his sabbaticalized dad.”
Ruth Ann Smith Plummer (A)
says hello to anyone who might
remember her. She asks her old
friends to email her if they will be
attending the aoth reunion:
r.plummer@ntlworld.com.
1983
Lyn DesMarais (A) writes: “Our
kids are growing, healthy, and
active. We are engaged in a lot of
music, mainly bluegrass, and hope
to have a barn full of animals by
winter.”
From Margaret S. Mertz (SF):
“Santa Fe Class of’83 alums-where
are you? I am in my 3rd year as the
Dean of General Studies at the
North Carohna School of the Artsfinally a winning combination of
my St. John’s years in the context of
a performing arts conservatory.
Email is always welcome:
msmertz@mindspring.com.”
1986
Amy Bianco (SF) is living in
Sleepy Hollow, New York, and
working as a science editor at large
for Princeton University Press.
Her email address is amybianco@earthlink.net.
Daniel Schoos (A) participated in
1984
Liz Travis (SF) writes: “Leaving
my role in higher education was
tough, but I originally picked St.
John’s with the intention of going
on to become a lawyer, and when I
found that an annual ski pass was a
part of the deal I knew I belonged
here in Mammoth. If ever you are
wandering in the Eastern Sierras,
look me up; the door will be open.”
Er. Robert John NicoLETn, M.J.
(SF) is living in Ukraine and
searching for benefactors for an
orphanage for 14 children (soon to
be many more) and a soup kitchen
(serving over 350 people a day).
“Greetings to all my friends from
St. John’s,” writes Reth KoolBECK (A). “I keep very busy home
schooling each of our four school
age children. (We have two
preschoolers, as well.) This
sounds a lot harder than it is,
since the older kids do much of
the chores. The hardest part is
getting along with each other,
which we do for the most part. It’s
never dull, and sometimes we
have moments of glory.”
Elizabeth and John Rush (SF) and
Salem and Loran say hello from
the mountains ofVirginia.
Chris Rutkowski (A) is thrilled to
announce the birth of her daugh
ter, Rose Adelajda Rutkowski.
Russell Titus (A) writes: “It’s an
Sarah DeKorne (A) writes: “I am
exciting year for me. I have a new
job with terrific training facilities
and my wife and I are expecting
our third child in September.
Hmmm...ril be 63 when this child
graduates high school.”
working as a technical writer for a
medical software company. My
daughters, Cecelia and Helen, are
now 14 and 13.1 am remarrying in
the fall, Mark Howe. I hope to see
my classmates at our 30th
reunion.”
the Washington, D.C. AIDS ride
in June, a 330-mile bicycle trek
from Norfolk to Washington, D.C.
Stephanie Rico (A) writes: “Todd
(Todd Peterson, A87) was hang
ing out as ship’s surgeon on the
U.S.S. Stennis in the Arabian Gulf
while Steph was waiting for their
first child to arrive. Todd was
sorry to miss the birth, but came
home in May. Steph taught high
school physics up until the day it
all happened. Exciting times for
both of us.”
Elisabeth Long (A) is currently
splitting her time between co
directing the Digital Library
Development Center at the Uni
versity of Chicago and her latest
endeavor-getting an MFA in book
and paper arts at Columbia Col
lege. She had her first piece in a
gallery show in January. It was
based on the 3 Fates.
1987
Michael David (SF) writes: “Left
Sandia Labs in October 3000,
tried technology marketing con
sulting until recession arrived.
Been teaching algebra and geome
try at Sandia High School in Albu
querque. Students loved Euclid
Book I and doing propositions. I47 is still fun. Now looking for
business position.”
Sallie Fine Lewin (A) writes: “On
March 34th I married Michael
Lewin in Cleveland, Ohio. While
not a Johnnie, Mike did win the
approval of many of our fold. We
were thrilled that Jerry Abrams
(A87), Dave Heimann (A87),
SheilaMonen’Virgil (A88),
Linda Hamm Grez (A86), Tamara
{The College- St. John^s College ■ Summer 2002 }
(A87) AND Jerome Downey (A86),
Jo Ann (A87) AND Walter Matt
son (A87), and Joe Miller (A89)
could join us as we celebrated the
start of our new life together.
After a fabulous honeymoon in
Australia, we’re adjusting well to
our new filing status.”
1988
Sarah Waters (A) writes: “I’m
back on Kent Island and loving it.
I’m senior designer for Vanguard
Communications in Washington,
D.C., and doing my art on the
side. Would love to hear from my
classmates. Come visit.”
1989
George Erhard (SF) writes: “I
am currently working as an Inter
net technical course developer and
instructor and have recently re
discovered philosophy by way of
motorcycling”
Joe Miller (A) will move from
Chicago to Portland, Oregon in
late May. He will join the faculty of
Lewis & Clark Law School as an
assistant professor teaching intel
lectual property and evidence law
courses.
Heidi Ann Hoogstra (SF) writes:
“I am primarily responsible for
getting a new Buddhist Peace Fel
lowship chapter started for Port
land, Oregon. I am also the con
tact person for this new chapter. I
would love to hear from folks (you
know who you are). My email
address is enji@earthlink.net.”
Sophie Ehrhardt (Romano) (SF)
writes: “Mac and I still find our
selves in the heartland with (his)
family business and (my) growing
Montessori school, and enough
community involvement to drown
in. We know we have the two
smartest and most beautiful chil
dren this side of the Mississippi
River. If anyone knows where John
Ange (SF88) is, drop me an email:
orchards@deskmedia,com.”
�{AlumniNotes}
Jennifer Rogers Hoheisel (AGI)
writes: “Eric, Will, Luke, and I
are beginning to put down roots in
New Jersey. I just got a tenure
track teaching job in philosophy at
Camden County College. This fall
has been quite a time to contem
plate and ‘teach’ ethics, especially
with a wonderfully diverse group
of students. I continue to be an
evangelist for St. John’s style semi
nars. Eric is enjoying his 5th year
as a pastor at a local church that is
geographically and economically
between Camden and Haddon
field, New Jersey. Will is in third
grade, and Luke just started
kindergarten. We miss everyone at
St. John’s!”
Joy Kaplan (SF87) came for a
quick trip to Texas, where she vis
ited with Dixie Davis (A), Jim
Tourtelott (A73), and ran into
Kevin Heyburn (SF86) at a book
signing.
Beverly Angel (SFGI) graduated
in May from University of Texas
School of Law. She was recently
selected as one of 16 third year stu
dents (out of a class of 450) for
Peregrinus Consul. Consuls are
chosen for recognition based on
leadership and service to the law
school community. She hopes to
practice general civil litigation
after graduation. She is currently
clerking part-time at Hilgers &
Watkins, a mid-size Austin firm.
Rick Craven (A) writes: “Rick and
his wife Debbie were expecting
their first baby in July. They can be
reached at 2007 Bent Tree Loop,
Round Rock, TX 78681; rpcrfaven@hotmail.com. We’d love to
hear your news and visitors are
welcome! ”
Jeanne Blackmore (nee
Duvoisev) (A) writes: “I’ve never
written into the alumni magazine;
after all these years, I guess it’s
time! To start from the beginning,
I became a lawyer (ugh, I know,
how boring) after college, and
wound up practicing tax
law/mergers & acquisitions for
Ernst & Young’s San Jose office.
After too many years of that, I met
my husband and we decided to
take two years off from real jobs to
work for an animal rescue group in
beautiful southern Utah, Best
Friends Animal Sanctuary. We ran
their mobile adoption program for
dogs, and loved it. My firm never
let me quit completely, but for
some unknown reason asked me to
continue working part time from
home in a research and writing
capacity. This fall, after we fin
ished our two year stint in Utah,
we returned to the East Coast in
Burlington, Vermont. We are
enjoying it very much, snow and
all. I’m back to work full time for
Ernst & Young from my home
office-much better than a real
office.
Somewhere in all of that, we had
a baby boy named Benjamin Rex.
He’s eight months old now, and we
think he’s a blast! But, I guess all
parents think that about their
babies!
Over the years. I’ve kept in
touch with Garfield Goodrum
(A89); he and his wife Lucy just
relocated to Vermont. They have a
beautiful spread near Woodstock,
with horses, guest houses, and the
like. We’re contemplating moving
in with them. I’ve also kept in
touch with Alexandra Kambouris-Alberstadt (A87), who
lives in NYC and just had her sec
ond baby-a boy. And Sandro
Battaglia (A90) got married last
year and then narrowly (phew) sur
vived the WTC disaster. All three
are lawyers-egads!
I’d love to hear from any John
nies in the area or from any of my
long lost classmates! Feel free to
e-mail atjeannevt@adelphia.net.”
1990
Kevin Graham (A) has been
granted tenure and promoted to
the rank of associate professor of
philosophy at Creighton Universi
ty, the Jesuit University of Omaha.
Graham Harman’s (A) book,
Tool-Being: Heidegger and the
Metaphysics of Objects, is available
from Open Court Publishing.
Jonathan Ying (A) earned a mas
ter of industrial and labor rela
tions from Cornell University in
37
May, 2001. During his studies at
Cornell he was an intern at Amgen
and General Mills. Jon is currently
a human resources manager at
Texas Instruments’ Wireless Ter
minals business unit. His email
address is jyingioo@yahoo.com.
Sean P. Scally (AGI) and Debo
rah S. Scally NEE Lilly (AGI91)
have relocated to 9107 Demery
Court, Brentwood, Tennessee
37027 (615-373-1094). Deborah is
the editor of Bank Director Maga
zine and Board Member Magazine
and can be reached at
dscally@boardmemmber.com.
Sean is University counsel and Tax
Attorney for Vanderbilt University
and Medical Center and can be
reached at sean.scally@vanderbilt.edu. “We have two wonderful
children: Case, age 8 and Molly,
age 5,” writes Sean. “Both of us
miss all our GI classmates and
tutors and the special program
that is SJC. We’d also like to hear
from Johnnies who are near
Nashville even if you are just pass
ing through!”
Ken Turnbull (A) recently
changed law firms and is now an
associate in the Washington, D.C.
office of Orrick, Herrington and
Sutcliffe, LLP, a firm that origi
nated in San Francisco. On May 4
he married Leslie Spiegel, who
also is a lawyer in D.C. “I’d love to
hear from old friends at my email
address: kturnbull@orrick.com.”
From the parents of Mickey MeriCLE (AGI91): “In 2001, seeking to
cut back to a 10 hour day from the
hectic life of a consultant, Mickey
took a pay cut and accepted a posi
tion with Kinko’s. Six months later
Kinko’s CEO laid off most of the
California workforce and moved
their headquarters to Dallas, so
Mickey returned to one of her pre
vious employers, OFDA. The
Office of Foreign Disaster Assis
tance was glad to have her back
and posted her to Sierra Leone,
Liberia, and Mali. They also gave
her a global positioning system to
pinpoint possible landing strips
for small planes as she traveled
around Western Africa.
“From beautiful Freetown, high
on a hill overlooking the ocean,
via satellite phone, Mickey sighs
wistfully and says, ‘Someday I’ll
find a job where I can stay in one
place long enough to have a per
sonal life and have Murphy and
McDuff’ (her two bassets).
“The caretakers of M and M sigh
and hope for this too.
“Mickey’s diplomatic pouch
address is 2160 Freetown Place,
Dulles, VA 20521-2160. Her per
sonal email (bassetpal@aol.com)
at 9600 baud is available but not
answered often.”
1992
1991
Lani Makholm (AGI) writes: “I’m
Deirdre Routt (A) has taken a
position as a cataloger and refer
ence librarian at the main branch
of the Omaha Public Library.
Sally Henderson Keller (SFGI)
writes: “I am in my roth year of
teaching Honors Philosophy at the
high school level. Bruce Grigsby
(SGI95) was a great help during
the early design stages. I designed
the course featuring the seminar
method as a key component. It was
approved in 1991 and I’ve been
teaching it every year since that
time. I was honored to be chosen
the Teacher of the year 2001 (dis
{The College. 5t. John ’5 College ■ Summer 2002
trict #60, Pueblo, Go.). Again, a
graduate of St. John’s, Lenore
Trujillo (SGI95), was one of my
strongest supporters.”
}
currently through my church tak
ing a six-month certificate course
on the Islam faith. Also through
the U.S. Dept, of State I have
recently completed a two-week
course on the Near East and
Africa. When I graduated from St.
John’s, I was working for the U.S.
Information Agency which merged
in 1999 with the State Depart
ment. For the USIA, I worked pri
marily with educational and cul
tural exchanges but since the
merger, have had to get up to
speed on politics and U.S. policies
in the countries for which I am
responsible. I hope through my
�{AlumniNotes}
38
studies on the Near East to be led
to short-term mission work in
Islamic countries.”
Elyette Kirby, formerly Elyette
Block (SF), writes: “I’ve moved to
Tunbridge Wells, UK, originally
for work but am now a stay-athome mom to Benjamin and am
expecting another baby this Sep
tember. I’m always interested in
meeting up with old friends who
may be in the area.”
Victoria Burgess (SF) writes: “I
was able to catch up with Nicole
Kalman Levy (SF93) this past
August when I was in the U.S.
which was super. I am still hving
in London and would love to get in
touch with any Johnnies in the
London area.”
Greg Francke’s (A) piece,
“Israeli actions toward Palestini
ans a crying shame,” was published in April in The Citizen.
sense that I would become a
farmer. My ii-year-old mutt,
Judas, and I have been working at
Organic Herbs Unlimited in Sara
sota since September. Among the
many reasons I moved to Florida,
learning to grow food organically
is an aromatic challenge. I am also
in the process of publishing a
memoir and a collection of shorter
work, mostly poetry. At 31,1 am a
vegan, Quaker, divorcee without
an undergraduate degree! Educa
tion is a luxury for which I am
grateful every day, and hope to
finish only with a final breath. In
the meantime, Johnnies are always
welcome.”
Michael A. Baldwin (SFGI) is
now a Program Manager for the
Community Development Block
Grant Program for the Local Gov
ernment Division for the Depart
ment of Finance and Administra
tion for the State of New Mexico.
Joseph Walter Sterling FV (A)
Jim Cachey (SFGI) has recently
opened his own real estate broker
age firm in Chicago. His website is
www.jimcachey.com.
Dawn Beltz Pollard (AGI98) and
Phil Pollard (AGI93) have three
daughters-Eleanore, Anna, and
Thea. They’re opening a Waldorfinspired school in Knoxville. Phil
plays lots of drums and has about
75 music students.
writes: “Since June 2000 I have
had the privilege of working for
Project H.O.M.E., a non-profit
organization in Philadelphia dedi
cated to helping individuals break
the cycle of homelessness. Being a
part of this community has been
the most extraordinary experience
and blessing for me. I continue to
work (slowly) on my doctoral the
sis in philosophy at Emory U.”
Kevin Johnson (A) writes: “Even
1993
Sharon Fitzpatrick (A) writes:
“Despite prestigious ambitions as
an adolescent, I had an intuitive
though I was never married, I can
faithfully report that I am single
again. And loving it.”
Sarah Louise Horton Stilwell was
born March a, aooa to Millicent
and McDavid Stilwell (both A).
Laura Anne Stuart (A) writes: “I
recently started a new job as the
health educator for students at
MIT. I am also a new member of
the board of the Boston Women’s
Health Book Collective, Publish
ers of Our Bodies, Ourselves. This
spring. I’ll wrap up a sexuality
education program for 7th and Sth
graders that I’ve been teaching
since last fall at the Cambridge
Unitarian-Universalist Church. I
spend most of my days and nights
talking about sex, which is great! ”
Thomas Hammerman (A) finished
his master’s degree in library sci
ence and is now the Hebrew mono
graphic cataloger at University of
Chicago.
The Ellermans write: “Alex
(AGI): Much to my amazement
and chagrin, the Navy’s promoting
me to Lieutenant Commander this
year; just in time for my resigna
tion. We’re planning to move back
to the D.C. area, where I’ll look
for an airline job. Vanessa (A): I’m
coming up on my and year at my
law firm here in Corpus Christi
and I’m celebrating by taking up
triathlon racing. I’m looking for
ward to finding a good law firm in
the D.C. area and settling down for
awhile. Ian (SFaa): I can count to
four now! ”
Kyle Linzer (SF and EC95) is hav
ing a great time teaching dance
and yoga at Rio Rancho High
School, and “living world’s rehgions” and philosophy for UNM.
He’d love to hear from alumni. His
email is Nikosdad@aol.com.
Jeffrey Spencer Wright (SFGI)
writes: “I received a National
Endowment for the Humanities
Fellowship last summer and so got
to spend last summer in San
Diego, California, as part of a sixweek seminar titled “Greek Values
in Crisis: Thucydides, Sophocles,
and Plato.” Pat Harnett (SGIoi)
was also one of the 15 participants
from around the United States.
Marvelous experience!! Carmel
High School’s philosophy class,
utilizing a real seminar method,
continues to flourish. Motivated
high school kids can read and
think and conduct real seminars!”
Phoebe Merrin Carter (SF)
writes: My husband Greg and I had
a baby boy in September, named
Dylan Guthrie, and we are really
enjoying being parents. I am the
Youth Services manager for the
Weber County Library System in
Ogden, Utah. Since I’m out of
touch with many of my old friends.
I’d like to say hi to everyone. My
e-mail address is pcarter@weberpl.hb.ut.us.”
Nancy Marcus (A) has been
named the Director of the Nation
al Abortion Federation’s Depart
ment of State Public Policy. She
continues to live in the D.C. area
with her cat Nicoless (whose name
reflects Nancy’s ongoing struggle
to quit smoking). Nancy welcomes
email from Johnnies at nmarcus@prochoice.org.
AnthonyChiffolo’s (AGI) sixth
book, too Names ofMary, has just
been published by St. Anthony
Messenger Press.
1995
Aaron Fredrickson (SF) writes:
A Year in Tuscany
1994
Mosheh Vineberg (SF) writes: “I
Anne Schuchman (A) and James Berrettini (AGI93) write: “We
spent the past academic year living in a i6th century farmhouse on
the outskirts of Florence, Italy. Anne had a Fulbright grant to do dis
sertation research on a 13th-century woman mystic and Jim quit his
job and is currently a full-time dad to Samuel, now 3. We returned to
New York (and to reality) in July. Baby #2 is expected in October so it
looks Uke we’re going to miss Homecoming (again). Maybe Croquet
2003? Anne can be reached at; ams8050@nyu.edu and Jim at
jpb@alum.mit.edu.
think an exciting life is accessible
to everyone everywhere, wherever
you find yourself, provided that
you listen to your heart and make a
little time each day or each week
to cultivate your dream and life
purpose. My dream/purpose is to
live as a Jew in Israel, build a fami
ly, learn Torah and make art.”
{The College. 5t. John’s College . Summer aooa }
“I’ve had an eventful fewyears. The
condensed version is that my wife
and I have returned to my native
soil in the San Francisco Bay Area
after finishing law school and
spending a mostly futile year in Vir
ginia. I’d very much like to speak
with any Johnny lawyers hving in
the area, as I’ll be taking the bar
this July and am curious about what
is, by reputation, the hardest bar
exam in the nation. Also, I’d love to
speak with any current or former
Johnnies contemplating law school;
�{AlumniNotes}
Sarah Van Deusen Flynn (A)
writes: “We are finishing our tour
in Guam, which has been wonder
ful. In September 02, we are head
ing back to the D.C. area. I am
leaving medical school for good to
he with my two boys.”
Texts for Tots
Mike Layne (SF95) writes: “My wife, Rachael, and I have been mar
ried three years as of June la, 2002, Our daughter, Audrey Rae
Layne, was born on February 12, 2002, in Anchorage. I spend at least
30 minutes each day reading her sections of Rousseau’s Discourse on
the Origin ofInequality and Emile. Marx is next on our reading list.
We are still living in Barrow, Alaska, and I am working as a counselor
at an emergency shelter for youth. Would love to hear from SJC
alumni and tutors. You can email me at mike_layne@hotmail.com.”
Faith Echele (SF) writes: “I am
it’s not as bad (or good) as you
might expect! I can be reached at
aefredrickson@rocketmail.com
if any of you would like to get in
touch.
someone who remembers the peo
ple who shared her St. John’s expe
rience more fondly than you might
imagine is welcome to do that at
webmaster@franzworld.de.”
Janet Sutherland (SFGl) writes:
Sean Stickle (A) writes: “I am in
“I finished seminary, moved to
Kansas City, and started a church.
Go figure. I’m also writing a book.
My web site is www.churchofantioch.org/coakc.html or write me at
suncliff@planetkc .com.”
love with and married to a woman
of profound excellence, who is
applying to the Graduate Institute
to acquire her own SJC-style edu
cation. On less important fronts, I
am employed as the Senior Manag
er of Information Systems at the
Corporation for Enterprise Devel
opment, a national nonprofit
research and economic develop
ment outfit, where most of my
time is taken up with the spectacu
lar intricacies of XML routing and
financial systems integration. I
encourage any Johnnies who want
to get into the bizarro world of
IT/IS to drop me an email at stickle@cfed.org. The field needs more
people who have read the Posteri
or Analytics. Really.”
In August, Aaron Benjamin
Rutherford (AGI) will begin his
fourth year and his internship at
Southern College of Optometry in
Memphis, Tennessee. His address
is 543 Par Drive/ Apt. 12/ Marion,
Arkansas 72364.
Angelika Franz (SF) writes:
“One among many things St.
John’s made me believe in was to
follow one’s call-which I already
put into practice with my decision
to leave the college after my fresh
man year. The fascination with
Greeks and Romans, however, has
never left me and led me to a PhD
in classical archaeology last sum
mer. After having done archaeolo
gy (among other things like waitressing and organizing
humanitarian aid transports into
Kosovo) for some nine years, the
call to follow was something else
St. John’s made me believe in: the
power of words. So I traded in the
ancient stones for current events
and am now working as a freelance
journalist. I guess what still sums
it up for me today, ten years after
having left St. John’s, are the four
wise words of Mr. Aigla: ‘Trust no
one. Trust yourself. Read every
thing twice. Enjoy life.’ Anyone
who cares to spare a few words for
Thea Agnew (SF) writes: “I’m
self-employed as a consultant to
rural communities, mostly work
ing on planning community proj
ects and seeking funding. Still liv
ing between Anchorage and
McCarthy. Getting married this
fall out in McCarthy. Saw Mike
Layne (SF) and Rachael, his wife,
and his beautiful new baby Audrey.
Will be seeing them again in Bar
row later this month.”
Gil Roth’s (AGI) publishing com
pany, Voyant Publishing, has
recently released two novels: Paul
West’s The Place in Flowers Where
Pollen Rests and Samuel R.
Delany’s The Mad Man. He hopes
to reissue Walter Pater’s On Plato
and Platonism in 2003.
{The College.
St.
currently teaching lower elemen
tary, ages 6-9, at Henson Valley
Montessori School in Temple
Hills, Maryland. I would enjoy
connecting with St. John’s alumni
in the Maryland/DC area. Also,
Henson Valley Montessori is in
need of Great Books discussion
leaders. We are looking for people
willing to volunteer once a week
to guide literature discussions
with elementary students.”
Tucker Braddock (A) writes:
Married an Aussi in Sydney in
December 1998. Live in Annapo
lis, work in Washington making
money. Daughter born December
2001: Ivy Elizabeth. 7 lbs. 13 oz...
In case you’re wondering, still
interested in Jesus; haven’t found
Hinduism, Ms. Hack.”
Rohert A Gammon II (SGIEC)
graduated May 19 from the Uni
versity of Hawaii with a PhD in
East Asian Languages and Litera
tures (Chinese). His dissertation
is titled “A common architecture
for expressing linguistic theories:
With illustrations from Chinese
languages, cognitive grammar,
and software engineering.” He
was selected to participate in a
National Science Foundation
summer program in Taiwan.
Patricia Greer (AGI) received a
PhD from the University of Vir
ginia in May, in history of reli
gion. Her dissertation is titled
“The Net of the Mahabharata.”
Ms. Greer is a tutor at St. John’s in
Santa Fe.
In December 2001 Benjamin
Friedman (SF) earned his MFA in
film and television production
from the University of Southern
California. He’s living in L.A. and
looking for a job in the entertain
ment industry.
Tracy Whitcomb (A) and Josh
SiLBERSTElN (A94) are now
John’s College ■ Summer 2002 }
39
engaged. They’re planning a fall
2003 wedding.
1996
Adrien Dawson nee Gehring (A)
finished seminary in May and was
ordained in June at the Baltimore
Episcopal Cathedral. She and her
husband, Sean, moved from NYC
to the Towson area following grad
uation. Adrien is now the assistant
rector at Trinity Church, Towson,
Md.
Amy Jane King (SF), formerly Amy
Jane Borsick-Stanton, writes: “I
am back in NM, studying Spanish
and silversmithing, making arts
and crafts. I am also a balloon
twister, you know, I make balloon
animals.”
Ezra Nathaniel Hubbard (SF)
writes: “After making movies in
L.A. and New York, met wife on
tropical island of Hawaii and got
married June 23, 2001 in St. Louis,
Missouri. Now live in Taos, New
Mexico, where we are very happy—
would love to have any alums come
and stay with us.”
1997
Salvatore Scibona (SF) received a
Pushcart Prize for one of his short
stories. It was published in the
Pushcart Book ofShort Stories: the
Best Storiesfrom a Quarter-Centu
ry ofthe Pushcart Prize in January.
Salvatore is currently a Fiction Fel
low at The Fine Arts Work Center
in Provincetown, Mass.
Leslie Norton (AGI) is unem
ployed at the moment. She is try
ing to change careers from teach
ing to working for an international
aid organization. If you read this
and you can help, feel free to con
tact her. She’s in the SJC Alumni
Directory. Leslie is in touch with
Aaron Mannes who spends his days
writing serious stuff about the
Middle East (he’s looking for a job
too) and she also remains in con
tact with George Strawley-he’s
still working for AP in Penna.
�{AlumniNotes}
40
Artist Inya Laskowski (SFGI)
showed her work at two solo shows
in 2,002,: Gallery Route One, Point
Reyes, Calif, (encaustic minia
tures) and Sebastopol Center for
the Arts, Sebastopol, Calif, (recent
work). She will also exhibit in a
two-person show at Pacific Union
College, Angwin, Calif, in Septem
ber as well as several group shows
throughout the year. She says her
art is moving into a new phase
because she now has use of
a large press.
Larissa N. Parson (A) is still in
grad school-slowly working
toward her Classics PhD. She’s
taken up running marathons.
Diane Marie Shires (SFGI) and
Christopher Patrick English
(SFGI97) were happily married on
December 37, 3001 on Santa
Catalina Island, Avalon, Calif.
They note that this was 135 years
to the day Darwin set off aboard
the HMS Beagle. Tricia Daigle
(SFGI97) was in attendance.
Jehanne Dubrow (A) is currently
Billy Sothern and Nikki Page
at the University of Maryland
working on an MFA in poetry. She
attended writing workshops at the
University of Prague this past
summer.
(both A) were married in their gar
den at their home in New Orleans,
La. on March 30, 3003.
JillNienhiser (SFGI) is now the
Director of Writing and Web
Development at Mind & Media,
Inc. in Alexandria, Virginia.
1998
Stephen Conn (SF) found himself
in New York City for most of 30013003, involved in film and art
studies, as well as being an intern
with the Pulse Theatre. While
studying at the New York Film
Academy he made three short
films, two of which relate to Sep
tember II, while the third is a little
vignette which features Steve as
the main character. These films
were recently shown at an under
ground film event in New York
City. There is a copy of these three
short films on VHS in Meem
Library at St. John’s College in
Santa Fe. He sends his love to all
his old friends at St. John’s.
David Turney (AGI) writes: “Wife
Stephanie (Bardis) recently gave
birth to our first child, Christo
pher David. I gave up France and
goat cheese adventures for a
career in scientific publishing with
Reed-Elsevier. Contact us: writerscramp@worldnet.att.net.’’
Marjorie Roueche (A) writes:
“We are expecting a baby girl,
though we’re still working on a
befitting Greek name.”
Dawn Star Borchelt (A) sends
what she calls a silly rhyme:
“Though I live not far away/To
Annapolis, I rarely stray./Early
Autumn, Early Spring/Never
work. You see the thing/Is that
work requires my presence/Most
often at these times ofyear./Alas
my fond, fond alma mater-/Many
moons shall pass’ere I draw near.”
Lorna Anderson (SF) became
Lorna Johnson on May 35, when
she married Aaron Johnson at the
Woman’s Club of Evanston in
Evanston, Illinois. Aaron is a clas
sical pianist who received his mas
ter’s degree in music performance
from Northwestern University in
1993 and has been performing
original and classical composi
tions in the Midwest and east
coast. Lorna is pursuing publica
tion of her poetry in various jour
nals and has become an active
member of RHINO: The Poetry
Forum, an annual poetry journal
based in Evanston. She welcomes
anyone passing through Chicago,
and can be reached at velvet_6o636@yahoo.com.
1999
Paul Ronco (SF) writes: “Hi all,
hope everything is going well for
you out there in the real world.
What more should I say? The
Army was fun, St. John’s was fun
ner [sic]. Drop me a line at pronco@hotmail.com anytime.”
Cheryl Hut (AGI) writes: “I am
living in Scotland with my 3-yearold son, Gabriel, who was born a
week after graduation. I am work
ing on an M. Litt in Shakespeare
Studies at the University of St.
Andrew’s and love this town by the
sea. I would love to hear from any
St. John’s alumni in Great
Britain.”
TracyNecroux (A) graduated
from St. Andrews in June. She’s
now living in Ilhnois and hopes to
begin teaching soon.
Greg W. Koehlert (SF) writes:
“Moved from Atlanta to New York
City in June. Teaching in an LD
High School-Enghsh, History,
Outdoor Education, and yes,
Euclid Book i.”
Ruth Busco (SF) writes: “I am
currently enrolled at the Tradi
tional Acupuncture Institute in
Columbia, Md., where I am pursu
ing a master’s degree in acupunc
ture. I ivill start seeing patients in
September-anyone in the area
interested in the institute or in
acupuncture treatment please feel
free to contact me by phone 410313-0991 or email (rmbusko@hotmail.com)!”
2000
Abigail Weinberg (SF) has been
accepted into a masters program at
the School of Forestry and Environ
mental Studies at Yale University.
Andrew Burgard (SF) is attend
ing an intensive Czech language
program at Indiana University.
Anne Berven (SF), Alexis Brown
(SF), and RaifeNeuman (SFoi),
will not leave the college. Mr. Neu
man is constantly outside smoking,
contemplating which office he will
work for. Ms. Brown is attempting
to finish the EC program and her
last pack of cigarettes. Ms. Berven
is communing tvith the young
minds of America while she
attempts to find her car keys.
Eowyn Levene (A) has been work
ing in an organic, brick-oven bakery
(The College. St. John’s College ■ Summer 2002 }
for the pastyear or so and has
recently spent a few months travelhng in New Zealand. She is begin
ning a two-year apprenticeship to
get her diploma in biodynamic agri
culture. She will be doing this at a
community for the mentally dis
abled in Gloucestershire, England.
Paul Spradley (A) writes: “Hello
ya’ll! I’m still teaching math in the
Mississippi Delta and am fixin’ to
graduate from the University of
Mississippi with a master’s degree
in curriculum and instruction. In
addition to my teaching duties I
have been made head baseball
coach. Unfortunately, that sport
was not well covered in intramu
rals in Annapolis.”
Anna Marissa Abbott (SF) writes:
“I am interested in knotving about
job opportunities in Santa Fe. I’m
currently working part-time at a
Sylvan Learning Center (as I have
been for the past year). Hello
Kelsey Bennett, wherever you are,
I hope you are happy. Jennifer
Rogers, Matthew Duffy, and
Kathy Pluth-1 send you my
regards and God bless...”
Karina Noel Hean (A) writes: “I
am moving back to New Mexico to
start an MFA program in fall 3003
at NMSU in Las Cruces. Feel free
to stop by for a visit! Have had a
lot of luck getting artist residen
cies, one in Harper’s Ferry, W.V.
and one at VSC, Vt. And a few
small shows. (P.S. did not go to
Amsterdam, not enough $$.)
email: karinahean@hotmail.com”
Christopher Vaughan (A) recent
ly visited Fletcher Cunniff (A) in
Catonsville. Christopher writes:
“I’m attending and loving every
minute of Flagler College. I hope
to get my degree in deaf education
by 3005. All of my former class
mates are in my prayers. If anyone
is near St. Augustine let me know.
I would love to hear from any
alums. Best wishes to old friends
like Tim Freeman (Aoi), Adella
Fay (SF), PaulNino (A), and
Claudine Cristoforides (A). At
first I was bitter about getting dis
enabled. Now I am just proud of
the time I had with you all at such
a wonderful school! ”
�{Alumni Notes}
Alice Baldwin (SF) writes; “I
hope everyone is well!”
fall. I thought four alumni in one
department was strange enough to
be worth noting.”
Alan Rubenstein (A) won a Uni
versity Fellowship to study lin
guistics at Georgetown University
this fall.
Lizzie Jump (A) writes: “I just fin
ished a year of service to Volunteer
Maryland (an AmeriCorps pro
gram) in Baltimore at the Neigh
borhood Design Center. I’m prob
ably going to move to North
Carolina and start working
towards a master’s degree in psy
chology. Folks should feel free to
email me if they’ve questions
about AmeriCorps.” Lizzie’s email
is iameloise@yahoo.com.
Wyatt Dowling (A) writes: “I just
finished my first year of graduate
school at Boston College in the
political science department. Eric
Dempsey (Aoo) is here too and two
other Johnnies, Steve Ide (SFoi)
and Jonathan Culp (Aoi) are
starting grad school at BC in the
2001
so that I may really focus on this
opportunity. I’ll most likely try to
make a move into journalism and
catering when I return. If I
return.”
Ian Mullet (SF) and Ben Judson
ing forward to retirement. Big ups
and much love coming out of
Crimebridge.”
(SF) are both teaching in San
Antonio, Tex. at Judson Montes
sori School, which is run by Ben’s
parents, James Judson (SFGI95)
and Gay Judson.
Talley ScROGGS (A) writes: “Upon
Basil Bryan Thorpe Cleveland
finishing my seven weeks as a
“debutante” student at L’Ecole
Francaise at Middlebury College my
goal was to move to France. Follow
ing my budding passion for food as
an object of study and of course
immense pleasure, I found an
apprenticeship with a Frenchtrained American chef and teacher
named Robert Reynolds. From
March to May 2,002, I’ll be living in
Montesquieu, France, going to mar
kets and cooking regional cuisine.
I have yet to plan the next move
leaving my desire to plan behind
(A) writes: “I will gladly host any
Johnnies passing through the
Chicago area-I’ve got a futon and
some floor space you can borrow
just for the asking.”
EbenLasker (SF) writes: “Look
Joel Hopkins (SF) is working in a
program for troubled youth in
Santa Fe right now. He took cours
es in art history at Tulane Univer
sity and at the College of Santa Fe.
He has received a scholarship to
pursue an MA in art history and
criticism at SUNY Stonybrook
starting this fall.
Calling All Alumni
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 December; copy
deadline is October 15.
In Annapolis:
The College Magazine, St. John’s
College, Box 2800. Annapolis,
MD 21404; s-borden@sjca.edu.
In Santa Fe:
The College Magazine, St. John’s
College, Public Relations Office,
1160 Camino Cruz Blanca, Santa
Fe, NM 87505-4599;
classics@mail.sjcsf.edu.
Alumni Notes on the Web:
Read Alumni Notes and contact
The College on the web at:
www.sjca.edu - click on “Alumni.”
{Obituaries}
Rogers Albritton
Rogers Albritton, class of 1945, a professor of phi
losophy at University of California at Los Angeles
and at Harvard, died on May 21. He was 78.
Mr. Albritton was born in Columbus, Ohio, to
a physiologist and a chemist. He began his stud
ies at St. John’s but left to serve in the Army Air
Forces in World War IL He returned and gradu
ated in 1948. Mr. Albritton received a master’s
and a doctorate in philosophy from Princeton.
He taught at Harvard from 1956 until 1970, and
was chair of the philosophy department for
seven years. He then taught at UCLA until retir
ing in 1991.
Mr. Albritton has been praised for the breadth
and depth of his philosophical interests, which
included ancient philosophy, philosophy of
mind, free will, skepticism, metaphysics, and
the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein. At St. John’s,
his senior thesis defended lyric poetry from log
ical positivism. Although he did not publish
much, he was nevertheless widely known and
admired in the academic world. A colleague at
UCLA, Gavin Lawrence, wrote in an obituary,
“Rogers had the finest philosophical mind I
have ever encountered. He never rushed to a
facile answer and was a wonderful sounding
board.” Mr. Albritton was awarded the Alumni
Association Award of Merit in 1995. He is sur
vived by his sister, Heloise Frame.
Paul Krol
Paul G. Krol (A76) died in May. He was a loved
and respected international businessman. He
was fluent in German and Polish and spoke
some Spanish, Korean, and Japanese. He was
financially responsible for the building of the
Southwest CARE Medical Center in Santa Fe.
Paul was a computer engineer who published
the book ORC AD Capture, a text used to teach
the teachers in that industry. He also wrote
many poems and short stories.
Paul spent half of his hfe volunteering and giv
ing to others. After being diagnosed with a ter
minal illness, he requested permission from
Catholic schools in New Mexico to talk to stu
dents about death and dying. His talks were so
successful they have been published in a book.
Although he was only 47 years of age, he
affected so many people in the world in such a
positive way, that I have no doubt there is a
“new star” in Heaven.
—submitted by Ron Moar
H. Ralph Lewis
H. Ralph Lewis, a former tutor in Santa Fe, died
in March in Hanover, N.H. Born in Chicago, he
was a physicist who studied at the University of
Chicago, the University of Illinois, and the Uni
versity of Heidelberg. In 1963 he joined the staff
at Los Alamos National Laboratory, where he
worked on the controUed thermonuclear fusion
project. He taught at St. John’s and then at Dart
mouth, where he was on the physics faculty.
Mr. Lewis is survived by his wife, Renate; two
daughters, and a sister.
Admiral Robert Long
Adm. Robert Long, commander in chief of U.S.
military forces in the Pacific and a former mem
ber of the Board of Visitors and Governors, died
June 28 at the National Naval Medical Center in
Bethesda. He was 82 and lived in Annapolis.
Born in Kansas City, Mo., Robert Lyman John
Long graduated in 1943 from the U.S. Naval
Academy. He served during World War II in the
Pacific. In 1972, Adm. Long was named com
mander of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet Submarine
Force and vice chief of naval operations. He saw
combat in the Vietnam War. He headed the
American military forces in the Pacific from
1979 to 1983, when he retired. Soon after retir
ing, he was caUed to assist President Ronald
Reagan and Defense Secretary Caspar Wein
berger, who asked him to lead the commission
continued on p.43
{The Colleges;. John’s College ■ Summeraooi }
�{CampusLife}
4^
THE TWENTY YEARS’ WAR
Johnnies reclaim the Annapolis Cup, brinp^ing the croquet series to i6 and4.
BY Sus3AN
Borden
(A87)
he opening shots of the St. John’s-Naval After Heyburn returned to campus, he
remembered that several students had been
Academy croquet series have long been playing croquet and that they were pretty
the subject of speculation and rumor. good, so he decided to challenge the acade
my. “My main aim was to get the two groups
Some say the first match was the result of of students together and my hope is that the
a barroom bet. Others say it was a last- match is still a way to foster better relations
between the two schools,” he says.
minute substitute for a barroom brawl. And so it has happened. The spirit of the
has remained,
The truth, says Kevin Heyburn (SF86), wasmatch
much
more more or less, one of
peaceful camaraderie. The team uniforms
simple-and peaceful.
(footloose and fanciful for the Johnnies,
T
campy-casual for the Mids) bespeak a play
ful rivalry, not war games. The crowd’s
attention is on picnicking, not the score
board. And the goodwill that the opponents
display after each match is no clenchedteeth affair, but rather a hearty handshake
for a job well done.
At this year’s match (in April), however,
there was just the hint of a martial edge to
the Johnnies’ attitude. The Middies had
won last year’s match, breaking a nine-year
St. John’s winning streak. An article in the
Washington Post quoted senior Louis
Kovacs announcing before the match, “I’m
out for blood. I’m out to hurt people and
humiliate them.”
Newly inaugurated Santa Fe president
John Balkcom hit out the opening ball. Next
the freshman chorus, under the direction of
tutor Tom May, in an apparent welcome to
our comrades-in-croquet, launched into a
stirring rendition of the Navy Hymn:
Eternal Father, strong to save.
Whose arm hath bound the restless wave.
The
few, the proud, the victorious: the
aooa sjc
team.
Who bidd’st the mighty ocean deep
It was 1981 and Heyburn, then a freshman
in Annapolis, was curious about the Naval
Academy. He and a friend went to the acad
emy’s pep rally for the Army-Navy game.
On the way back to St. John’s, they found
themselves walking behind the Comman
dant of the academy. “Being a bold fresh
man, I started to talk with him,” Heyburn
recalls. “I told him that in the old days, St.
John’s had quite an athletic program and
would often beat Navy at sports like foot
ball and lacrosse. The Commandant said
that now there was no sport where the St.
John’s students could beat Navy.”
{The College ■ St. John’s College • Summer 2002 }
Its own appointed limits keep:
O hear us when we cry to Thee,
For those in peril on the sea.
As the chorus sang the next two verses
(penned by Tanya Hadlock Piltz, A05), their
loyalties became clear:
�{Campus Life}
Oh Johnnies who doplay
croquet.
43
greeting, offering its now-traditional menu of cucumber sand
wiches, college-logo chocolates,
and champagne. Tote bags with an
image of a Greek-style statue play
ing croquet on front campus wear
ing nothing but Birkenstocks and
a fig leaf were prized souvenir
giveaways.
The games ended just before
5:00 and the alumni office packed
up its champagne and chocolates
at 6:00. But the crowds, enjoying
the spirit of croquet and the thrill
of victory, lingered on the lawn
until dark.
Congratulations go to Imperial
Wicket Jon Polk, next year’s
Wicket Ben Porter, and team
members Lucas Ford, Nick Whit
tier, Mike Maguire, Jon Cooper,
Lou Kovacs, Tom Juskevich, Peter
Speers, and Terry Duvall. >
Protect our honor on this day.
Our battle cry: Let Middies kneel!
To them theform ofGood reveal.
Oh hear us when we boldly say
Defeat the Middies at croquet!
Oh ye who books do seldom read
Your unexamined lives concede
Beware each Middy girl and boy;
We are the Danaans to your Troy!
Oh hear us when we boldly say
Defeat the Middies at croquet!
The Johnnies on the field pro
ceeded to answer the pleas of the
singers, shutting out the Middies
5-0 before a crowd of over 1000,
including more than 300 alumni.
Throughout the day the alumni
tent was a locus of meeting and
{Obituaries}
continuedfrom p.41
to investigate the bombing of the marine bar
racks in Beirut, Lebanon. The commission
looked into security lapses in its fact-finding
mission on the incident, in which a terrorist
drove a truck laden with explosives into the
barracks, killing 241 marines.
He served on the St. John’s Board from 1986
to 1992. Later, he maintained his ties to the col
lege by encouraging the croquet rivalry between
St. John’s students and the residents of the
retirement community of Ginger Cove, where
he served as chair of the community associa
tion.
He is survived by his wife, Sara, and his three
sons, Charles, William, and Robert.
Roberts. Parr
Robert E. Parr, a former tutor in Santa Fe, died
Sept. II, 2001 in Ada, Oklahoma. He was 77.
Mr. Parr taught music at St. John’s and was a
life-long musician and active in theater. Born in
Norman, Oklahoma, he graduated from the
University of Oklahoma. During World War II
he served in the military in Europe. After the
war, he studied at Yale with German composer
Paul Hindemith, then moved to San Francisco,
where he received a master’s degree in composi
tion from the University of California, Berkeley.
He taught at Candell Conservatory and at pri
vate schools in New Mexico and St. Louis, in
addition to St. John’s. He also ran a wheat farm
in Oklahoma, raised Arabians, and enjoyed his
involvement with puppet opera. Mr. Parr is sur
vived by his lifemate, Dianne Stowers.
Charles Wallace
Charles “Charlie” Wallace, the superintendent
of buildings and grounds for the Annapolis cam
pus for many years, died in April. Mr.
Wallace was born in Baltimore and served in the
U.S. Marine Corps during the Korean War. He
worked as a construction superintendent for
Dunton, Inc. for 20 years, building many public
schools in Maryland. He retired from his job at
St. John’s in 1998.
Surviving are his wife, Emily; two sons,
Charles and William; one daughter, Lisa
Delasko; a sister, and six grandchildren.
John Wirth
A long-time Board member of St. John’s Col
lege, John Wirth passed away on June 20.
He was 66.
Mr. Wirth and his wife, Nancy Meem Wirth,
were active members of the college for many
years. Beginning with the donation by Nancy’s
parents. Faith and John Gaw Meem, of the land
for the Santa Fe campus and continuing into the
present with their involvement on the faculty
housing project, their dedication to the mission
of St. John’s has always been exemplary. Mr.
{The College- St. John’s College - Summer 2002 }
Wirth served as vice chairman of the Board of
Visitors and Governors, and worked on the Cali
fornia property project.
Mr. Wirth was born in Dawson, New Mexico
in 1936. He graduated from Harvard University
in 1958 and received his doctorate in Latin
American History in 1967 from Stanford Univer
sity. He served in the army in 1958-59. He was
the recipient of numerous awards, prizes, and
fellowships related to his expertise in Latin
American history. He commuted weekly to
teach undergraduate courses in contemporary
Brazilian history, environmental history, and
Canadian history at Stanford University where
he held the Gildred Chair of History. He retired
from Stanford in June.
He founded and was president of the North
American Institute, based in Santa Fe. The tri
national organization is dedicated to better rela
tions between Mexico, Canada, and the United
States. A prolific writer, his latest book is
Smelter Smoke in North America: The Politics of
Transborder Pollution. He recently completed a
history of the Los Alamos Ranch School, which
wiU be published shortly by the University of
New Mexico Press.
He is survived by his wife, Nancy Meem
Wirth; sons, Peter, Tim and Nicholas; and four
grandchildren.
�44
{Alumni Association News}
Letter from
THE Alumni
Association
Dear Johnnies,
What does it mean to “come home?” For
most colleges and universities. Homecom
ing means foothall, old haunts, a few old
friends, and lots of people you hardly
rememhered the day after graduation. At
St. John’s, Homecoming is some of those
things, and many more.
It might mean coming hack to a place that
smells and looks and feels not so different
from when you left it. Homecoming might
also mean visiting a place you’ve never
been. If you spent your college years in
Santa Fe, you might just as well enjoy
Homecoming on the water and in the midst
of colonial red brick in Annapolis. If
Annapolis was the locus of your personal
memories, you might also come home to
the wonderful mountains and desert sun
sets of Santa Fe. The places, though both
beautiful and significant, are not the
essence of Homecoming for Johnnies.
Yes, you’ll see old friends, especially if
you choose a Homecoming for one of your
class’s special five-year reunions. But
even if you come when other classes are
having their reunions, you will still see old
friends-tutors, staff, members of classes
before and after yours. The community on
each campus is surprisingly constant with
the familiar names and faces scattered
among the new ones. Chances are that
you’ll also meet new “old friends,” includ
ing many who are familiar because they
shared the experience of reading and talk
ing about the same books in the same ways
that you did. Everytime I return-whether
to Santa Fe or Annapolis-I discover inter
esting and stimulating people whose his
tory makes them part of an intellectual
and institutional family. The family
resemblance is striking, regardless of
when or where or for how long they lived
in the Program.
The Homecoming Dinner last October
in Annapolis was an excellent example for
me of the cross-generational nature of the
Johnnie experience. According to tradi
tion, after dinner is served and awards are
presented, each reunion class gives a toast.
Sometimes the toasts are funny and some
times they are poignant, and last year was
no exception on this count. It was an excep
tion, however, because all of the toasts
revolved around a theme very near to each
of us on that evening, just three weeks after
September ii. Each class toast reflected, as
only Johnnies can, on the meaning of the
college in the wake of our national trauma.
Classes from the ’40s remembered the dis
ruption of their lives during World War II.
Classes of the ’50s talked about what it
meant when women entered the campus as
fellow students. The ’60s reflected on a
rediscovery of patriotism that had not been
part of their early engagement with the
world. The ’70s talked of Vietnam and the
dissention that war introduced to personal
and social self-knowledge. Classes of the
’80s and ’90s opened our eyes to a genera
tion that approaches self and institution
with confidence and assumed security.
Together, the toasts framed a social history
of America from the point of view of
thoughtful and admirable individuals. For
me, it was a touching and powerful mes
sage about my self, my community, and my
nation
But most of all, for me. Homecoming is
coming home to the books. There is always
a formal time when alumni and guests
meet in official seminars to inquire togeth
er as we did in the old days. Sometimes the
books are different, and usually the tutors
and students are different, but always the
experience is the same. I come to the table
with certainties and questions and leave
with fewer certainties and more questions.
My real measure of a good seminar is
whether it inspires me to read the text
again. Seldom does a seminar fail to meet
this expectation. Just like our student
{The Colleges?. John’s College ■ Summer 2002 }
ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE
ALUMNI ASSOCIATION
Whether from Annapolis or Santa Fe, under
graduate or Graduate Institute, Old Program
or New, graduated or not, all alumni have
automatic membership in the St. John’s Col
lege Alumni Association. The Alumni Associa
tion 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 Alumni Association news and
events of interest.
President - Glenda Eoyang, SF76
Vice President - Jason Walsh, A85
Secretary -Barbara Lauer, SF76
Treasurer - Bill Fant, A79
Getting-tke-Word-Out Action Team ChairLinda Stabler-Talty (SFGI76)
Web site - www.sjca.edu/aassoc/main.phtml
Mailing address - Alumni Association, St.
John’s College, Box aSoo, Annapolis, MD
21404 or 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca, Santa Fe,
NM 87505-4599.
days, however, coming home to the books
is not restricted to the time around the
table. Informal conversations over food,
drink, or dance remind me of the wellgrounded conversations of my student
days. Themes emerge and common refer
ents are invoked. The conversations are
decidedly different from those I have dayto-day, and they feed my curiosity and my
ever-developing view of the world and
myself.
Homecoming is an opportunity to revisit
whatever lives in your memory of your days
at St. John’s. It is also an invitation to
reflect on current aspirations and activities
in the context of personal, institutional,
and intellectual history. I hope that you will
plan to join the next Homecoming party,
and I hope you find, as I have, that coming
home is a richly varied experience that
transforms memories of the past into reali
ty of today and hopes for tomorrow. See
you there!
For the past, the present, and the future,
Glenda Eoyang
President
St. John’s College Alumni Association
�{AlUMNiAsSOCIATIOnNeWS}
As will not surprise any Johnnie, our
progress could be measured more in the
improvement of our questions, or in the
introduction of new ones, than in reaching
final answers.
On one conclusion there did seem to be a
consensus: the efforts of Aristotle, Hegel
and Nietzsche to capture the essence of
tragedy pale in comparison to the real
thing. The profundity and variety of the dra
matic experience exceed their descriptions,
and analysis of it is like trying to “catch
lightning in a bottle.” ♦
Report From The
Hinterlands
What the Minneapolis/St.
Paul Alumni Chapter Has
Been Up To For the Last
Few Years
The Minneapolis/St. Paul chapter of the
Alumni Association has recently completed
its second set of readings and seminars
organized on a theme. Politics was our first
theme. Tragedy our second. Each extended
over a year. Prior to that, for over 20 years,
we had read books more or less at random;
and, although there were some memorable
seminars during that period, the theme
approach has generally produced more con
tinuity of thought and depth of discussion.
We would recommend the approach to
other chapters.
Our Tragedy list:
• Agammenon, Aeschylus
• Oedipus Rex. Sophocles
• Poetics, Aristotle
• Othello, Shakespeare
• The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche
• Three Sisters, Chekhov
• Bartleby the Scrivner, Melville
• Mourning Becomes Electra, O’Neill
• The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald
• The Tragic Sense ofLife, Unamuno
We were somewhat naive in our choice of
readings. For example, none of us knew
what to expect from Unamuno’s Tragic
Sense of Life, and we were divided after
wards concerning its intrinsic value; but
most agreed that it produced some of the
best discussions. It helped us discuss
Tragedy as Philosophy, not merely as a dra
matic form.
As evidence of the continuity, some of the
same questions persisted throughout the
year. For example:
• What is Tragedy? Is a precise defini
tion possible?
• Are Greek Tragedy and Elizabethan
Tragedy essentially the same or diff
erent? (and the same question when
comparing the plays of Aeschylus,
Sophocles and Euripides).
• The Bacchcie, Euripides
• Is Cosmology an essential ingredient
of Greek Tragedy? Can we ever fully
appreciate Greek Tragedy without
sharing its cosmological view?
• Poetics, Aristotle
• Is Christianity anti-tragic?
• The Orestia, Aeschylus
• On Poetry, Hegel
The list is eccentric and somewhat acciden
tal. We discussed Agammenon twice, once
by itself and once in the context of the
Oresteia. We also read and discussed Aristo
tle’s Poetics twice, once at the beginning
(with the help of Santa Fe tutor Matt Davis)
and once at the end, when we had a “theme
overview” discussion. In the middle, and at
their suggestion, we did Bartleby the
Scrivener with the help of Santa Fe presi
dent John Balkcom and then-vice president
Robert Glick.
45
• What is the “tragic effect”? Does
either Aristotle’s “catharsis of fear
and pity” or Hegel’s “resolution of
substantive values” adequately
describe it?
• Why didn’t the Greeks have an inter
mediate dramatic form, like Tragi
comedy?
• What is the role of Tragedy in Educa
tion? Is it central?
• What is a Tragic Sense of Life? Is it
healthy or unhealthy?
{The College- St. John’s College ■ Summer 2002 }
Regular contributors to the monthly discus
sions were: Glenda Eoyang (SE76), Judy
Kistler-Robinson (SF77, SGfg), Robert Neal
(Abo), Walter Burk (SFgo), Nick Colten
(Ag?), Garol Freeman (AGIgg), John Hart
nett (SF8g), Graig Lefevre (Ag2), Kait Schott
(SFgi), J. Shipley Newlin (Afi7), Lori
Williamson (Agg), Mike Woolsey (Afig)
CHAPTER CONTACTS
Call the alumni listed belowfor information
about chapter, reading group, or other alumni
activities in each area.
ALBUQUERQUE
Bob & Vicki Morgan
5O5-=i75-9ora
ANNAPOLIS
Beth Martin
410-^80-0958
PITTSBURGH
Robert Hazo
412-648-2653
AUSTIN
Jennifer Chenoweth
512-483-0747
PORTLAND
Dale Mortimer
360-882-9058
BALTIMORE
Deborah Cohen
410-472-9158
SACRAMENTO
Helen Hobart
916-452-1082
BOSTON
Ginger Kenney
617-964-4794
SAN DIEGO
Stephanie Rico
619-423-4972
CHICAGO
Lorna Johnson
773-338-8651
SAN FRANCISCO,
NORTHERN
CALIFORNIA
Jon Hodapp
831-393-9496
SANTA FE
John Pollak
505-983-2144
SEATTLE
Amina Stickford
206-269-0182
DENVER
Lee Goldstein
720-283-4659
LOS ANGELES
Elizabeth Eastman
562-426-1934
MINNEAPOLIS/
ST. PAUL
Garol Freeman
612-822-3216
NEWYORK
Joe Boucher
718-223-1957
NORTH CAROLINA
Susan Eversole
919-968-4856
PHILADELPHIA
Bart Kaplan
215-465-0244
WASHINGTON DC
Jean Dickason
301-699-6207
ISRAEL
Emi Geiger Leslau
15 Aminadav Street
Jerusalem 93549
Israel
972-2-6717608
boazl@cc.huji.ac.il
�46
{AlumniAssociationNews}
Election Notices
Election ofAlumni
Representatives to the
St. John's College Board
of Visitors and Governors
In accordance with Article VIII, Section II
of the By-Laws of the St. John’s College
Alumni Association, notice is hereby given
that the following alumni have been nomi
nated by the Alumni Association Board of
Directors for election to the St. John’s Col
lege Board of Visitors and Governors.
Notice is also given that nominations may
be made by petition.
The rules governing submission of nomi
nations bypetition are asfollows:
• Petitions must be signed by at least
fifty members of the Alumni Associa
tion in good standing.
• Nominations must be accompanied by
a biographical sketch of the nominee.
• The consent of all persons nominated
must be obtained.
• The petition must reach the Directors
of Alumni Activities NO LATER THAN
DECMBER 1, 2002.
c/o Alumni Office
St. John’s College
P.O. Box 2800
Annapolis, MD 21404
Mr. Bienenfeld has worked for Honda for 21
years in a variety of areas in the U.S. as well
as Japan. Mr. Bienenfeld served on the
Alumni Association Board of Directors from
1998, and more recently on the Board of Vis
itors and Governors since July of 2000. He
served as the president of the Los Angeles
Chapter of the Alumni Association in the
early eighties. In addition, Mr. Bienenfeld
helped organize alumni to support the Cam
paign for Our Fourth Century.
Thomas Stern Sl- '6g
Palo Alto, CA
Mr. Stern has been involved with motion pic
ture production since receiving an MA from
Stanford University in r97i. In 1981 he began
his association with Malpaso Productions at
Warner Brothers, Clint Eastwood’s produc
tion company. Mr. Stern works as a lighting
consultant, and has been responsible for the
lighting more than 40 feature-length motion
pictures including “Risky Business”, “Pale
Rider,” “Goonies,” “Bird, The Unforgiven,”
“Space Cowboys,” and “True Crime.”
Steve Thomas SFJ4
New York, NY
Following a few years as a computer opera
tor, Mr. Thomas spent the academic year
1976-77 in graduate school at the University
of Texas at Austin, in the Ancient Philoso
phy program. Remaining in Austin, Texas,
but dropping out of graduate school, he
worked as a computer operator by day and
became active in local and state politics as a
gay activist. In r98o, Mr. Thomas was named
as an at-large alternate delegate to the
National Democratic Convention, which
means that he gets hohday cards from the
White House whenever it is occupied by a
Democrat. He proceeded to attend the Uni
versity of Texas School of Law, initially to
acquire credentials for his political career,
when he discovered an actual interest in the
law. He served on the Texas Law Review
and was a member of Chancellors, which is
the highest honor society based on grades at
the school. He graduated with honors in
1984. He then moved to New York City,
where he has been admitted to the bar since
1985. He worked as an associate at the Wall
Street law firm of Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen
and Hamilton from 1985 through 1991, and
since 1991 has been employed by Financial
Security Assurance (a monoline bond insur
ance company), most recently as associate
general counsel. Mr. Thomas has also been
involved since r989 with HIV Law Project,
an organization that provides legal assis
tance and advocacy to low income people
infected with HIV, for most of those years in
If nominations by petition are received,
there will be an election conducted by mail
ballot. If there are no such nominations, the
nominees listed above will be considered
elected. Terms will begin in July of 2003.
Robert Bienenfeld SF’8o
Long Beach, CA
The Senior Manager of Product Planning
for American Honda Motor Co. Inc., Mr.
Bienenfeld is responsible for planning the
vehicle line ups for Acura and Honda cars
and trucks in the U.S. In addition, he is
responsible for the sales and marketing of
electric, natural gas, hybrid and, believe it
or not, fuel cell automobiles. In addition, he
serves on Honda’s Environment Committee
for the Americas, and operates a small ven
ture capital operation for American Honda.
Great
moments in croquet history
(circa 1985): St. John’s teammates (l-r) David Kidd
(A85), Andrew Bi'.ckman( A87), Steven Werlin(A85) and Bryce Jacobsen (class
POSE WITH THE AnNAPOLIS CuP AND MiDDIE RIVALS.
{The College. St. Jo hn’s College ■ Summer 2002 }
of
1942)
�{AlumniAssociationNews}
his current capacity as chair of the Board of
Directors. Since 2000 he has served on the
SJC Alumni Association hoard. Mr. Thomas
is a fanatical opera fan, and is devoted to the
New York Mets. In his spare time he still,
helieve it or not, reads philosophy hooks;
and he still doesn’t understand Plato.
Election ofDirectors of the
St. John A College Alumni
Association
In accordance with Article VII, Sections I
and II of the By-Laws of the St. John’s Col
lege Alumni Association, notice is hereby
given that the following alumni have been
nominated to serve as directors on the St.
John’s College Alumni Association Board of
Directors.
Notice is also given that nominations for
the positions as officers and directors of the
Association may be made by petition.
The rules governing submission of nomi
nations bypetition are asfollows:
• Petitions must be signed by at least
thirty members of the Alumni Associa
tion in good standing.
• Petitions must be presented to the
Secretary of the Alumni Association
prior to the Annual Meeting at which
the election is to be held. Petitions
should be sent to Barbara Lauer, c/o
Alumni Office, St. John’s College,
P.O. Box 2800, Annapolis, MD
21404.
• The election will be held at the Annual
Meeting on Saturday, Oct. 5, at 1:45
p.m. in Annapolis.
• The candidates for Directors receiving
the highest number of votes for those
offices shall be declared elected.
Terms will begin on January i, 2002.
Mark Middlebrook A ’8g
Oakland, CA
Mr. Middlebrook currently is testing the
truth of the well-worn dictum “in vino veritas,” as well as his hopeful corollary “in
vino pecunia.” He has worked in the wine
industry in Oakland, California, for a year.
As he waits for both truth and money to flow
from oenophilic endeavors, he continues
his mercenary masquerade as a computer
consultant. In addition, he teaches litera
ture and philosophy seminars at St. Mary’s
College of California. When he isn’t too
busy juggling three jobs, he enjoys playing
flamenco guitar and oud.
Jonathan Sackson A ’6g
Miami, Florida
MBA in Finance, Wharton, 1982. Mr. Sackson worked in various controller and finance
positions at Ryder System (1982-1989) and
served as Vice President and Controller of
the Bekins Corporation (1982-1992). Since
1992, he has been an investment advisor to
private and institutional clients in Miami,
Florida. He is currently Senior Vice Presi
dent at UBS PaineWebber. Mr. Sackson has
served as an at large member of the Alumni
Board since 1999. For many years he has
functioned as liaison to South Florida appli
cants to St. John’s. He was also Class Chair
for the Campaign for Our Fourth Century.
C. Frank Davis SFGI’gg
Santa Fe, NM
Mr. Davis has a BA in economics/govern
ment from the University of Texas (1958),
and he completed the Small Company Man
agement Program at the Harvard Graduate
School of Business in 1981. From 1963 to
1969 he was a broker for Bache and Co. in
Corpus Christi, Texas and from 1969 to
1998 served as the Chief Executive Officer
of Whataburger of El Paso, Inc. and Taco
Cabana of El Paso. In El Paso he has served
on the boards of Renaissance 400, the Rad
ford School for Girls, and the Bank of the
West, and has also served on the board of
the Texas Nature Conservancy. He has trav
eled extensively in Africa, Europe, and
Asia, and has participated in several Earth
watch projects in Nepal and Thailand, as
well as flying his own Cessna 185 for Wings
of Hope in Guatemala and Nicaragua, for
Lighthawk, and for local Santa Fe conserva
tion organizations. He volunteers in the
Santa Fe public schools, and has been a
longtime participant in Summer Classics
and Community Seminars at the college.
Gary Edwards Sk ’-g
Arlington, VA
Surgical oncology physician assistant,
Washington Cancer Institute, Washington
Hospital Center, 1995 to present. Surgical
physician assistant, Sibley Memorial Hos
{The College ■ St. John’s College ■ Summer 2002 }
47
pital, Washington, D.C. 1990-1995. B.S.
Physician Assistant program. The George
Washington University 1990. Medical
transcriptionist. The Neurology Center,
Washington, D.C. 1984-1990. Customer
service representative, Tulsa Oklahoma
1981-1984. Reporter KLMN television,
Fayetteville, Arkansas 1980-1981. Editorial
Assistant, National Review magazine,
summer 1979. Participated in class fundraising efforts Campaign for Our Fourth
Century. Co-class leader Philanthropia
1999. Appointed interim member SJC
Alumni Board member 3/02.
Joanne Murray, A ’^o
Pittsburgh, PA
Ms. Murray took her PhD in solid state
physics at the University of Maryland and
gradually slid into a profession in metallur
gy at the National Institute of Standards and
Technology (1977-1986) and then Alcoa
Technical Center. Although she is a con
firmed theorist, she also takes great pleas
ure in donning steel-toed shoes and hard
hat and heading out to the plant floor where
aluminum is being melted, cast, and rolled.
At Alcoa, she is leader of the Alcoa Techni
cal Center Women’s Network and presi
dent-elect of Sigma Xi, the Scientific
Research Society. She maintains ties with
the college through local alumni seminars,
the summer sessions in Santa Fe, and the
online Johnny-list.
Proposed Amendments to the St. John’s
College Alumni Association By-Laws_____
In accordance with Article XIII Section i of
The St. John’s College Alumni Association
By-Laws (as amended 9/29/01), notice is
hereby given that certain proposed amend
ments to the by-laws (to Article III, Section
III; Article IV, Sections II, II a, II b, II d, II
e, II g, II i, VI; Article V; Article VII, Sec
tion I; Article VIII, Seciton V; Article X;
and Aritcle XIV) will be considered by the
membership of the Association and
brought to a vote at the Annual Meeting,
1:45pm, Saturday, October 5, 2002, in the
Conversation Room in Annapolis. These
proposed amendments are posted at
http://www. sjca. edu/aassoc/main.phtml
(see navigation sidebar). Call the Alumni
Office in Annapolis (410-626-2531) if you
prefer to receive a copy via mail or fax.
�48
{St. John’s Forever}
ack Landau (top, class of ’44) and picking them up. The ones that stick
James Waranch (class of ’43) together, we put in the same room.”
Seriously, though, Ranson’s method is
undoubtedly had a memorable year
rooming together. But not every rather more effective. The roommate form
one ends up a winner in the room asks a series of questions relating to smoking
mate lottery. Luckily, the odds are practices, sleeping habits, noise tolerance,
and inclination towards neatness or slobbery.
good for freshmen arriving this fall. Andrew
Ranson, director of Student Services on the Ranson enters the answers into a computer
Annapolis campus, puts a great deal of for an initial match-up. Then, he looks at
thought into the roommates he matches: answers to a more general question asking if
“We have a roommate questionnaire we there’s anything else he should know about
send out,” he says. “When they all come the respondent’s ideal roommate. “I get the
back we throw them on the floor and start best and easiest matches from that ques
J
{The College- St. John’s College ■ Summer 2002 }
tion,” says Ranson. “When two people men
tion they play instruments, say that they’re
rehgious, talk about their interest in travel,
or note that they’re vegans, we put them
together and it usually works out well.”
Some answers to the “anything else”
question, he says, are so vague and subjec
tive as to be unhelpful. Incoming freshmen
might say they want a cool roommate or a
laid back room-mate, or someone who’s not
a moron. “We took the moron question off
the questionnaire a couple of years ago,”
Ranson says.
�{Alumni Events Calendar}
Homecoming aooa—Annapolis
Friday, October 4—Sunday, October 6
ilieanion Glasses: 193?, 194a, 1947, i
1957,1962,1967,197a, 1977,198a, 1987,
199a, and 1997
■■ ■:
Homecoming Highlights
Friday, October 4
by Eva Brann
(HA89): “The Empires of the Sun and
the West”
Career Panel
Wine and Cheese with the Class of
2003 in the Dining Hall
.Rock Party in the Boathouse
■ • • g'
Saturday, October 5
PPaturday Morning Seminars
‘ Homecoming Picnic and Reunion
Class Luncheons
• Mitchell Gallery Tour;” The Sweet
Uses of Adversity: Images of the Bibli
cal Job”
*•---------
• Classes of 87 and 88 Pick-Up Basketball
Extravaganza (all alumni are invited)
• Freshman Chorus Revisited led by Tom
May
Philanthropia, the alumni
A COCKTAIL PARTY AT THE BrOWN PaLACE HoTEL IN DeNVER IN JUNE. ThIS WAS THE GROUP’s SEC
OND
event; the first took place last
(piCTUED above). Events Chair
ROLE OF Philanthropia and its
porting
• Alumni-Student Soccer Classic
• Bookstore Autograph Party
• Tour of the Renovated Mellon Hall
• Cocktail Party in the Great Hall and
McDowell Classrooms
group that works on fundraising for the college, sponsored
pated
THE
IN the
college.
for
December
in
New York City. Stef Takacs, A89
Philanthropia,
familiarized those gathered with the
goal of informing alumni about the importance of sup
The Denver/Boulder chapter of
event, with
the
Alumni Association partici
Lee Goldstein, Liz Jenny, and Craig Sirkin choosing the ele-
GANT LOCATION. NoT THAT JoHNNIES WOULD NEED THE PERFECT SETTING FOR CONVERSATION TO
TAKE PLACE....
John Balkcom (SFGI 00),
president of the
Santa Fe
campus, initiated a lively discus-
SION AMONG ALMOST 50 ALUMNI ABOUT THE CURRENT STATE OF THE COLLEGE. “ThIS IS A GREAT
TIME TO BE ASSOCIATED WITH St. JoHn’s COLLEGE,” HE SAID. “ENROLLMENT IS STRONG; WE ARE
DOING FINE FINANCIALLY—ALTHOUGH WE COULD DO BETTER. ThE QUALITY OF CONVERSATION IN
• Homecoming Banquet: Candace
Brightman (A67) and Howard Zeiderman (A67) will receive the Alumni
Association Award of Merit; John
Sarkissian, Robert Williamson, and Al
Toft will be recognized as new Hon
orary Alumni
• Waltz Party in the Great Hall
THE CLASSROOM IS SUPERB. WHENEVER I LOSE SIGHT OF WHAT WE ARE HERE TO DO I GO SIT IN
THE DINING HALL AND A HALF-DOZEN TO TWO DOZEN STUDENTS SIT DOWN WITH ME. I DON’t KNOW
WHAT YOUR CONVERSATIONS WERE LIKE WHEN YOU WERE THAT AGE, BUT WHEN I WAS 18 YEARS
OLD MINE WERE NOTHING LIKE THESE. ThOSE CONVERSATIONS RENEW MY INSPIRATION AND
SENSE OF COMMITMENT TO WHAT WE DO AS AN INSTITUTION.”
Topics ranged from what the
college is doing to become more involved with the local
COMMUNITY IN SaNTA Fe TO HOW THE COLLEGE HAS CHANGED OVER THE YEARS TO THE POSSIBILITY
OF INCLUDING MORE WOMEN AUTHORS ON THE READING LIST.
For MORE INFORMATION ON PHILANTHROPIA AND UPCOMING PHILANTHROPIA EVENTS CALL OR
EMAIL Maggie Griffin
TY IN Santa Fe
at
in
Annapolis
at
410-626-2534,
505-984-6099, groherty@aol.com.
Sunday, October 6
uflch at the President’s
ouse
{The College. St. John’s College ■ Summer 2002 }
m-griffin@sjca.edu or
Ginger Roher-
�STJOHN’S COLLEGE
ANNAPOLIS • SANTA FE
Published by the
Communications Office
Box aSoo
Annapolis, Maryland 21404
DAVID TROZZO
ADDRESS SERVICE REQUESTED
Periodicals
Postage Paid
�
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<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.
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St. John's College
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Annapolis, Md.
Santa Fe, NM
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St. John's College Greenfield Library
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English
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thecollege2001
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paper
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48
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The College, Summer 2002
Description
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Volume 28, Issue 3 of The College Magazine. Published Summer 2002.
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St. John's College
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St. John's College
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St. John's College owns the rights to this publication.
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2002
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pdf
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The College Vol. 28, Issue 3 Summer 2002
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Goyette, Barbara (editor)
Borden, Sus3en (managing editor)
Ducker, Susanne (art editor)
Mulry, Laura J. (Santa Fe editor)
Johnson, David
Morrison, Marissa
van Doren, John
Eoyang, Glenda H.
The College
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/6000ce628b9c12de7dd73c8bb1995edd.pdf
1e31c95a58ad4b1ad8f3c4c869929f25
PDF Text
Text
�STJOHN’S
College
ANNAPOLIS ■ SANTA FE
On Faraday
The College (usps 018-750)
ichael Faraday was the Horatio Alger of Victorian Eng
land. His father was a not-especially-successfnl black
smith who had emigrated to London from Westmorland
when the family fell on hard times. Faraday was born
there in 1791. He went to school until he was 13 and at 14
he was apprenticed to a bookbinder. Through reading,
the young man became fascinated with science. By the
time he was 19 he was conducting chemical experiments on his own, with equip
ment and materials he was able to scrounge, and he attended public lectures at
the Royal Institution with tickets provided by one of the bookbinder’s patrons.
In a positive effort at self-improvement, Faraday worked to purge his accent of
Cockney origins. He corresponded with like-minded young men who also sought
to expand their intellectual horizons. He considered science a noble activity and
once wrote: “My desire was to escape from trade, which I thought vicious and
selfish, and to enter into the service of science, which I imagined made its pur
suers amiable and liberal.”
On a long shot, without any introduction, Faraday wrote Sir Humphrey Davy,
the eminent chemist, and enclosed the notes he had taken on Davy’s lectures.
Later, when Davy injured his eyes in an experiment, he sent for Faraday to write
for him and serve as an assistant. From there, Faraday’s rise in the very active
Victorian world of science was swift. By 1813 he had been appointed Chemical
Assistant at the Royal Institution.
By 1835, Faraday was the director of the laboratory at the Royal Institution. He
lived upstairs, having married the daughter of a well-to-do silversmith, and had
his laboratory in the basement. His focus was experimentation and on explaining
to the public the principles governing nature.
In r83i he began research into electromagnetic induction, resulting in a paper
that established his reputation. He published 400 articles and books, including
the monumental Experimental Researches in Electricity.
Scientists in Victorian Britain felt a civic responsibility to use their expertise
for the public good. Faraday made recommendations on railway safety. In his 60s
he traipsed over rocky seacoast terrain to visit lighthouses and study how to
improve their operation. He was called in to investigate a fatal mine explosion.
He tried to improve the quality of steel by making different alloys.
Faraday wasn’t a mathematician, and his experiments did not depend on or
seek to find a mathematical explanation of the world. Faraday belonged to a
strict Christian sect called the Sandemanians. He saw the natural world as
divinely created, and sought the natural laws he felt reflected God’s will.
Maxwell, who later developed the equations that described what Faraday had dis
covered about electromagnetism, called him “The Great Electrical Philosopher.”
M
~BG
is published quarterly by
St. John’s College, Annapolis,
MD and Santa Fe, NM.
Known office of publication:
Public Relations Office
St. John’s College
Box a8oo
Annapolis, MD 21404-2800
Periodicals postage paid
at Annapolis, MD
Send address
changes to The College
Magazine, Public Relations
Office, St. John’s College,
Box a8oo, Annapolis, MD
21404-2800.
postmaster:
Annapolis
410-626-2539
b-goyette@sjca.edu
Barbara Goyette, editor
Sus3an Borden, assistant editor
Jennifer Behrens,
graphic designer
Advisory Board
John Christensen
Harvey Flaumenhaft
Roberta Gable
Katherine Heines
Pamela Kraus
Joseph Macfarland
Eric Salem
Brother Robert Smith
Santa Fe
505-984-6104
classics@mail.sjcsf.edu
Laura J. Mulry, Santa Fe editor
Advisory Board
Alexis Brown
Grant Franks
Robert Glick
David Levine
Margaret Odell
John Rankin
Ginger Roherty
Tahmina Shalizi
Mark St. John
Magazine design by
Claude Skelton Design
�{Contents}
Page Z2i
Commencement 2001
DEPARTMENTS
Elliott Zuckerman delivered a series of
“preludes” for graduates in Annapolis; in
Santa Fe, Cornel West urged graduates to
challenge the assumptions of contempo
rary mass culture.
Page
2, FROM THE BELL towers
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
z6
Sophomore Seminar
Forever
All Johnnies have wrestled with the
questions about faith, suffering, God,
and mortality. But some alumni, whether
by conviction or vocation, live in a world
where theology is more than a speculative
study.
Faraday, the Experimenter
Balkcom Inauguration invitation
Liberty Tree clones
New dean and GI director appointments
McDowell’s facelift
Poetry Slam highlights
Philanthropia news
The studs of St. John’s
Mortimer Adler, an appreciation
II ALUMNI VOICES
•
Marx Redux
36 ALUMNI NOTES
ALUMNI
PROFILES
38 Barbara Rogan (SF73) is a novelistshe can’t help writing
Page 2/0
31 Robert Bienenfeld (SF80) markets
tomorrow’s cars today
Rousseau and Realpolitik
33 Tia Pausic (A86), a lawyer by training,
works to build democracy in Croatia
Five alumni in the world of politics discuss
how the political philosophy on the pro
gram relates to the issues they deal with in
their professional lives.
36 Catherine Allen (A69), a cultural
anthropologist, focuses on the people
of the Andes
Page 28
40 LETTERS
It Takes Two Villages
41 OBITUARIES
Timothy Miller considers what it means
to learn in a community in his Dean’s
Statement.
•
43 HISTORY
•
Page /j-6
Nick Maistrellis on Leo Raditsa (page 43)
The colorful past of Hunt House
PAGE 46
43 ALUMNI ASSOCIATION
Say It Isn’t So
What happened to St. John’s domination
in croquet?
ON THE COVER
Michael Faraday.
Illustration by DavidJohnson.
•
Finding lost alumni
•
Welcoming new alumni
•
Amendment procedures
48 ST. John’s forever
�2.
{From
the
Bell Towers}
The Experimenter as
Entertainer
Michael Faraday was more than “the great
electricalphilosopher. ”
Who would think the burning of
an ordinary candle a fascinating
subject of study? Michael Faraday
did, and his lecture on the topicoriginally delivered for childrenwas re-created this spring at a
conference on Faraday held in
Annapolis. “There is not a law
under which any part of this uni
verse is governed which does not
come into play, and is not touched
upon, in these phenomena,”
wrote Faraday in the introduction
to his lecture “The Chemical His
tory of the Candle.”
Grant Franks (A78), a tutor in
Santa Fe, donned the garb of a
nineteenth century gentieman
scientist (a suit put together by
his wife, based on a pattern for an
Abe Lincoln Halloween
costume) and grew three
month’s worth of side
burns in order to play
Faraday. His demonstra
tions performed in front of a
crowd of students, faculty, visi
tors, and children kicked off the
three-day conference. Franks-asFaraday showed how a candle
forms a cup for the melted wax,
how capillary attraction occurs as
a candle burns, how a candle’s
vapor is combustible even after
the flame is blown out, why a can
dle flame is brightest at the top
and darker toward the bottom,
and how tongues of flame differ
from a single candle flame,
among other things.
Learn
ing the
hues to the
talk was
the easy
part. More
challeng
ing was
assembling
the props.
“Finding
different
kinds of
candles,
shaping the glass tubes, practic
ing the technique of piping gas
out of a flame, figuring out how
much copper chloride to add to
the alcohol to make a green
flame-it involved a lot of
STUFF,” says Franks. Faraday
dehvered public lectures, not in
an academic setting but at the
Royal Institution. The lab where
he carried out his own experi
ments was in the basement.
“Faraday is important because he
learns about the world by manipu
lating it with his hands, not by
casting it into algebraic forms
that he can play with on a black
board,” says Franks. “Of course,
no scientist is obhvious to experi
mental results, but Faraday is
especially wonderful in the way
his thoughts take physical form in
the apparatus he builds.” Faraday
understood the idea that there
can be some show business in science-“Faraday was, among other
things, the precursor of Mr. Wiz
ard and of Bin Nye the Science
Guy,” says Franks.
The conference (sponsoredby
the Dibner Fund) focused on two
issues: How does experiment lead
one to knowledge of nature, and
how can such knowledge be made
accessible to others, especially to
non-scientists. Faraday is particu
larly apt as a focus for these ques
tions, says Annapolis tutor
Howard Fisher, one of the confer
ence organizers. While Faraday’s
Experimental Researches in Elec-
Santa Fe tutor Grant Franks,
FaRADAY,
PLAYING THE PART OF
demonstrates the characteris
tics OF flames.
{The College. St. John’s College ■ Summer 2001 }
tricity is read in junior lab and
several of his experiments on
electromagnetism and electro
magnetic fields are performed,
his method of thinking and his
approach to experimentation are
themselves worthy of investiga
tion and thought. The confer
ence’s keynote lecture was dehv
ered by tutor emeritus Thomas
Simpson (A50) on the topic “Was
Faraday a Mathematician?” Other
lecturers included David Good
ing, from the University of Bath
(U.K.), Frank James, from the
Royal Institution of Great Britain,
and Ryan Tweney, from Bowling
Green State University. In addi
tion to the lectures and the candle
demonstration, the conference
featured a roundtable discussion
of Faraday’s “Lecture on Mental
Education” and some student
demonstrations of classic Faraday
experiments.
Faraday, whom Maxwell called
“the great electrical philoso
pher,” has been studied at St.
John’s for more than 30 years; a
part of his 7th series on electro
chemical equivalents was done in
senior lab and small segments of
the nth series on induction in
junior lab. About four years ago,
Annapohs adopted the Santa Fe
manual for junior lab electricity
and magnetism, which included
much more generous portions of
both Faraday and Maxwell, who
developed the mathematical
equations for the phenomena of
electromagnetism that Faraday
showed. A book by Howard Fish
er, Faraday’s Experimental
Researches in Electricity: Guide to
a Eirst Reading, has just been
published by Green Lion Press
(run by Bill Donahue, A67, and
Dana Densmore, A65, SFGI93);
Green Lion has also just come out
with a three-volume reprint of
Faraday’s Experimental Research
es in Electricity.
“The conference was a great
delight,” says Fisher. “I saw
again, first hand, how deeply
Faraday’s way of pursuing a ques
tion resonates with ordinary read
ers who respect a natural clarity
in the things around them.”
�{From the Bell Towers}
Balkcom Inauguration
Set for September
All St. John’s College alumni are
invited to attend the inaugura
tion of John E. Balkcom as Santa
Fe’s fifth president. Events will
take place on Friday and Satur
day, September 14 and 15. Dr.
Hanna Holborn Gray, president
emeritus of the University of
Chicago, will give the inaugural
address. Students, faculty, alum
ni, and staff have been working
on committees to organize the
celebration, which wiU include
events for all segments of the
college community. The theme
“Inviting Conversations” was
developed to capture a sense of
Mr. Balkcom’s vision for his
Liberty Tree
Lives On?
When the Liberty Tree suc
cumbed to damage from Hurri
cane Floyd in the fall of 1999,
lovers of the tree took heart in
the fact that there were several
offspring: a seedling planted
across front campus, in front of
what is now the Greenfield
Library, by the Daughters of the
American Revolution in 1889 is
now a very large tree; a Liberty
Tree descendant from a seed
hatching project begun by the
Caritas Society in 1975 thrives
on the grounds of the U.S. Capi
tol; and some crack scientists at
the University of Maryland are
working on cloning the Liberty
Tree using shoots taken from
the tree’s new growth just
months before the hurricane.
Now it seems that the baby
Liberty Tree on the Capitol
grounds may be endangered
itself. A plan to expand the Capi
tol building with the construc
presidency: a commitment to the
program, including his intention
to further relations within the
college community and expand
relationships with those who are
unfamiliar with the college.
On September 14, students,
faculty, and staff will launch the
weekend with a picnic on the
soccer field, followed by an all
college Chicago-style softball
game (an athletic challenge that
resembles “mush ball”). On Fri
day evening, inaugural guests
and college community mem
bers will join with the Santa Fe
community for a performance at
the newly renovated Lensic Per
tion of a visitors cen
ter calls for the Lib
erty offspring, along
with 83 other trees
that have national
significance (some
planted by Congress
men to honor people
or events important
in their state’s histo
ry) to be cut down.
The tree, planted in
1978 by Maryland’s
then-senator,
Charles McC. Math
ias, is now 40 feet
high, with a trunk
that is almost ao
inches in diameter.
Because the tree is
so large, moving it
would be expensive and perhaps
fatal. However, after a couple of
articles in the Washington Post
and the Baltimore Sun reported
on its fate, the Liberty progeny
suddenly appeared on the list of
trees slated to be moved rather
than chopped. Rebecca Wilson,
former public relations director
at St. John’s and the planner of
forming Arts Center in down
town Santa Fe. Students and
alumni, in addition to profes
sional musicians, will perform in
honor of the occasion.
There will be an Inaugural
Breakfast for guests of
the college and dele
gates from distinquished liberal arts
institutions on Satur
day morning, followed
by the official Inaugu
ration at IO a.m. on
Meem Library Placita.
Immediately after the
3
installation of Mr. Balkcom, a
reception will take place on the
Upper Placita. Saturday evening,
the festivities will conclude with
a Student and Alumni Waltz
Party in the Great Hall. 4-
John Balkcom will
BECOME Santa Fe’s fifth
PRESIDENT IN AN INAUGU
RATION THAT CELEBRATES
THE
St. John’s Program.
''The clones
have been
recalcitrant to
rootformation
...bittwehaveni
given up.''
The Liberty Tree, ca. 1955.
WILL ITS OFFSPRING SURVIVE?
the Liberty Tree seedling project
in the 1970s, expressed dismay
about the transplanting. “I don’t
think it can survive the move,”
she told the Baltimore Sun. She
hopes instead that the design of
the visitors center can be
{The College- St. John’s College • Summer 2001 }
modified to save the trees.
As for the clones, Gary Cole
man, a University of Maryland
professor who took cuttings of
Liberty Tree shoots, says in an email that he is still working on
the project. “We have estab
lished tissue cultures and have
managed to increase the number
of cultured shoots through this
process. Although this is good
news, the clones have been very
recalcitrant to root formation,”
he says. “We haven’t given up
and will continue until we suc
ceed.” 4-
�{From the Bell Towers}
New
Appointments
FOR Dean,
GI Directors
Bill Pastille GI Director, Annapolis
What qualifies
a tutor to lead
the Graduate
Institute?
Annapolis
tutor Bill
Pastille has one
idea: “An
advanced sense
of not knowing anything.” As he
begins his three-year term as
Director of the Annapolis Gradu
ate Institute this summer, Pastille
discusses his Socratic take on life:
“Socrates has become more and
more understandable to me, his
repeated refrain: I know that I
don’t know. People either regard
that statement as a sham, false
modesty, or they try to take it seri
ously,” Pastille says. “Socrates
seems to know all the answers,
but the more I live with him, the
more I see it’s just a simple
human truth. We’re constantly
pretending to ourselves that we
know something so that we’U have
something to hang onto.”
Pastille earned a BA in music
from Brown University and an MA
and PhD in musicology from Cor
nell University. He became a tutor
in 1986 and served as assistant
dean from 1994 to 1996.
It’s entirely likely that Gradu
ate Institute students share
Pastille’s sense of not knowing.
Outgoing Director Michael Dink
has recently written that they are
in some sense more self-selected
than undergraduates because
“they have decided that they are
in need of a liberal education
when they had passed the stage of
life when such a need is often con
ceded, if not heartily endorsed, by
common opinion.”
By SusgAN Borden (A87)
Frank Pagano GI Director, Santa Fe
As the newly appointed director
of the Graduate Institute, Frank
Pagano has struggled with the
question: what is an administra
tor? Undoubtedly the title brings
with it a slew of managerial mess
es, loads of paperwork, and tons
of added concerns. But Mr.
Pagano, like many tutors, looks
beyond the trifling details to the
heart of his job. He believes the
role of the administrator is to
“think about how to keep the pro
gram alive,” and to work to main
tain the integrity of the program.
Before joining the faculty at St.
John’s, Mr. Pagano taught at the
University of New England. Class
es geared towards professional
training began to replace the lib
eral arts focus of the college, and
the emphasis placed on grades
reminded him to appreciate the
importance of a liberal education.
It should come as no surprise,
then, that Mr. Pagano views his
move to St. John’s, “where the
grades were not paramount,” as
the beginning of a “second life.”
But this was not his only “sec
ond life.” Along with marrying
tutor Janet Dougherty and father
ing two children, Rachel and Ron,
Mr. Pagano counts his work with
the Eastern Classics among his
life-changing experiences. Teach
ing classes in both Chinese and
Ancient Greek have illustrated for
him the uniqueness of both intel
lectual traditions. Yet, he sees a
startfing similarity between the
Chinese and the Hellenic views of
history, and he understands this
similarity as a “point of contact”
despite their differences. While
on sabbatical, Mr. Pagano pre
pared two lectures on Herodotus’
Histories, and the past fall semes
ter he led a preceptorial on Sima
Qian’s The Records ofthe Grand
Historian. Studying these two
eminent historians has provided
him time to reflect on the nature
of historical thought and how it is
capable of traversing the wide gap
that distinguishes Eastern and
Western culture.
Mr. Pagano sees this sort of
inquiry as crucial to the life of the
graduate program. In his eyes.
Eastern Classics provides an
excellent complement to studies
in Western tradition. It helps stu
dents discover, through another
cultural perspective, “how human
beings choose to live their lives.”
Students in the Graduate Institute
in Liberal Education also apply
themselves to the study of this
question, but within the context
of their own cultural heritage.
Mr. Pagano understands that by
keeping the idea of their “point of
contact” active, he keeps the two
halves of the Graduate Instituteand the study of their distinctive
programs-vigorous and alive.
By John McCarthy (SFoz)
David Levine Dean, Santa Fe
David Levine (A67), appointed
dean in Santa Fe this spring,
brings to the office the experience
of being a Johnnie himself. He
feels he knows what it means to be
on the other side of the desk, and
often tries to view his administra
tive tasks from the perspective of
a student. That knowledge cou
pled with 15 years of teaching
experience, including holding the
positions of assistant dean and the
director of the Graduate Institute,
prepare him for the role of dean.
His academic career was not
always aimed straight for the
office of the dean, or St. John’s
College for that matter. He spent
his first year of undergraduate
work at the University of Pennsyl
vania, and it was not until he
encountered that “sting ray” of a
philosopher, Socrates, that he
made a move for St. John’s. “Plato
(The College ■ St. John's College ■ Summer sooi }
“Should the dean wear jeans?”
GI Director Frank Pagano
(left) and Dean David Levine
(right) address all manner of
QUESTIONS IN THEIR NEW ROLES.
ruined my medical career,” he
says. Mr. Levine also had no idea
when he was a student that he
would ever become a tutor. After
completing his graduate work at
Pennsylvania State University,
and while he was teaching at the
University of Oklahoma, he
received a call from the dean’s
office offering him a position on
the Santa Fe campus. He accepted
because he knew that the interac
tion with colleagues and students
would be of a high caliber at St.
John’s.
He has thoroughly enjoyed the
teaching side of the St. John’s
experience, and is ready to meet
the challenges associated with
being dean. In that role he must
address a variety of questions and
demands, everything from
“Should the dean wear jeans?”
(Mr. Levine sports denim rehgiously) to decisions about faculty
employment. He sees his new role
as an opportunity to become more
involved with student life by meet
ing with organizations such as the
Graduate Institute Council, the
Student Polity, the Student
Review Board, and the MoonTag,
and by eating in the dining hall
more often. In support of stu
dents and the importance of their
opinions in the decisions of the
college, Mr. Levine would like to
see the Student Committee on
Instruction re-instated. 4"
By John McCarthy (SFoi)
�{From
the
Bell Towers}
Of
Bricks
AND
Mortar
Venerable McDow
ell Hall is covered
with a fretwork of
scaffolding this
summer, as the
exterior of the 259year-old building
undergoes a reno
vation. Workers
from the A.J.
Marani Company
and Coastal Exteri
ors in Baltimore
are cleaning the
brick, chipping out
deteriorated grout,
and putting in new grout (22
tons of it) where necessary. The
cupola, whose tin roof had devel
oped several leaks, is being re
roofed with lead-coated copper.
Begun as the governor’s man
sion for the colonial head of the
Maryland colony in 1742, the
building was abandoned before
being completed because of a
dispute between governor
Thomas Bladen and the legisla
ture, which thought his original
plan for the house too
grandiose-£3000 for a house
with a central three stories and
single-story wings extending to
each side, a colonnade of pillars,
and on the inside marble floors
and elaborate woodworking.
When St. John’s was chartered in
1784, the state gave the building
to the college. By 1789, the first
classes were being taught in it.
As late as 179a the college’s
Board was stiU petitioning the
General Assembly for funds to
complete the hall. Until the mid1800S McDowell (named for the
college’s first president) served
every function on campus-it was
the only classroom building,
dormitory, dining hall, and pro
fessors’ quarters (the hbrary
Draped in plastic
sheets and
COVERED WITH A FRETWORK OF
SCAFFOLDING, McDoWELL GETS A
FACELIFT.
hved in the octagon room under
the cupola). During the Civil
War, McDowell became the
headquarters of the Union Army
Medical Corps, which used the
college as a hospital for
exchanged prisoners.
On February 20,1909,
McDowell was gutted by a fire
which began in the cupola and
destroyed much of the front of
the building. At the time
St. John’s had compulsory mili
tary training and ammunition
was stored in the basement, but
students managed to remove it
before fire caused an explosion.
The building was rebuilt accord
ing to its original design. A com
plete interior renovation in 1989
reconfigured former administra
tive offices on the first floor into
classrooms and included modern
heating and air conditioning.
Repointing the brick this sum
mer proved somewhat controver
sial with the Annapolis preserva
tion community, some of whom
felt that grout hke the original
(made from lime and
oyster shells) should
be used, rather than
the cement and lime
compound proposed
by the contractors.
After a review by the
Annapohs Preserva
tion Commission,
the contractors’
methods were
approved. “This
building was con
structed in several
phases over a period
of many years,” notes
John Christensen,
the Annapohs admis
sions director who
has written a book
about the architec
ture and history of
McDowell. “Its brick
and the mortar hold
ing it together are of
different kinds. So
this careful restoration is impor
tant because it will ensure the
building lasts another 250
years.”
Tutor ExtraCURRICULARS
Peter Kalkavage, a tutor in
Annapolis, has a new transla
tion of Plato’s Timeaus out. It’s
published by Focus Press . . .
Annapolis tutor Amirthanayagam David (A86) has a
lecture “ ‘I Know Thee Not, Old
Man’: The Renunciation of Falstaff’ published by the Universi
ty of Chicago Press as a part of
his teacher David Grene’s
festschrift. Literary Imagina
tion, Ancient and Modern:
Essays in Honor ofDavid
Grene.. .Annapolis tutor emeri
tus Curtis Wilson is the author
of a chapter called “Newton on
the Moon’s Variation and Apsidal Motion; The Need for a
Newer ‘New Analysis’” in the
new book, Isaac Newton’s Natur
al Philosophy, published by
MIT.. .Santa Fe tutor emeritus
{The College. St. John's College • Summer 2001 }
5
Charles Bell is featured in two
recently published books by New
York photographer Mariana
Cook. The first. Couples: Speak
ingfrom the Heart, shows Mr.
Bell with his wife, Diana Bell. In
the second. Fathers and Daugh
ters, he is with his daughter Carola. . .Annapolis tutor Andre
Barbera has recently published
articles in The New Grove Dic
tionary ofMusic and Musicians,
Macmillan Publishers; “George
Gershwin and Jazz” in The
Gershwin Style: New Looks at
the Music of George Gershwin,
Oxford University Press; and
biographies of Aaron Thibeaux
(T-bone) Walker and Dianah
(Ruth Lee Jones) Washington in
American National Biography,
Oxford University Press...
Annapolis tutor Adam
Schulman’s book review oIAll
Shook Up by Carson Holloway
appeared in the Wall Street Jour
nal in March. The book’s subject
is the potentially destructive
effects of popular music.. .Santa
Fe tutor William Alba is run
ning the Bard Writing and
Thinking Workshop in Santa Fe
this summer. The workshop,
sponsored by Bard College, is for
high school students interested
in creative writing. Mr. Alba has
also started a publishing compa
ny, Pulley Press, specializing in
small runs of books that are chal
lenging to print. The hrst book
is An Oz Album, a collection of
visual poetry related both to
Dorothy’s journey in Oz in
search of a way home and to a
person’s hfe in Chicago in search
of love.. .Annapohs tutor Eva
Brann’s new book. The Ways of
Naysaying, has been pubhshed
by Rowman & Littlefield. It’s the
third part of a trilogy that
includes The World ofthe Imam
nation: Sum and Substance and
What, Then, Is Time?. ..
Annapolis tutor Jim Beall had
articles pubhshed in Proceedings,
the U.S. Naval Institute, “Tech
nology Policy and Military
Readiness at the Dawn of the
Millennium” and “Restore the
Focus on Technology.”
�6
{From the Bell Towers}
Franz Strum
Slammin’
Stanzas
(SF04) delivers
VERSE AS PERFORMANCE ART IN THE
FIRST ANNUAL POETRY
In celebration of National Poet
ry Month, Meem Library and
the Bookstore in Santa Fe spon
sored the campus’ first annual
poetry slam in April. Poetry
slams make a competitive art of
performance poetry. Partici
pants are judged on both the
content of their poems and the
quality of their performances.
The most exciting performers
interact with their audiences,
and the structure of a slamwith poets advancing in the
rounds according to their judged
scores-depends on the performer-to-audience and audience-to performer relationship.
At the St. John’s slam, a panel of
judges from the college commu
nity that included tutor David
Carl, library staff member Tim
Taylor, and junior Paul Obrecht
rated the 15 high-energy contest
ants on their delivery, content,
form, and style.
The poets exhibited great
variety in form, style, and above
all-content. From haiku to
blank verse to pure rampage,
the contestants never let the
audience’s attention waiver. Not
for a second. The contestants
were students, freshmen to sen
My Lady’s Blancmange
(3poem by winning slammer Mirabai Knight, SF02)
iors, with one lone, brave tutor
(William Alba). The rounds
were fast-paced and fun. The
decisions about who should go
on to the next round and who
should join the audience were
difficult indeed. Mr. Carl said he
was “impressed with the virtu
osity and level of skill” of the
poets. The first place winner
was Mirabai Knight, a junior.
Knight proved herself a true
actress: with each poem she
changed her stance, her accent,
and her tone.
—Marika Brussel
Ye Gods! Her smile, a tender eel
whose spark and sinew strike the fray
of pallid, melancholy meal
awash in jellied consomme.
The ringlets twining ‘twixt her thumbs
along a swathed stretch of brow,
beneath which Thought’s Dark Lantern hums and sput
ters rich, (as per allow)
the treacle-coats of mallow, ripe
until they wither, sweet and spenthut yet they wax, as folds of tripe
unfurl to zaftig firmament!
The pearly spiralling within,
whose snares admit of no escape,
the slumb’ring lips and sinking chin,
the ridge of silk, the sulk of nape...
My bosom fluttersOh, my soul!
Would that her ochre eyes were mine,
and intermittent brilliance
through a patient augure’s agar shine.
Student
ExtraCURRICULARS
On campus, they are united by a
single program. Off campus,
their interests are as numerous
as the entries in the Lidell-Scott
Lexicon. Here’s a quick look at
what Johnnies are doing off-campus these days.
Ellie Kocezela (SF04) and
Erin Hanlon (SF04) traveled to
Nashville, Tenn, to attend the
aooi Amnesty International
Annual General Meeting as rep
resentatives the SJCSF Amnesty
group. They spent three days
attending panel discussions and
participating in breakout ses
{The College- St. John’s College ■ Summer sooi }
SlAM.
sions as they looked for ideas to
make the campus group more
effective.
Adriana de Julio (SFoi) has
won a one-year fellowship with
the National Institutes of Health
to conduct cancer research and
Susannah Daniels (SFoi) has a
conservation internship at El
Malpais National Monument in
Grants, N.M. Philip Bolduc
(SFoi), Brian Ballentine (SFoi),
Karen Gosta (SFoi), and Justin
Kray (SFoi) have internships to
teach English in France through
the French Department of Edu
cation.
Elizabeth Royal (Aoi) will
spend two weeks this summer at
the Claremont Institute, a con
servative think tank, as a Pub
lius Fellow. She will attend semi
nars on political philosophy and
the American political tradition,
contemporary political issues,
and political rhetoric and writ
ing.
Among the 18 Annapolis stu
dents pursuing Hodson Trust
internships this summer are
Randy Pennell (A02), interning
with the Philadelphia ybers;
Hannah Ireland (Aoi), working
with a documentary production
company; Lydia Frewen (Aoa),
learning to make violin bows at
the University of New Hamp
shire; and Peter Heyneman
(A02), attending the Sewanee
Writers’ Conference.
�{From the Bell Towers}
Phoning for Philanthropia
Tuition only covers about 75% of
what it costs to educate students
at St. John’s. The rest comes
from the endowment andfrom
contributions to the Annual
Fund. Phonathons are part of
the story behind those contribu
tions.
Q: You throw a phonathon and
who shows up?
A: In the case of St. John’s, 33
alumni from classes spanning 48
years, from Everett Wilson (A56)
to Hayden Brockett (A04).
Q: And just what does everyone
do (besides making phone calls)?
A: Eat dinner and compete for
prizes for the most donations
and the most new donors (the
phone calls involve chatting with
alumni, outlining the college’s
needs, and asking for $$$).
Q: So where do you throw that
phonathon?
A: In Annapolis, it’s the Conver
sation Room-where else? In
Santa Fe, it’s the Senior Com
mon Room.
Q: And who sits where?
A: Interestingly enough, says
advancement officer Mary Sim
mons, at the Annapolis
phonathon the very youngest
and very oldest choose to sit
right next to each other. It’s a
Alumni phoning alumni;
EFFECTIVE FUNDRAISING AND
SUCCESSFUL FUN.
social event that brings alumni
together for a good cause.
Simmons reports that the
spring phonathon, held May 15,
was a success. In Annapolis, ao
volunteers made 619 calls, rais
ing $r6,arr.5o from 149 donors.
Among the donors, 63 were
making their first gifts to the
Annual Fund. In Santa Fe, 13
volunteers made 38a calls rais
ing over $4aoo (gifts are still
coming in). Of Santa Fe’s 59
phonathon donors, aa were
making their first gifts. These
high proportions of first-time
donors are particularly satisfying
to members of Philanthropia,
the alumni organization dedicat
ed to fundraising among fellow
alumni. While Philanthropia’s
goal is to increase alumni finan
cial support to the college, it’s
not just the number of dollars
they want to increase. The num
ber of donors counts too; foun
dation and corporate support is
often linked to the percentage of
alumni who donate.
Ginger Roherty, Director of
the Annual Fund for the Santa
Fe campus, is a fan of the
phonathon approach. “There is
a tremendous synergy when
phonathons are conducted
around seminar tables and there
is a great sense of everyone
working toward a common
goal,” she says. “Everyone is
truly having a good time and
enjoying each other’s company.”
Phonathons are one tactic
Philanthropia employs to
involve alum
ni in financial
support for
the college.
They also
solicit alumni
with bro
chures and
letters and
they organize
reunion class
es to focus on
social events.
7
cyber-networking,
3,035,763
Dollars given by Alumni
and giving.
FYOl
Annapolis cam
pus vice president
2,083,984*
Jeff Bishop says that
1,953,944
FYOO
Philanthropia
1,520,683 FY99
expects to meet its
FY98
goal of a ten-percent
increase in alumni
participation in the
Annual Fund.
“We’re laying the
groundwork for the
plus $5,000,000 from the estate of Paul Mellon
future of the col
lege,” he says.
2,187
Number of
“More young alum
pYQj
Alumni Gifts
FYOO ■
ni are becoming
1,710
acquainted with
FY99
Philanthropia and
FY98H
recognizing the col
lective power of the
number of gifts
given to St. John’s.”
Before the creation
of Philanthropia,
alumni giving was
around 20%, well
below the median of
other small liberal
arts colleges, which
garet Odell (SGI97), Rachel
is 44%. “Today, we’re up to 25%,
O’Keefe (A82), John Oosterhout
with reunion classes making the
(A5r), John Wood (SFoi), Elaine
biggest improvements, now up to
Coleman Pinkerton (SGI88), and
30%. “While we have a long way
Inga Waite (SF87).
to go,” says Bishop, “we feel
Philanthropia’s leadership
confident that someday we will
recently
changed. Leslie Jump
get there.”
(A84) is the new chair of Philan
Philanthropia wants to thank
thropia. Other members of the
the phonathon volunteers,
Steering Committee are Amber
including Mary Pat Justice
Boydstun
(SFpp-overseeing “spir
(SGI71), Katherine Haas (A60),
it” activities), Eloise Collingwood
Merle Maffei (AGI86), Harry
(A79-overseeing communica
Zolkower (A82), Chris Olson
tions),
Brett Heavner ( ABp-over(A78), Thea DelBalzo (AGIoi),
seeing
the
reunion class leaders),
Rosamond Rice (AGI81), Karen
Marta Lively (A78-at large), Paula
Salem (A76), Everett Wilson
Maynes (SF77-overseeingpoh(A56),Tom Tandaric (A98), Pilar
cy/membership), Becca Michael
Wyman (A86), Tim Pomarole
(A97-overseeing strategy), and
(A98), Steve Wilson (AGI99),
Amy Thurston (A95-overseeing
Jim Heyssel (A84), Hayden
events/phonathons). -ijiBrockett (A04), Isadora Sageng
(A03), Stephen Steim (A03),
Stephanie Porcaro (A03), Brooke
Lee (A03), Gin Behrends
(AGI90), Anne Ferro (A80), Joni
Arends (SF89), Carisa Armen
dariz (SF99), Claiborne Booker
(A84), Kit Brewer (SGI98), Alex
is Brown (SFoo), Peter Dwyer
(A86), Geri Glover (SF80), Mar
{The College -St. John’s College ■ Summer 2001 }
Philanthropia seeks volunteer help
from all alumni who want topar
ticipate, whether in a small or
large role. Ifyou ’re interested,
please call or e-mail Maggie Griffin
in Annapolis: 410-626-2534,
m-griffin@sjca.edu or Ginger
Roherty in Santa Fe: 5O5-g84-6og<).
�8
The Studs of
St. John’s
Ostensibly as a fundraiser (but
primarily for the novelty value)
several juniors in Santa Fe cre
ated the wildly popular “Studs
of St. John’s” calendar. Featur
ing the 15 most macho men per
suaded to pose for a project ini
tially dismissed as a dubious
attempt to raise money, the cal
endar turned out to be a raging
success. While this “success”
was mostly realized in terms of
school-wide interest rather
than fiscal returns (due to con
fused leadership and poor
financial forecasting), the
entire project served Santa Fe
well. It’s not every year that the
campus is hit with a Studs calendar-and despite the lack of a
precedent, the outrageous pic
tures amused all those exposed
to the handsome visages and
physiques displayed in the cal
endar.
The project was conceived to
finance the so-called Junior
Block Party, another first for
Santa Fe. The block party-held
on a pleasant sunny day in
May-featured live music, a bar
becue, outdoor games, much
{From
the
Bell Towers}
lounging in the sun, the third
annual women’s arm wrestling
contest, and kegs of beer to help
facilitate the atmosphere. The
block party, financed by pre-pro
duction sale of the calendars,
treated all to a good time and
lived up to its expectations.
Unfortunately, with a business
plan that drew on the dot-com
legacy, the calendar’s start-up
money got spent on the party
and there were no funds left to
produce the calendar. After
many rounds of creative negoti
ations with several businesses in
Santa Fe and a few helpful mem
bers of the St. John’s adminis
tration, the calendar was pro
duced at a cost far below initial
expectations-with photos of
superb quality and ridiculous
content.
—BY John
Rankin,
SFoa
Greatest Hits (in Russian)
Valery Serdyukov (left),
the governor of Leningrad, recently
LiSA RICHMOND (RIGHT),
PRESENTED A GIFT OF 30 RUSSIAN BOOKS TO
GrEENFIELD LIBRARY AS BuD BiLLUPS, COLLEGE
ThE BOOKS INCLUDED WORKS BY ToLSTOY, DoSTOEVSKi, Chekhov, and Pushkin, The governor was in Annapolis to
SIGN A TRADE AGREEMENT WITH PaRRIS GlENDENING, GOVERNOR OF
Maryland, and expressed an interest in donating books to a local
COLLEGE. The Russian classics found a home with the other
“greats” at the St. John’s library.
LIBRARIAN AT THE
A point of history: As John
Rankin points out, it’s not every
year that the college is hit with a
Studs calendar. But such an
event did happen at least once
before-in Annapolis in 1987,
when Ben Birauss (A88) pro
duced “The Men of St. John’s.”
Drawing on the non-PC transla
tion of the college motto “I
make free men out of boys by
means of books and a balance,”
TREASURER, LOOKED ON.
the calendar featured comely
men posing in St. John’s-esque
situations: Krauss in front of
the pendulum pit mural, Steve
Hulbert (A87) in the King
William Room, Chandran
Madhu (A88) in front of an
Apollonius proof, Mark Shiffman (A89) at the switchboard,
Jeff Kojak (A89) at the plane
tarium, Andre Wakefield (A87)
in a music room, Scott
Vineberg (A88) near the French
Monument, Toby Barlow (SF88)
in a Humphreys bathroom,
Vince Pruden (SF89) in the art
gallery. Matt Krawiec (A88) at
the boat house, John Lavery
(A87) in the weight room, and
John Pronko (A90) in the con
versation room.
La plus qA change;
St. John’s studs in
aooi and 1987.
{The College - Si. John’s College • Summer 2001 }
�9
{From the Bell Towers}
Mutant Gene
Discovery
When Marc Priest (Aoi) began
an internship at the National
Institute of Allergies and Infec
tious Diseases during the sum
mer before his senior year, he
thought he’d be learning some
lab techniques and helping out
with minor projects. Instead, he
discovered a gene mutation that
was causing a i6-month-old
patient to be particularly suscep
tible to common bacterial infec
tions that most people fight off
with no trouble.
Under the direction of Dr.
Steve Holland (A79), Priest set
out to find what was causing the
patient’s interferon gamma
receptor-alpha
deficiency. They
knew that a gene
mutation pre
vented the
receptor from
processing a
chemical that is
essential to the
functioning of
the body’s
immune system.
He isolated the
gene, cloned it,
and then com
pared it to normal genes to
locate the mutation. Priest
found that both the child and his
mother had a deletion on the
gene that acts as a chemical
receptor for the immune sys
tem’s pathway. “After I found
the mutation I met with the
Marc Priest, shown
AT GRADUATION WITH
President Nelson,
LOCATED A GENE MUTA
TION THAT CAN AFFECT
THE IMMUNE SYSTEM.
patient and his mom,” says
Priest. “I explained to her that
the child’s condition was treat
able. This was certainly gratify
ing.” Treatment consisted of
injecting double the amount of
the chemical that cannot be uti-
barred, music-wise)
Annapolis Homecoming 2001 . The
traditional Saturday
Take a handful of Annapolis
alumni and ask them which
building, Mellon or McDowell, is
closer to the heart and soul of the
college. Only the incorrigible
will say Mellon. Yet Mellon’s FSK
lobby has been the site of all
Homecoming registrations in
recent memory as well as the big
Saturday evening cocktail party,
when the acoustically
challenged room
echoes with a din ren
dering individual
words inaudible.
This year we say,
“Enough of this.”
Homecoming (Sep
tember 28-30) will at
last reflect the fond
feehngs of alumni for
McDowell, with regis
tration moved to the
cozy quarters of the
Coffee Shop and the
cocktail party moved
to the Great Hall and
the first and second
floor classrooms.
Other decidedly non-lobby
events will include:
• A career panel, both for cur
rent students and job-chang
ing alumni
• Two rock parties, one Friday
night in the boathouse (all
seventies music, sans disco),
one Saturday night in the
Coffee Shop (no holds
night waltz party in the
Great Hall
Seminars running the gamut
from Plato to Emerson,
from Robert Frost to Chfford Geertz, from Shake
speare to Toni Morrison,
with a seminar on Harry
Potter for children
Reunion dinners, picnics,
croquet games, and
cocktail parties, for
reunion classes 1936,
1941,1946, '95>-1956,
1961,1966,1971,1976,
1981,1986,1991, and
1996
• The Special Meeting
of the Alumni Associa
tion, where Nancy
Lewis, John Moore and
Beate Ruhm Von
Oppen will be made
Honorary Alumni
“Essay Conference” by
Jo Ann Mattson, A(i7
{The College- St. John’s College - Summer 2001 }
lized because of the
missing gene. “This
particular deletion
occurs in only one out
of 200,000 patients,
but it is significant to
study it. Looking at
the few that are with
out the receptors in
their immune system pathways
helps us to understand how the
pathways work. This helps us
understand how to help normal
people who are susceptible to
such bacteria as tuberculosis,”
he says.
• The Saturday night Homecoming banquet, where Tom
Williams (A51) and Warren
Spector (A81) will receive
the Alumni Association
Award of Merit
• The Soccer Classic, with the
alumni rarin’ to avenge last
year’s loss to the students
• The Homecoming auto
graph party, with alumni
and faculty authors signing
books ranging from western
novels to translations of
Aristotle and Plato
• Sunday brunch at the home
of President Christopher B.
Nelson (SF70)
The Homecoming lecture Fri
day night will be dehvered by
Abraham Schoener (A82), who
will speak on “The Biology of the
Fermentation Vessel.” Before
and after the lecture, students,
faculty and alumni will gather,
yes, in the FSK lobby. Some
things never change. 4"
Contact the Annapolis alumni
office at 410-626-2331 or alumni@sjca.edu to registerfor Homecoming.
�IO
{FromtheBellTowers}
Mortimer J. Adler, An Appreciation
ortimer Adler-a teacher,
author of books that
popularized themes in
philosophy, and compil
er of the Great Books
published by Encyclope
dia Brittanica-died on June 28 in San
Mr. Adler played an important role in
Mateo, Calif., at the age of 98.
the establishment of the St. John’s Pro
gram, of which he was a vigorous support
er over many decades. From the earliest
days of the New Program he visited
St. John’s, both in Annapolis and Santa Fe,
many times to lecture and to meet with fac
ulty and students. He was an articulate
spokesman for liberal education and for
the reading and discussion of great books
as central and fundamental to it. Along
with such colleagues as Scott Buchanan,
Stringfellow Barr, Mark Van Doren,
Richard McKeon, and Robert Hutchins,
he made a major contribution to the estab
lishment of great books programs not only
in Annapolis and Santa Fe but also in
New York, in Chicago, and all across the
country.
In the more than three dozen books that
Mortimer Adler wears a crown after being
he wrote, Mr. Adler sought to clarify for a
PROCLAIMED, A LA NaPOLEON, THE HOLY EmPERwide general audience a variety of pro
OR OF THE Western World in the 1992 lec
found philosophic questions illuminated
ture PRANK.
by the study of the greatest authors. His
books included How to Read a Book, How
to Think About War and Peace, The Differ
then went to the University of Chicago as a
ence ofMan and the Difference It Makes,
professor of the philosophy of law.
Aristotlefor Everybody, miHov: to Think
Mortimer Adler did not believe that the
About God.
full exercise of intellect was something for a
Born in New York City, Mr. Adler
small academic elite. In 1946, he joined with
dropped out of De Witt Clinton High
Robert Hutchins to organize a Great Books
School when he was 15, and worked for the
program for the general public and arrange
editor of the New York Sun. Deciding that
for the Encyclopedia Britannica to print a
he wanted to study philosophy, he attended 54-volume set of such books, for which he
Columbia University and completed the
contributed the Syntopicon, a guide to the
course of study, but did not receive a diplo themes, questions, and arguments to be
ma because he refused to take the swim
found in them. In 195a, he organized the
ming test that was a physical education
Institute for Philosophical Research. He was
requirement. Even without his degree,
editor and then chairman of the board of
however, he became an instructor in phi
editors of the Encyclopedia Britannica
losophy, and in 1928 he received his PhD
beginning in the mid-1960s. He organized
(eventually being granted a BA by Colum
and led seminars for executives at the Aspen
bia in 1983.) He did research in psychology
Institute, and initiated the Paideia Project
and taught at Columbia from 1923 to 1930,
to make practice of the liberal arts and dis
M
cussion of great books central to the high
{The College- St. John’s College • Summer 2001 }
school curriculum.
At St. John’s, Mr. Adler is
remembered as an energetic
advocate of studying the great
books and practicing the liberal
arts-one who never stopped ask
ing the big questions, both theo
retical and practical, and who
always relentlessly insisted on
clarity in discussing them. He
showed himself as such a man in
the course of visiting this Col
lege as a lecturer, with undimin
ished vigor, for almost sixty
years. In the early years, his lec
tures were several hours long,
which gave rise to the tradition,
ever since the late 1930s, of
interrupting his talks with a stu
dent prank. Some were simple
like the first, which consisted of
a hall full of alarm clocks which
all began ringing at exactly one
hour into the lecture. Some were
quite elaborate, like the one in
which the curtain opened
behind the lecturer, to reveal a
tableau of students costumed and posi
tioned to resemble the Renaissance painting
“The School of Athens”: there was a Homer
in it, and a Virgil, and a Plato, and the restbut no Aristotle; out came a student, who
placed a wreath on Mr. Adler’s head and
escorted him into the scene, to take the
place of Aristotle. Mr. Adler loved it. He
took the pranks as they were meant to be
taken-as signs of affection and regard for a
man who loved reading hard books, asking
deep questions, clarifying alternative
answers, and making thought make a differ
ence in the world.
Mr. Adler is survived by four sons: Mark,
of Chevy Chase; Michael, of Grand Junc
tion, Colorado; and Douglas and Philip,
both of Chicago.
A memorial will be held for him at 9:00
a.m. on Saturday, September 29, at Homecoming in Annapolis. 4"
—Harvey Flaumenhaft
For a retrospective ofpranks staged during
Mortimer Adler’s lectures, see page 39.
�{Alumni Voices}
MARX REDUX
By Sarah Fridrich, SF99
n the two-year anniversary of my senior oral-on
my essay concerning Karl Marx and his discus
sion of capitalism-I found myself, late at night,
scribbhng a letter in a notebook near my bed
side. It was addressed to Ms. Engel, the chair of
my senior oral committee.
The letter began: “I’ve been
thinking about and slowly sort
ing out what excited me about
Marx’s assessment of capital
ism. Now, I would like to contin
ue the discussion that had only
just begun at the table in Meem
during my oral. You had posed
several questions to me about
my essay. The most troubling
question was about revolution.”
Recent protests at the World
Trade Organization talks in
Quebec, Washington, D.C,, and
Seattle had given me new incen
tive to decipher what Marx was
trying to say about capitalism. The protes
tors questioned whether impacts that world
trade agreements could have on the environ
ment and on the populations and socioeco
nomic stability of developing countries
would be brought to the discussion tables.
Sitting comfortably at my mother’s home
in Annapolis where I grew up, I wondered
why they thought these things. Why did pro
testors believe, even though many of them
had no first-hand proof of it, that certain
issues were not being addressed? Why did
they feel compelled to shout and carry
signs?
It had been five years since I’d participat
ed in similar activities. I’d started a petition
signed by the majority of female students
demanding that the administration permit
us to wear long stockings during the winter
months at our CathoUc high school. I’d
Sarah Fridrich, who currently works in
MARKETING in AnNAPOLIS, WRITES SONGS AND
PERFORMS WITH HER BAND IN HER SPARE TIME.
marched past the White House with a body
of young people shouting to be heard on the
issue of gay rights. I’d made posters and got
petitions signed while shouting for more
culturally diverse faculty and curricula to
serve the needs of a diverse student body at a
small liberal arts college in upstate New
York. Then, in 1994,1 enrolled at St. John’s
and I knew there wouldn’t be shouting, it
wouldn’t be necessary.
I became accustomed to being heard and
having fruitful discussions-in attempts to
figure out what it means to be human-on
topics such as heroism, war, and revenge;
truth, knowledge, and intellect; god, cer
tainty, and morality; rights, givens, and
{The College- St. John’s College ■ Summer 2001 }
assumptions. At times I may have felt like
holding up a sign to get my point across, but
it was never necessary. In silence, I often
learned more. I found that, by listening, I
prepared others to better hear me.
When the discussion turned to Marx’s
essay on alienated labor, I felt compelled to
put some words on paper, but there was still
no need for it to be fluorescent poster board.
In my senior essay, I managed to say a few
things and to clarily what he meant when he
criticized the German Ideologists and when
he talked about the effects of capitalism on
society. But when the hour for the senior
oral was up, it felt like I had just started to
uncover what I needed to know from Marx.
Ms. Engel asked why I thought that non-vio
lent revolution was possible within Marx’s
philosophy. I really didn’t have an answer.
The dilemma highlighted my need to sort
out what Marx said from what Marx had
inspired me to say. This would take much
longer than the weeks we had to write an
essay. Working in the business world after
graduation gave me the opportunity to test
my understanding of the philosophy that
labor in capitalism is a commodity, and that
capital must create more capital.
Two years later, on the couch in my living
room, I wondered if these shouting protes
tors might benefit from a Johnnie-like dis
cussion on Marx’s ideas. Had Marx laid the
foundation for these protests? Did the pro
testors know it? Maybe not. In my letter to
Ms. Engel I submitted: “Much of Marx’s
concern about capitalism was that it dehu
manized common laborers ... Yet in Europe
and America most of those labor issues have
been addressed in the time since Marx
wrote. Might Marx’s insights on capitalism
still shed some light on current issues of
working conditions? Is there a connection
between the globalization of trade and the
nature of capitalism as an ever-expanding
economic system? ... Should I be making
some signs and protesting?” I haven’t felt it
necessary.. .yet.
�{Commencement}
COMMENCEMENT
2001
Ed Moreno (Santa Fe) and
Barbara Goyette (Annapolis)
BY
he
graduating
Mr. Zuckerman attempted to clothe
seniors-95
in
the inevitable graduation bromides in
Annapolis and in
attire appropriate to St. John’s. He said
in Santa Fe-chose
he would present the seniors and mas
as their com
ter’s candidates with seven “preludes,”
mencement
which “have no required form. They may
speakers one each
be perfectly made miniatures; or they
from the two basic
may be mere fragments, famously
pools: tutors at
baffling to the experts.”
the college whose real thoughts they
The subject of the first prelude was the
have been curious about for four years Tutors Peter Pesic and Janet Dougherty
claim that at St John’s, the books are the
CONGRATULATE THE SaNTA Fe GRADUATES.
and “outsiders” who might have
teachers. “It is easy enough for me to
thoughtful words to send them on their
agree with the truism,” he said, “for one
way. In Annapolis, tutor emeritus Elliott
of my own exaggerated opinions about
Zuckerman presented a perfectly constructed, wittily pack
teaching is that all a teacher can do is point to something.
aged set of what he called preludes, while Harvard professor,
Since in the St. John’s seminar the places pointed to are in the
author, and lecturer Cornel West wove the theme of radical
texts... that gives us both a role, the person pointing and the
questioning into his address to the Santa Fe graduates.
page that is pointed to. And this becomes a richly complicat
ed process when, in the course of a seminar or a class discus
Bromideless Preludes in Annapolis
sion, all the participants are doing the didactic pointing.” Mr.
Before the assembled seniors and the a6 master’s degree can
Zuckerman’s second prelude also had to do with his role as
didates and all their families and friends, plus students and
teacher: “Even though I was officially an historian, I never
alumni, Elliott Zuckerman, who’s been a tutor since 1961, was
worried about our not doing official history. I have seen what
introduced on the bright sunny morning of May 13 by Presi
happens elsewhere when lectures on the Greeks intrude upon
dent Chris Nelson. It cannot be said of Mr. Zuckerman that he
Homer, and Machiavelli is crowded out by arguments about
is incapable of uttering a trite remark, but it can certainly be
when the Renaissance began...”
said that he is incapable of uttering a trite remark and not
Third, Mr. Zuckerman related anecdotes from his own stu
identifying it as such. This character trait put him at some
dent days, when he was enrolled in a course at Columbia
thing of a disadvantage in delivering remarks at a graduation,
taught by poet Mark Van Doren on Narrative Art. The course
since, as he said, “Abromide [which is a commonplace] is rec
included works like the Iliad, Don Quixote, and a novel by
ognizable not necessarily by the inevitability of its words but
Kafka. “The exam, as I remember it, consisted of two ques
by the triteness of the very thought behind the words...Bro
tions. The first question was: Which of the books in the
mides are not only the expected material of commencement
course did you like least? The second question was: To what
speeches, but they are the substance of Graduation Day
deficiency in your character do you attribute not liking this
itself.”
book as much as the others?...In classes in cultural history or
{The College. St. John’s College ■ Summer aooi }
�{Commencement}
‘‘‘ Use your intellect to cut though the thicket ofmass tastes
and mass culture...''
Cornel West
{The College- St. John’s College • Summer zoot }
^3
�14
{Commencement}
lost, or known students who have felt lost.
the history of ideas there was one sort of
“Perhaps at such times it might be useful to
final exam that I found particularly vex
remember the grapefruit crate, and to think
ing. I refer to the Imaginary Conversation.
of oneself as not entirely lost, but as in some
One is asked to compare the view of (say)
way
analogous to the stray object that is both
Saint Augustine and Hegel and Jane Austen
lost and found and therefore neither lost nor
on (say) what is the most important pursuit in Elliott Zuckerman in Annapolis (above).
found. Allow oneself to hang poised, like a
life. I was never able to get started on such a Santa Fe Seniors reflect on Cornel West’s
QUESTIONS (below).
character in Henry James who may want to
comparison because I couldn’t decide how
give two contradictory responses at the same
these miscellaneous characters should
time.”
address one another. Does Saint Augustine
Mr. Zuckerman wove the theme of myriad-mindedness versus sin
call Hegel George? Is it in good taste for Jane Austen to ask Augus
gle-mindedness
throughout his address, and concluded with a prel
tine to convey the greetings of Emma Woodhouse to Santa Monica?
ude
on
the
subject.
A fable of La Fontaine, he said, is about a bat who
At St. John’s College the students can engage in the Great Conver
finds himself twice trapped in the nests of different weasels. The first
sation without such stifling problems of entering into it.”
time, he convinced the mouse-hating weasel that he was a bird; the
Prelude number four involved the study of biology at the college.
second time he convinced the bird-hating weasel that he was a
“We used to do a whole year of biology lab in the sophomore year,”
mouse.
“And even though such myriad-minded animals are lovable
said Mr. Zuckerman. “There was a student who, in the seminar, was
enough, it is difficult for people to remain entirely comfortable with
particularly taken with Plotinus, and with a principle called the
mixed natures in these days that still recommend the Romantic
One, which, as you know, is transcendental and undifferentiated. It
virtues
of sincerity and authenticity, virtues that seem to imply one
happened that in the lab that student failed utterly to complete the
ness. So it may not be so bad to take as a model La Fontaine’s inven
fruit fly experiment. It was suggested at his Don Rag that he simply
tive Chauve-souris.”
couldn’t deal with the fruit flies because there were so many of
them.”
Facing the Big Questions in Santa Fe
The fifth prelude included a story about Mr. Zuckerman’s gradu
ate school experience at Cambridge, where he became friends with
An uncommon May rain in Santa Fe marshaled the St. John’s Gollege
Watson and Crick at the time they were discovering the double helix
Glass of 2001, their families and friends across campus and into the
structure of DNA. He and his literary friends had not been open with
Student Activities Genter for commencement exercises on May 19.
Watson because he was a scientist. “Part of our prejudice,” said Mr.
Beneath a soft glow through skylights, in undergraduates received
Zuckerman, “had been owing to the fact that those were the years
the Bachelor of Arts degree, and 26 received the Master of Arts in
when there was a sharp split between the sciences and those pursuits
Liberal Arts degree. Nearly 700 visitors watched as the members of
that were known as the Humanities. They were even called the Two
the largest of the Santa Fe campus’ 34 graduating classes received
Cultures, and there were scandalous revelations about physicists
their degrees.
who had never read Euripides... and
The commencement was the first
poets who didn’t know how many equa
major event in the Student Activities
tions bore the name of Maxwell.”
Center, the new building-opened last
Not all Mr. Zuckerman’s preludes
fall-that overlooks the Atalaya Trail
were from the academic world. The
Arroyo. Although commencement is
sixth told of a boy at a summer camp
usually held outside on Meem Library
who constructed a lost and found box,
Placita, the crowd seemed not to mind
a grapefruit crate that was already
that rain forced the ceremony into the
conveniently divided down the middle
new space. The graduates and many vis
into two sections. For each section he
itors gathered in the gymnasium, while
had a sign, one reading LOST and the
others watched from the mezzanine.
other reading FOUND...Day after day I
The Anasazi Brass and the St. John’s
watched people come up to the box ...
College Chamber Choir performed,
trying to decide which half ...was the
with selections from the Brass includ
more appropriate repository.” Some
ing two trumpet tunes by Henry Purcell
times, noted Mr. Zuckerman, he has felt 5
and from the Choir, “Regina Caeh” by
{The College- St. John’s College • Summer 2001 }
j
�{Commencement}
15
Gioaccino Rossini and “Sicut Cervus” by Gio
to raise the courage to evaluate the evaluations,
to interrogate the most basic presuppositions
vanni Palestrina.
The event was a milestone for the college. In
and prejudgments in the spirit of intellectual
his first commencement as president, John E.
humility-back to the grandpop, eye-pop, potBalkcom revealed fondness and love for his first
belhed, big-lipped, flat-nosed Socrates,” West
ensemble of graduates, recalling numerous
said.
occasions on which students welcomed him into
He continued, “Tradition is not something
you inherit. If you want it, you gain access to it by
the college community. Balkcom had become
president of St. John’s College in Santa Fe just Cornel West in Santa Fe (above).
means not just of hard labor but sacrifice, com
nine months earlier, after a long career in busi Annapolis graduates parry and party
bat. Looking deeply inside of yourself, and
after the ceremony ( below) .
ness and management consulting.
always acknowledging that when you look inside
Commencement speaker Dr. Cornel West, the
yourself you’ll see, in part, the antecedent reali
Alphonse Fletcher Jr. University Professor at
ties, the histories, the social structures that have
Harvard University, called upon the graduates to use their critical
in part shaped us, but never render us captive, because we’re agents.
thinking to challenge and question the seductions and shallowness
We can make choices and commitments and decisions.”
of mass culture and to remain true to their humanistic training. West
In an address filled with references to Leo Strauss, Montaigne,
Nietzsche, Seneca, and St. Paul, West brought a very contemporary
is known for his best-selling book Race Matters, which triggered a
national debate on race issues. Touching on influential traditions in
focus to the age-old question that faces all graduating students: How
religion, philosophy, democracy and populism, he lectures on race
to adopt away of life of “genuine questioning.” That questioning, he
said, “has to go hand-in-hand with the legacy of Athens: the spiritu
issues, education and other subjects. Dr. West Uved part-time in
Santa Fe throughout the academic year. He attended lectures at the
ality of genuine loving, serving, situating oneself in a story bigger
than oneself, being able to locate oneself in a narrative grander than
college and stayed to participate in discussions that followed, which
is how the students got to know him. As in Annapolis, the seniors in
oneself, that tries to tease out the better angels of one’s nature, to
Santa Fe choose who will be invited to give the commencement
get one out of one’s egocentric predicament.”
West said young people might realize the importance of not “sell
address.
West posited the essential question: “The one question that will
ing their souls for a mess of potage,” but they nevertheless must
continue like a drum beat to confront you, the most frightening
somehow confront our market-driven civilization, where the guid
question, the most terrifying question, the question that sits at the
ing principle is “the nth commandment: Thou shalt not get
very center of the humanistic educa
caught.”
West concluded his remarks by urg
tion; What does it really mean to be
human? We will not get out of space and
ing the graduates to continue to use
time alive, and what are you going to do
their “intellectual and existential
armor” acquired at St. John’s to fight
in the meantime?”
West illustrated his point with refer
for justice, “not because you would
somehow create a better world
ences to Socrates’ remark in Plato’s
Apology, that the unexamined life is
overnight, but rather, as my grand
not worth Uving (and to Malcolm X’s
mother used to say going all the way
addition: “the examined life is
back to gut-bucket black churches and
painful”). As Socrates, who was on trial
Jim Grow Mississippi, that ‘if the king
for questioning the “pretenders to wis
dom of God is within you then every
dom” of his day. West challenged the
where you go you ought to leave a little
graduates to use their intellect and to
heaven behind.’ Leave the world just a
“cut through the thicket of mass tastes
little better than how you found it,” he
and mass culture” that dominate socie
said.
ty in the present day.
Both commencement addresses are
“Intelligence is a manipulative facul
ty. It allows us to evaluate immediate
on the web. Elliott Zuckerman’s speech
context. But intellect is about awe and
is at www.sjca.edu, and Cornel West’s
wonder and astonishment. It forces us
is at WWW. sjcsf. edu.
{The College. St. John’s College ■ Summer 2001 }
�{Johnnies on Theology}
SOPHOMORE SEMINAR
FOREVER
Reflections on theoloflcal questions by religious alumni.
BY Sus3AN
Borden, A87
t St. John’s, we come to seminar
seeking answers bnt walk away
with questions. Nowhere is this
more true than in sophomore
seminar, where we read the Bible,
the “A saints” and Martin
Luther, Dante and Chaucer. At
year’s end most of us gather our
thoughts, settle on answers, and
resolve to live with our doubts and difficulties. But some, by
conviction and often vocation, live in a world where theology
is more than a speculative study. They are pastors and can
tors, rabbis and chaplains, ministers and seekers. Their lives
are a permanent search, where the questions of sophomore
seminar are forever open.
Bible ioi
The Bible is the stepping stone in the rushing stream of reli
gion at St. John’s-no matter what their religious upbringing
(or lack of it), sophomores all read and discuss the Bible as a
part of the program rather than as a basis for belief. For some
students, it’s hard to separate past associations and to address
the text directly; for others, reading the Bible opens their
minds to a new world.
The Rev. Janet Hellner-Burris (SF77) remembers her sen
ior enabling oral: “I had boned up on all those seminar books
and I was ready to go,” she says. “The tutor asked me, ‘Ms.
Hellner, do you remember the story of the prodigal son?’ and
I thought, ‘Come on, I grew up on this stuff.’ He said, ‘It’s in
Matthew,’ and I said, “No, it’s Luke 15.’ And then they knew
who they were talking to.” Familiarity with the text, says
Hellner-Burris, did not turn out to be an advantage: “I had a
miserable exam. I could not get beyond a Sunday school
understanding of the story.”
Hazzan (Cantor) Frank Lanzkron-Tamarazo (A95), howev
er, had never read the Bible until sophomore seminar. The
son of a Jewish mother and an Italian-Catholic father, his reli
gious background was fairly limited: “The only Judaism I had
in my family,” he says, “was when my mother got angry at my
father. Then she would say, ‘Frank, don’t forget you’re a
Jew!”’
When Lanzkron-Tamarazo finally arrived at the sophomore
seminar table, he says it was an awakening; in some ways, a
rude awakening. “To hear about a God who destroys an entire
world of people except for Noah, to hear about a God who
would let Abraham sacrifice his son, to learn about David
betraying his soldier, that made me angry,” says LanzkronTamarazo. But, he says, that anger led to some lively discus
sions in the Nick Capozzoli-Wendy Allanbrook seminar and
brought him to study Hebrew with tutor Michael Blaustein
(A74) for a year and a half.
Nine years later (five of them spent studying at the Jewish
Theological Seminary of America), Lanzkron-Tamarazo is
now a cantor. Both his training and his cantorial practice
require the reading of the Talmud and the AfwAraa-biblical
commentaries that inform the Jewish interpretation of the
Torah (the first five books of the Bible). “You can’t read the
Torah just by reading it as a book,” he says. “What makes it a
part of the Jewish tradition is the way the rabbis understood it
in the writings of the Talmud and the MishnaT
Lanzkron-Tamarazo’s problems with stories like the bind
ing of Isaac were put to rest by the commentaries. “I asked,
{The College. St. John’s College • Summer 200 f }
�I?
ing to him because of his work.
“I think there is a tragic char
acter to existence. God, for bet
ter or worse, created the world in
a certain way and we have to deal
with the consequences. That
may be blaming God some, but
that’s all right with me. I think
God knows there’s lots of trouble
in this world and it’s not all our
fault. I guess I’m more involved
now with how to manage the cre
ation as we find it, not so much
asking how it became this way.”
The relationship of God and suf
fering comes up often in Dillard’s
work because of the degree of pain
he encounters and because of the
population of patients he works
with: mostly poor, sometimes
undereducated, and often with a strict religious background
that features a punishing God. “One of the main things patients
here need to believe is that you don’t have schizophrenia
because of sin. It’s a medical thing, not the response of an angry
God,” he says. “That’s a big issue for people here. They think
they’re suffering because of something they did.”
“Why is the universe as it is?” he asks. “The longer I con
tinue with my faith and ministry, I become less and less clear
about issues that were so plainly clear when I was growing up.
I’d like to have God come out looking good, but I think it’s a
process where the universe is emerging and God’s under-
how could God tell Abraham he’s
going to he a father of a multi
tude of nations and then ask him
to destroy his only son?” he says.
“I was bothered that Abraham
would go ahead with it, even if it Outward symbols of religion like a church steeple or meno
rah SERVE AS reminders OF PROFOUND THEOLOGICAL ISSUES.
was God who asked.” As it turns
out, the great rabbis of the ages
have had some of the same prob
lems. “The rabbis weren’t so
troubled by God as by Abraham.
Before this story, Abraham ques
tioned everything and haggled
with God. But when it came to
Isaac, he said okay. He went up
the mountain and lied to his only
son,” says Lanzkron-Tamarazo.
Janet Hellner-Burris (sf 77)
“A hero can be flawed.”
Yhave a deeper understanding
ofthe question ofsuffering than
I did in college, but I don i
have the answer
What About Job?
Reading the Bible as a book, as it’s done in sophomore semi
nar, leads some students to examine the stories in an almost
literary way-the implications for their beliefs recede into the
background as the stories’ universality is considered.
Rev. David Dillard (A89), a psychiatric chaplain at a state
mental hospital in Kentucky, wrote his sophomore essay on
Job and says that, in the context of his current work, the ques
tions of that book remain. “Why are people born with mental
illnesses? Why should they suffer the way they do? How is a
righteous God involved in all of that?” he asks. The questions
he first dealt with on a theoretical level now have more mean-
{The College - St John’s College ■ Summer 2001 }
�i8
{JohnniesonTheology}
Y think ofinterfaith work as an opportunity to share
our glimpses ofGod. None ofus, by assumption,
has seen Godface toface, but each ofus has
experienced God in a variety ofways.""
Clark Lobenstine (A67)
standing is emerging too. I think God is struggling with cre
ation as much as any of us are.
“There’s a theology called ‘God Wins’ theology, where we
do everything we can to make sure that God comes out look
ing good. If there’s a problem, it’s not God’s fault, it’s some
thing else’s fault. I don’t think God respects that frame of
thought any more than a free-thinking individual would.”
Dillard knows there are objections to his point of view: “One
criticism of this kind of thinking is that I’m anthropomor
phizing God, but I can’t bring the other kind of theology into
a room with a patient.”
Rev. Hellner-Burris, pastor of an urban church facing urban prob
lems (violence, addiction, poverty, racism), also struggles with the
question of suffering. “I have seen so much suffering in my workthat question doesn’t go away,” she says. “I would say that I have a
deeper understanding of the question [than I did in college], but I
don’t have the answer. All I know is that I would rather live with God
and all of those questions than without God.”
The Rev. Dr. Glark Lobenstine (A67), director of an interfaith
organization, tells the story of William Sloan Coffin, a former chap
lain at Yale: “His son was killed and someone gave him the tradi
tional line about it being God’s will, and Coffin lashed out and said,
‘To Hell it was! God was the first to cry!’”
As for Lobenstine’s understanding of God’s relation to suffering,
he says that for him, it isn’t a question of how to understand suffer
ing but a challenge of how to remain faithful in the face of suffering.
“I am very clear that God never promised us a rose garden. There are
joys that are part of the spiritual journey, some of which come in the
midst of pain and suffering and some of which come in what appear
to be much easier ways.”
Glimpses of God
When Lobenstine was in high school, he asked God to make clear
His personal love for him. “I never doubted the existence of God,”
says Lobenstine. “But I wanted something more personal.”
The summer before his senior year, Lobenstine was in a car acci
dent. “It was my fault. I broke the windshield and they had to pull the
glass out of my mouth, but no one was injured,” he says. “I was very
struck by this being the answer to my prayer. God didn’t cause the
accident, but I felt he protected me in it. I responded to that experi
ence, a revelation to me of God’s love, as a calling to my ministry. I
was God’s to do with as he wanted.”
Lobenstine’s ministry is an unusual one. As director of the Inter
Faith Conference of Metropolitan Washington, D.C., he works with
people of many faiths and representatives of many communities on a
host of social issues from housing and child welfare to racial toler
ance and interfaith understanding. Through his work, Lobenstine
says, God is revealed to him in many ways: “I see a great variety and
depth of God’s love. Although I’m profoundly grateful to be a Chris
tian, I know from Sana the Muslim and Jan the Baha’i and D.C. the
Hindu the great joy they have in their own relationship with God and
the depth of that relationship with God.
“I think of interfaith work as an opportunity to share our glimpses
of God. None of us, I assume, has seen God face to face, but each of
us has experienced God in a variety of ways. By sharing ghmpses,
whether we are all Presbyterians or all Muslims or all Catholics or of
diverse faiths, we deepen our understanding of God while we grow in
our appreciation of our own traditions and our understanding of
others’.”
In her own spiritual journey, Vicki Manchester (SF71) has seen
glimpses of God through different religions, from her Episcopalian
childhood to a time when she attended a Jewish temple to now, when
she has found what she was searching for in Tibetan Buddhism.
Manchester says that faith does not demand understanding. Rein
carnation, for example, is an important idea in Tibetan Buddhism,
and although it doesn’t make sense to her, she has faith that it will.
“I keep listening to my teachers and seeing that everything else they
say makes sense. My respect for the dharma, the teachings, has
steadily built up, mainly because it works. Being kinder to people
really did increase my own happiness. That’s kind of a law of karma
which is connected to the idea of reincarnation,” she says. “A lot of
the teachings are mysterious to me. I can’t understand all of them,
but I have faith that someday, maybe, I will.”
The Rev. Rachel Frey (Agi), an associate minister at a suburban
parish, agrees that questions of doubt can live within a faithful per
son. “I wrote my senior essay about doubt,” she says. “I asked if you
could be both faithful and doubtful, something I was thinking about
and wanted affirmed.” Now, after seven years as a minister, she says
she no longer looks for answers in theological readings. “I have
more life experience that affirms my faith,” she says. “When I was at
St. John’s, I thought about God in an academic way. Being a minis
ter, my experience with congregations of faithful people has led me
to believe in having a relationship with God, as opposed to thinking
philosophically about a concept of God. I used to believe because it
was logical, but now I believe because of the things I see in people’s
lives.”
Frey, who works part-time at the University Christian Church, in
Hyattsville, Md., says she set out to find a position at a church with
more than one minister so she could continue learning from some
one with more experience. “I’m at U.C.C. because my senior minis
ter, Marshall Dunn, is the kind of minister I wanted to be with and
work with and learn from. He’s an excellent pastor. He loves his
{The College. St. John’s College ■ Summer soot }
�{Johnnies on Theology}
19
''When I was at St. Johns, I thought about God in an
academic way. Being a minister, my experience...has led
me to believe in having a relationship with God.''
Rachel Frey [A91]
church and he’s beloved by his church. He loves people and he loves
being a minister, which sometimes seems kind of rare. There are a
lot of disheartened ministers out there.”
Keeping the Faith
As a pastor at an active and diverse church near Pittsburgh, Rev.
Hellner-Burris has sought to avoid the disheartened minister syn
drome by focusing on her prayer life. She recalls a time early in her
ministry when she saw she was heading for burnout. “I became com
mitted to daily prayer,” she says. “For me the inner journey is what
feeds the outer journey. The inner focus of my prayer life has been
crucial to my outward expression of ministry. I can’t do one without
the other.”
For Dillard, the psychiatric hospital chaplain, the difficult cir
cumstances of his work keep him from burnout-an irony not lost on
him. “This is a place where there’s a lot of suffering and mental
anguish, but we’re able to do some good and help people out.
Patients really give us the greatest affirmation.” As an example, Dil
lard describes a group he leads in geriatric music: “These folks can’t
remember what they had for lunch, but they remember all the words
to the a3rd Psalm or ‘Your Cheatin’ Heart’ or ‘The Old Rugged
Cross.’ We’ll use these songs to access memories and emotions.
We’ll sing the old church song ‘Break into the Garden,’ and it’ll
bring somebody back to a little country church in Kentucky.
“It’s a gift to worship with people who really want to be in a wor
ship environment, a gift to be in a service with people who aren’t
driving up to the church in a Jaguar. They come with a rawness you
rarely see out in the real world where people put on their church
clothes and church personas and don’t show their true selves.” -#■
Theology Bookshelf
David Dillard (A89) is a psychiatric chaplain at Central State Hos
pital in Louisville, Kentucky. He is a member of the Alliance of
Baptists. He recommends:
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Tragic Vision and Divine Compassion: A Contemporary
Theodicyiyj'^&aAy^sAey
Either/Or by Soren Kierkegaard
The Crucified Godby Jurgen Moltmann
Rachel Frey (Agi) is associate minister at University Christian
Church in Hyattsville, Maryland. She is a member of the Christian
Church (Disciples of Christ). She recommends:
Desiring God: Meditations ofa Christian Hedonist
by John Piper
Walk in the Light and Twenty-Three Tales by Leo Tolstoy
The Christ-Centered Woman: Finding Balance in a World of
Extremes by Kimberly Dunnam Reisman
Janet Hellner-Burris (SF77) is pastor at the Christian Church of
Wilkinsburg in Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania. She is a member of the
Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). She recommends:
Jesus and the Disinheritedby Howard Thurman
Open Mind, Open Heart by Thomas Keating
Pedagogy ofthe Oppressedby Paolo Frieire
Frank Lanzkron-Tamarazo (A95) is hazzan (cantor) and education
director at Temple Beth-El Mekor Chayim in Cranford, New Jer
sey. He is a member of the conservative movement. He recom
mends:
The Guidefor the Perplexed by Moses Maimonides
The Talmud over 500 years of rabbinical commentaries
The Jewish IFtzz-by Josephus (around 37 c.e.)
Clark Lobenstine (A67) is director of the Interfaith Conference of
Metropolitan Washington in Washington, D.C. He is a member of
the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). He recommends:
The Illustrated World’s Religions: A Guide to our Wisdom
Traditions by Huston Smith
A New Religious America by Dr. Diana Eck
Vicki Manchester (SF71) has taken refuge vows as a Tibetan Bud
dhist. She recommends:
The Dhammapada (teachings of the Buddha)
Liberation in the Palm p/’FoMr/ZazztZby Pabongka Rimpoche
Ethicsfor a New Millennium by His Holiness The Dalai Lama
The Art ofHappiness by His Holiness The Dalai Lama
The Four Noble TFiztAj by Venerable Lobsang Gyatso
What the Buddha Taught by Walpola Rahula
{The College - St. John’s College ■ Summer aoot }
�ao
{Politics}
ROUSSEAU
AM) HKAI.I'OI I I IK
How alumni in the world ofpolitics are influenced
by their St. Johns background.
By John Rankin, SF03
rom a C-SPAN production studio
to
the diplomatic negotiating table in
F
Cyprus, St. John’s graduates have
found their calling in the field of
While the alumni
interviewed
for this article
politics
and government.
Could
express a great appreciation
for
their
education,
they
this array of positions held by alum
see the value moreniinindicate
the mental
tools and skills
they
a connection
between
picked up at St. John
than in the
content ofread
the pro
the’spolitical
philosophy
at St.
gram. Reading political
careersphilosophy
chosen? was not particu
larly persuasive for any of them in terms of choosing a
career; they felt a desire to get involved and pursue
the causes important to them. However, all the alum
ni profiled value the fact that they have read the
majority of the political texts that played a role in the
evolution of western political thought, and they cite
this as an indispensable background for a thoughtful,
substantive take on the political world of today.
The stories of five alumni follow: an ambassador, a
television producer, a writer and television panelist,
and two who work at think tanks.
Donald Bandler (sfgi 73)
“Getting things done-that’s what it’s about,” quips Donald Ban
dler, American Ambassador to Cyprus. Appointed to the post by
former President Bill Clinton in May 1999, Bandler faces the
complex and delicate issues concerning this small island nation
off the southern coast of Turkey. As ambassador, Bandler’s pri
mary mission is to represent American interests in Cyprus. This
involves everything from providing political analysis to the U.S.
State Department, to managing the 200-employee embassy in
Nicosia.
Recently,
John’s and
the he played a role in facilitating a major sale of
Boeing planes to the commercial fleet of Cyprus Air. The issues
facing any diplomat in Cyprus demand thoughtful analysis and
careful handling. Divided since 1974 by a Turkish invasion, the
status of the island as a whole, and potential unification, remains
uncertain. Tensions run high, and lives have been lost in demon
strations and uprisings.
Bandler came to this post with a solid background in interna
tional diplomacy. After j oining the State Department in 1976, his
career took him to posts in Africa, the Middle East, and Europe,
where he participated in the negotiations leading to the
unification of Germany.
Consistent with the practice of political appointees, Bandler
submitted a letter of resignation to President Bush when he took
office. The Bush administration, however, has given no indica
tion it would like him to leave, and Ambassador Bandler expects
to stay at his post.
Bandler’s connection with St. John’s began during his under
graduate years at Kenyon College, where he met several profes
sors who had studied with Leo Strauss and other academics
involved in the Great Books movement. Bandler married Jane
Goldwin (A71, daughter of former Annapolis Dean Robert A.
Goldwin, A50) and completed the Graduate Institute in Santa Fe
several years after graduating from Kenyon.
{The College- St. John’s College • Summer sooi }
�{The College* St. John’s College • Summer 2001 }
�{Politics}
^...the conceptualfoundation acquired
from studyingpoliticalphilosophy can be
very helpful in thepolicy debate.
Donald Bandler [SFGI73]
Philosophy Meets Politics
Bandler discusses the role that his political philosophy background
hasplayed in the world ofRealpolitik in ‘"Philosophy Meets Politics. ”
Talking with John Rankin caused me to reflect on whether and how polit
ical philosophy, my academic concentration at Kenyon College and St.
John’s College, was a good background for a career in international rela
tions. The short answer: a resounding yes.
Early in my career I had the privilege of working as Special Assistant
to Dr. Paul Wolfowitz, currently the Deputy Secretary of Defense. As
Director of the Secretary of State’s Policy Planning Staff, Paul assembled
a group of 20 or so policy thinkers-many grounded in political philoso
phy, some taught by students of Leo Strauss-with a mandate to provide
an independent judgment on policies developed largely by career
experts. The policy debate often turned on issues that would appeal to
the student of political philosophy: What are the necessary conditions
for security of human rights? What deters hostile human behavior?
Fear? Hope? And why are so many people so desperately poor, i.e., what
causes poverty? Or the better question: what causes prosperity?
Later, I had two assignments in Paris, six years in all, ending up as
Charge d’Affaires at our embassy. The ambience alone was a political
philosopher’s daydream: Ben Franklin’s statue in the courtyard. Jeffer
son’s name carved at the top of the list of U.S. Envoys. Rousseau and
Lafayette memorabilia to explore. Even the pervasive reek of Gauloise
cigarettes did not dent the pleasure of a bistro lunch with Jean-Francois
Revel, a visiting Alan Bloom or Robert Goldwin. But Paris was not all
atmospherics. France wields considerable international influence and
enjoys playing her role as a counterweight to America. Although the
French Revolution and U.S. Constitution emerged at a common
moment, 1789, France had a string of different regimes and the U.S. only
one. Understanding the similarities and differences is important in
striving for good relations and cooperation. For its part, the French
“classe politique” is steeped in history and political theory that rein
forces its self-image as a competing pole of civilization. This comes out
in foreign policy seminars (“colloques”), which are often contentious
and are taken seriously. So too, are our discussions with French leaders
in the Elysee Palace, the Prime Minister’s office, and the Foreign Min
istry. Realpolitik generally prevails in those sessions, but the conceptu
al foundation acquired from studying political philosophy can be very
helpful in the policy debate. And when the U.S. and France agree, it is
usually a lot easier to build an international consensus.
Political philosophy also figured large in my work in Germany on its
reunification and on Israel’s peace negotiations with the Palestinians
and Jordan-and it is at the heart of my current ambassadorship. “The
Cyprus Problem” revolves around whether and how to negotiate a set
tlement to reunify this island that has been divided along ethnic lines
since 1974. Debate centers on “political equality” and whether the set
tlement should be a federation, confederation or some hybrid. The
issues parallel those in the Federalist Papers, especially debate over the
respective powers of the states and central government. I maintain an
intensive dialogue on these subjects with the Greek-Cypriot and Thrkish-Cypriot leaders on the island, in UN-led talks, and in unofficial study
groups led by U.S. academic experts.
I would hasten to add that political philosophy is only one of many
fields that provide a good background for a career in diplomacy. In fact,
the best preparation is probably a good liberal arts education, one that
dwells on books of lasting value, leads students to grapple with funda
mental ideas, values inquiry, and cultivates the art of serious conversa
tion.
Seth Cropsey (spya)
A Visiting Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Wash
ington, D.C. (a public policy think tank generally labeled con
servative), Seth Cropsey studies national security and defense.
Newt Gingrich, Lynne Cheney, and former Annapolis dean
Robert A. Goldwin are just a few of his well-known colleagues.
Cropsey analyzes how the United States military may best take
advantage of new technology. He studies the questions raised by
the increased accuracy and range of new weapons systems. As
history has demonstrated, technological advances such as the
longbow in medieval times and the Tomahawk cruise missile of
today can render old strategies and plans useless or even deadly.
Cropsey’s work creates new methods the military can use to keep
their tactics resonant with their technological capabilities.
Cropsey also studies the implications raised by the “kinder
and gentler” military of today. In recent years, the American mil
itary has undergone serious structural changes and adopted new
training methods. American military personnel often find them
selves in foreign countries as “peacemakers”-an ambiguous
type of policemen far from the typical (and expected) role of a
soldier. This often frustrates individuals in the armed services,
as few enrolled in order to police the streets of an unfamiliar
land. Furthermore, the character type the military has tradition
ally rehed on to excel-those interested in taking risks and test
ing themselves in combat-is put off by the style of the modern
military and less inclined to enlist.
Cropsey began his career in national security in 1981 as a
recent St. John’s graduate concerned with the relationship
between the United States and Russia. He has served as a profes
sor at the Marshall European Center in Germany, run jointly by
the governments of the United States and Germany. There,
Cropsey taught military personnel from former Warsaw Pact
countries principles of modern liberal democratic governments
{The College - St. John’s College ■ Summer 2001 }
�{Politics}
^3
''Because I work in politics, lam especially
grateful to have read works related to societies
organizing themselvespolitically, from Plato
andAristotle to the Federalist Papers. ”
Eloise Collingwood [A8o]
and related national security issues. He also worked with Ronald
Reagan and George Bush, Sr. as the Deputy Undersecretary of
the Navy from 1984 to 1990.
Cropsey values his St. John’s education for enabling him to
deal with a wide range of material and understand the fundamen
tal issues at stake. He suggests one change to the program, which
should not come as much of a surprise considering the path of his
career. “Edward Gihhon \Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire\
is no longer on the program, and he should he,” says Cropsey.
Eloise Collingwood (A80)
C-SPAN producer Eloise Collingwood uses the problems of
Washington, D.C., as the raw material for a television show.
Collingwood is responsible for getting C-SPAN’s national morn
ing call-in show, “The Washington Journal,” on the air. This is no
small task. Each day begins at 4 a.m. Collingwood thinks up seg
ment topics for the show, finds guests, determines the leads for
each segment, and works with the director and technicians to
ensure a seamless program. Collingwood reviews scores of arti
cles from newspapers, magazines, and the Internet to stay on top
of the issues and find new material for the daily show; under
standably, she values St. John’s for helping her learn how to get to
the gist of an argument and relate ideas to one another.
Like many Johnnies in politics, Collingwood finds the pohtical
books she read in seminar valuable in her professional life.
“Because I work in politics, I am especially grateful to have read
works related to societies organizing themselves pohtically, from
Plato and Aristotle to the Federalist Papers.”
Tom G. Palmer (A82)
Palmer is a Fellow in Social Thought at the
Cato Institute, a public policy research
institute in Washington, D.C. He publishes
papers, lectures at universities and insti
tutes around the world, and edits book man
uscripts and policy papers, determining
whether they meet Cato’s standards. He is
also director of Cato University, which gives
seminars on the principles of free markets,
limited government, the rule of law, and
other issues central to modern classical liberalism.
The libertarian Cato Institute suits Palmer’s interests well.
“My life work has been dedicated to advancing individual liber
ty,” he says. The Cato Institute has allowed him to immerse him
self in the study of the ideas he loves. In his work. Palmer fre
quently revisits texts he read at St. John’s. However, he feels that
books do not always hold the answer. “I learned at St. John’s that
there are lots of people who read a lot, but who have no wisdom
or who are bad people, and many more who don’t read much, but
who are wise and good,” he says.
Palmer does suggest some improvements to the program. He
argues that St. John’s “seriously underestimates the importance
of economics” and cuts off the study of economics with “one of
the most disastrous dead ends in the history of thought: Karl
Marx.” Palmer would like to see inclusion of the work from the
Marginahst Revolution of 1871, in which economists Karl Menger,
W.S. Jevons, and Leon Walras independently solved several prob
lems facing the classical economics of Marx and Adam Smith.
Will of the People?
In January 2001, Palmer and two colleagues, John Samples and
Patrick Basham, released a paper titled '"Lessons ofElection 2000. ”
Among other contrarian views ofthe election, the authors argue that
the electoral college should not be discarded, high campaign spending
did not discourage voters but actually increased voter turnout, and
the misguided appeals to the "will of the people ” by politicians on
both sides of the debate represent a confused claim to a concept
opposed to the nature ofAmerican representative democracy.
The United States is a constitutional republic, not a regime intended to
embody “the will of the people.”
Talk of the will of the people is profoundly misleading. Indeed, the
idea of the will of the people is a deeply authoritarian idea completely at
odds with the idea of government under law. It derives, not from the
American Founders or from any “Whiggish” antecedents in Britain’s
constitutional history, but from the radical authoritarian and anti-liber
al philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who postulated a “general will”
of the people as the foundation of the state. According to Rousseau in
The Social Contract-. “The general will is always right, and always tends
to the public good; but it does not foUow that the deliberations of the
people will always have the same rectitude. We always desire our own
good, but we do not always recognize it. You cannot corrupt the people,
but you can often deceive it; and it is then only that it seems to will some
thing bad.”
As political historian J. L. Talmon noted in his classic study of the play
ing out of Rousseauian politics, “The very idea of an assumed preor
dained will, which has not yet become the actual will of the nation . . .
gives those who claim to know and to represent the real and ultimate will
of the nation-the party of the vanguard-a blank cheque to act on behalf
of the people, without reference to the people’s actual will.”
{The College. St. John’s College ■ Summer zoot }
�{Politics}
24
''Thepersonal is the universal [in America]. Each
individual experience is a chapter in the larger
drama called the American Story.
Robert George [A86]
The United States is not based on some grand notion of the will of
the people. American government depends on the more modest idea
that the people may delegate certain limited powers to a representative
government operating on principles and procedures set out in our
Constitution.
If by “will of the people” pundits have in mind the Constitution, that
is closer to the occasional use of the term by the American founders. But
current debate indicates that what they have in mind is, instead, whatev
er the will of the people is (should be) about particular matters ofpolicy,
or who should be president. If the Constitution is the abiding will of the
people, then it sets the terms within which policies and officers will be
selected, and continual recourse to the “will of the people” is otiose.
The phrase “the will of the people”-along with “dimpled chad”-has
no place in a system of equal liberty under law. Instead of confusing our
selves with airy metaphysical talk about the will of the people, we
should, with Jefferson, “with courage and confidence pursue our own
federal and republican principles, our attachment to our union and rep
resentative government.”
Robert George (a86)
As an editorial writer for the New York
Post, Robert George writes five or six
unsigned pieces for the newspaper each
week, covering issues from the national
level to the local concerns of New York
ers. Where George really lets loose,
though, is in his regular columns for
National Review Online. Favorite topics
of recent months are Bill Clinton’s par
don fiasco and the early stages of Hillary Clinton’s senate
term. George’s columns feature slick appeals to his view of the
issues and a rhetorical flair unmistakably his own. Although at
heart a thoughtful commentator, his columns often leave the
reader more impressed by his brazen style than his cunning
erudition.
Before working at the Post and National Review, George
helped staff the communications office of former Speaker of
the House Newt Gingrich, writing speeches and press releases
and formulating public relations strategy. He then went on to
coordinate the efforts of grassroots organizers with the
Republican National Committee. His latest project is serving
as a regular panelist on the Saturday evening CNN show “Take
5.” On the show, he discusses topics from politics to popular
culture -with two co-hosts and guest panelists.
My Independence Days
Last year, Robert George took a breakfrom his clever and combative
style to write a sentimentalJuly 4th columnfor Salon, com, “My Inde
pendence Days. ”
Here we celebrate the Fourth of July. For this writer, everything that the
dream called America represents can also be found in two personal
“independence days.”
The first is January ai, 1971. It was the day an eight-year-old boy first
landed in the United States at JFK International Airport. At the time,
U.S. hospitals were experiencing a nursing shortage, so the boy’s moth
er responded to an inquiry from New York City’s Mt. Sinai Hospital. The
boy wasn’t happy about leaving his island home. It was only later that the
lesson of taking advantage of an opportunity when presented sunk in.
Fortunately, a volatile case of air-sickness endured by the young boy on
the flight over did not prove to be a portent for future experience in the
United States.
Living in a country for close to three decades, there are any number of
days and experiences that might stick out that also symbolize America.
But this writer selects November 3, 1989....the swearing-in ceremony
[for my citizenship]. The event itself was rather low-key; ultimately, it
seemed somewhat prosaic. The poetry was supplied moments later as
the new American emerged into a crisp Maryland morning and looked
up in the sky. There, fully unfurled over a government building, was Old
Glory flapping in the wind. Couldn’t have been more perfect if Spielberg
had directed it.
Many people consider the passage of the first 18 years as the initial
step from childhood into adulthood. This particular r8-year passage
marked a period separating arrival and “Americanization.” Other
opportunities followed. Less than three years later, a few of the writer’s
words ended up in the last speech Ronald Reagan delivered at a RepubUcan Convention. Just a short phrase, but for a young island immigrant, it
was certainly a thrilling, awe-inspiring moment. And then, a few years
after that, the immigrant found himself writing for the first Republican
Speaker of the House in 40 years.
As we celebrate the nation’s birth, it’s not a bad idea to pause and con
sider our own personal “independence days.” These are the moments in
our lives that stand out as uniquely American. At one time, for many, it
was the Ellis Island arrival. For others, it’s starting a business, beginning
the novel or casting the first vote. These are the days that connect each
of us intimately with the opportunity that is America. The personal is
the universal here. Each individual experience is a chapter in the larger
drama called the American Story. The opportunity to excel within the
story is the connection we all share, regardless of race, gender, or any
other superficial attribute.
{The College -St John’s College • Summer 2oot }
�as
{The Program}
It Takes Two Villages
In his Dean s Statement, Timothy Miller considers
what it means to learn in a community
By Barbara Goyette, A73
very year the chairman of the
Instruction Committee
(which alternates hetween
the dean in Annapolis and
the dean in Santa Fe) submits
a Dean’s Statement of Educa
tional Policy and Program. Topics for the
Dean’s Statement vary from the hroad to
the more specific; sometimes the Statement
serves as an institutional don rag or propos
es major changes to the program. This year,
Timothy Miller, acting dean in Santa Fe,
characterized his topic as “the intrinsic
fundamentals that make this small college
precious to its memhers and also a precious
resource within the larger educational
sphere.”
The Statement begins, “For St. John’s
College it takes two villages-one in Santa
Fe and one in Annapolis. Even in an age of
spin the notion of a village has an appeal
Timothy Miller (right) included passages
that is not merely sentimental. Reaching
FROM Simone Weil and William James in his
more deeply into our souls, it suggests
Dean’s Statement.
mutual care and nurture, the daily support
of family and neighbors, help in emergen
cies, the sharing of rituals . . ., recurring
celebrations . . ., and ceremonies by which,
often recedes to some vanishing point in
as thinking animals, we mark the stages of
the future.” Tenured tutors are more likely
our growth, maturity and decline.”
to be granted partial or full leave from
Mr. Miller discusses the primary goal of
teaching, and they are more likely to have
the college as the education of young peo
added responsibilities such as administra
ple who are emerging from adolescence to
tive posts that free them from the class
early maturity. The college must meet their
room. A result is that on the Santa Fe cam
educational needs and see to their personal
pus, throughout the 1990s, “approximately
needs and interests as well. That American
60 percent of tutors have been tenured, but
colleges and universities operate on a fourtenured tutors have taught only about 40
year cycle to bring students to this desired
percent of the classes. . . Clearly a majority
maturity makes for some difficult decisions
of our classes depend on the energy and dis
along the way.
tinction of our newer tutors.”
He expands on some of the problems this
Mr. Miller also discusses the perennial
compressed schedule creates for tutors,
problem of there being too many books to
whose primary responsibility is to “teach
read in too little time. The Statement sug
and make ourselves as competent as possi
gests alternatives for dealing with the music
ble in all parts of the St. John’s program.”
and visual art tutorials-including a sugges
In their early years, faculty must spend
tion to move the visual arts tutorial to soph
much time and effort to learn the parts of
omore year and to focus more time in lan
the program they are teaching. Even after
guage tutorials on writing. He also
receiving tenure, tutors find that the goal of considers a larger question: “We intend our
teaching at all levels in all areas of the pro
program of studies to have a wholeness that
gram is still elusive-“achieving that goal
does not exist in the typical college curricu
E
{The College. St. John’s College ■ Summer 2001 }
lum. Whatever our judgment
about the incompleteness and
inadequacy of specific parts of our
program most of us believe that
the program as a whole is greater
than the sum of its parts.
Whether this wholeness may be a
reflection of a wholeness existing
in the world is worth our atten
tion...”
Passages from William James
and from Simone Weil illustrate
some approaches to this question
of how it’s possible to pay atten
tion to the most important things.
In a passage from Psychology,
James lays out an approach to
learning that demands “willful
attention in study,” while Weil
denies the effectiveness of will
power and posits that leaving our
selves open works better: “Attention con
sists of suspending our thought, leaving it
detached, empty, and ready to be penetrat
ed by the object,” she writes.
Mr. Miller cites a passage in Weil’s
“Human Personality” that addresses “the
proper balance between the individual
intellect and the collective in which an indi
vidual has its natural origins”: “When sci
ence, art, literature, and philosophy are
simply the manifestation of personality they
are on a level where glorious and dazzling
achievements are possible...But above this
level...is the level where the highest things
are achieved. These things are essentially
anonymous...The human being can only
escape from the collective by raising him
self above the personal and entering into
the impersonal...” This passage serves as a
source for his final question: “Are we over
weening in the hope that our lives as stu
dents and faculty at St. John’s College are
directed toward the sacred realm of the
impersonal?”
Thefull text ofthe Dean’s Statement is
online at www.sjcsf.edu/academic/
deanoi. htm, or is availablefrom the Dean’s
Office in Santa Fe (505-g84-6o7o).
�{Alumni Notes}
1935
Richard Woodman writes: “Glad
to read the article on St. John’s in
the Smithsonian^ February aoor
issue. Those prior to the 1937 class
did get a good liberal education
with a chance to see the Maryland
legislature and U.S. Congress in
session without having to wait in
line and go through metal detector
systems. It was a poorer but it
seemed a kinder world in some
respects. I wonder how many of the
class of 1935 are stiU alive and
working as I am.”
1936
Gilbert Crandall, a Civil War
buff, recently had articles on that
subject published in the Washing
ton Times and the North Georgia
Journal.
1938
Frank Townsend reports that he is
still alive and thriving.
1942
Ernest Heinmuller writes about
two classmates: “Bill Ruhl died in
January. As a community leader in
Salisbury, Maryland, he was prop
erly honored by a large gathering of
friends and officials at the funeral.
Some of you 4aers might like to
send a note of encouragement to
Al Poppitti (use the register
address). Al suffered a severe heart
attack but is showing improvement
daily. I have been busy working for
World Vision, a ‘feed the hungry’
effort for Rwanda and other Third
World peoples.”
1949
Oscar Lord reports that his son,
Lt. General Lance W. Lord, USAF,
is Commandant of the U.S. Air Uni
versity Maxwell Field, in Mont
gomery Alabama.
copal parish in Palm Springs, Calif.
“This Sunday ‘work’ and a variety
of physical problems keep me from
attending Sunday alumni seminars
in Los Angeles. Health problems
hit us hard from Christmas into
January. Son David broke his left
leg and is in a wheelchair, and wife
Rita is on oxygen 24 hours a day
due to emphysema. So I get food
and run errands until we get David
on his feet and Ruth free of oxygen
tanks.”
1950
“I regret not being able to attend
the 50th reunion of my class this
last fall,” writes Tom Meyers. “My
health is generally quite good, but
that of my widowed sister is not.
Perhaps I will be able to make the
next one. It will not be quite the
same, but one does what one must.
Amazingly, I will be 80 years old
this coming October-both
astounding and amusing.”
stayed in pubs, B&Bs, and resort
hotels. “It was a blast!” he says.
“Great scenery, great people.”
Jennefer Ellingston is active in
1953
Charles Powleske reports: “My
fourth year of retirement finds me
at work on ‘The History of BCIU
(The Business Council for Interna
tional Understanding)’ where I
began working in i960.1 also con
tinue to be active with BCIU’s
working group that brings about its
annual benefit at the Metropolitan
Opera (since 1984); also still active
in the affairs of The Princess Mar
garita of Romania Foundation as a
member of its board. I still ‘rest up’
in Mexico when I can (Puerto Vallarta, mainly) and, in 2000,
enjoyed April, May, and October
there.”
1955
Priscilla Bender-Shore and
Merle Shore (class of ’54) write
1951
Alfred Franklin sends a message
to classmates; “Our 50th reunion is
this year. Myself, Ray Stark, and
Herman Small are starting togeth
er a committee for setting up the
agenda. We would like to expand
the committee to establish what the
class gift should be, who we can get
to tutor, and choose the reading.”
from California. Priscilla curated
and juried an art exhibition,
“Susan B. Anthony on Mt. Rush
more,” for the Santa Barbara Coun
ty Arts Commission. The exhibit
ran from February through April
and celebrated Women’s History
Month. Eighteen artists were repre
sented. Priscilla gave two lectures
in connection with the exhibit.
William Roberts writes that he
spent last March bumbling around
England, Wales, and Scotland. He
A Happy Accident
ARL Hammen
(A44) sent in the following contribution:
“I was a Maryland scholarship student, class of 1944.
Going to St. John’s was a happy accident for me. I last
Mostly I studied visited
oyster metabolism
taught cellular
and
comparative
the campus and
in October
1999, and
enjoyed
seeing
physiology courses.
Also
ran the Boston
Marathon
times.
Sinceand
a few
classmates.
Most of
my career12was
teaching
retirement in 1993
I have in
taught
freshman
biology at of
a community
col
research
biology
at the University
Rhode Island.
lege several times and have held other part-time jobs, the most interest
ing: enumerator for the 2000 census. I became so good at obtaining
information that I was promoted to denominator. Beginning in August I
C
Richard Frank was made an hon
orary member of the Societe Asiatique.
The Rev, Frederick Davis says
that he is still assisting at an Epis
1956
plan to teach math review at the Ringling School of Art and Design, one
of the best art schools in the U.S. I remember that Jacob Klein said that
if you have a mind at all, it is a mathematical mind. My running career
continues. In 2000 I was ranked number one M75 in Florida for both
5 km and 15 km.”
{The College. 5t. John’s College ■ Summer 2001 }
the Green party and reports that it
now has 84 elected officials. “Yes,
we are small, but everyone is grow
ing green or withering away. Global
warming continues and the Arctic
ice cap loses four inches a year.”
1957
Arianne Laidlaw writes that she is
going to Vietnam as the guest of
people she and her husband spon
sored in 1975. She will spend three
weeks there, from Ho Chi Minh
City to Hanoi. She also plans a few
days in Hong Kong and Bangkok.
1959
John McDevitt says that he con
tinues to teach part time at the
community college and to make
dulcimers and harps. His daughter,
Gianna, has joined with his wife in
the operation of a country general
store and trailer park.
“ISI Books of Wilmington,
Delaware, has just brought out my
newest (of nine) books,” reports
Hugh Curtler. “It is entitled
Recalling Education and it propos
es a traditionalist approach to high
er education that is counter to the
major trends today (except, of
course, St. John’s) where the liberal
arts are in serious jeopardy.”
i960
“I am in the third year of a fouryear great books program at the
University of Chicago downtown
campus,” writes Peter Ruel. “We
meet once a week for three hours
(one and a half seminar and one
and a half tutorial) for three iiweek semesters. Forty years makes
a difference in how one reads a
book. It is definitely worthwhile to
return to what we all loved as young
people, and breezed through ivith
little understanding.”
1962
Lenke Vietorisz reports a new
web site address: members.net/
rrrepasy.
�{AlumniNotes}
Jon Cohen retired last summer
after ai years as a social worker for
the State of New Jersey.
David Schiller writes that he is
planning to deliver another paper
for the International Society of Chi
nese Philosophers in Beijing in July
2001.
David Benfield has enjoyed elec
tronic correspondence with various
classmates and suggests that the
class of 1962 plan an electronic
reunion to coincide with Homecoming 2001. “At this reunion we
can make plans for a real face-toface reunion in 2002 to celebrate
40 years of reality. Write to me at
david.benfield@montclair.edu.”
1964
Judith Laws Wood has moved to
Visalia in the San Joaquin Valley of
California. She is a reference librar
ian at the county public Ubrary.
1966
Constance Baring-Gould writes:
“Congratulations on the Smithson
ian article! My sister wrote to me
about it and I really enjoyed reading
it. I still protect my books rather
than my hair-I’llbet we all do!”
1967
Meredith Burke continues to
publish editorials on the subjects of
AIDS control and negative popula
tion growth. Her pieces have
appeared in the San Francisco
Chronicle, the San Francisco Exam
iner, the San Diego Union-Tribune,
and the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Hope Zoss has been appointed
Associate Director of Development
at the Chemical Heritage Founda
tion in Philadelphia.
1968
Ellin Barret (SF) writes that
there are several St. Johnnies in the
San Francisco Bay Area who are
involved with a winter production
called the California Christmas
Revels. Revels uses a unique form
of music theater to dramatize the
celebratory traditions of diverse
cultures and eras. Both profession
als and amateurs perform, and
there are carefully planned
moments of audience participa
tion. The 2001 show will focus on
music as a force for ethnic and reli
gious reconciliation, drawing espe
cially on Irish-Celtic heritage, to
portray some of the unifying
themes underlying the on-going
struggles that beset warring fac
tions over generations. This year’s
script is built on the story of the
greatest Irish harper of all times,
the blind O’Carolan, who, against
great opposition, steadily dedicated
his life to using music to heal enmi
ty among peoples.
Antigone Phalares (SF) has been
a part of the Sacramento alumni
seminar group for over 20 years.
“Our crown jewels are Marion and
Tom Slakey,” she writes. “How
lucky it is to have our very own
St. John’s tutor and tutoress to con
tinue those enriching conversa
tions we began long ago, in
Annapolis and Santa Fe. This
is life lived to the full.”
“Our daughter has joined the Peace
Corps. We are planning to visit her
in the Dominican Republic this
spring,” writes Carol Neitzey
Dale (A).
tour the ancient Temples in Noa
(Japan’s first capital), and see
Kabuke. He is a professor of Pedi
atrics, Physiology, and Biophysics
at the University of Southern Cali
fornia and Children’s Hospital Los
Angeles.
1969
“Got caught in the dotty-com melt
down. An interesting experience
but one I don’t want to repeat,”
writes Frances Burns (A).
Joseph Baratta (A) will be teach
ing the history of math at Worces
ter State College in Worcester,
Mass., in 2002.
Carl Severance (SF) is now living
in Lexington, Ky., teaching adult
education (GED Preparation). His
wife Deanna is Director of Ken
tucky’s historic Frontier Nursing
Service. His son Alex is in his sec
ond year at Boston College Law
School, and his daughter Sarah
Sebestyen is pursuing a singing and
song writing career in New York.
Greetings may be sent to
carlsev@aol.com
1970
Allison Karslake Lemons (SF)
Steven Hanft (A) says, “In nine
reports: “I am currently teaching
French part-time at Wichita State
University and at East High School
in Wichita. My husband, Don
(SFGI), teaches physics at Bethel
College, in North Nevrton Kansas,
and my oldest son, Nathan, is a
freshman at (dare I admit it?) Ober
lin College, studying piano (among
other things). I’m afraid making
money just isn’t in the genes; but
we’re leading enjoyable lives (and
possibly even somewhat virtuous
ones) all the same.”
years I can retire.”
Thomas Keens (SF) received a fel
lowship for Foreign Scientists to
Japanese Institutions from the
Japanese Foundation for Emer
gency Medicine. He spent nearly
two weeks at the National Chil
dren’s Hospital in Tokyo. He gave
two major presentations on his
research on sudden infant death
syndrome (SIDS) and discussed
SIDS and respiratory research with
Japanese colleagues. He also had a
chance to walk in the East Gardens
of the Imperial Palace in Tokyo,
Catherine Carroll (A)
announces her marriage to Gilbert
T. Lusero on January 6, 2001, at
their home in Portland, Oregon.
She continues to practice law, spe
cializing in domestic relations;
Gilbert is semi-retired. They will be
traveling to Spain and would like to
hear from any St. John’s people
who are there now or who have
travel suggestions, recommenda
tions, or reminiscences they’d like
to share. Their address is 8100 SW
68th Place, Portland, OR 97223.
Maya Hasegawa (A) and Bor
Wycoff (A) were sorry they missed
the 30th class reunion in 1999.
Maya’s father Ichiro had become
very ill and they went to Richmond
several times that autumn to visit
before he passed away Christmas
Eve morning. Maya continues to
work at the Boston Housing
Authority, overseeing compliance
with civil rights requirements man
dated by HUD. Bob, working for
{The College. Sr. John^s College ■ Summer 2001 }
ay
Data Dimensions as a systems con
sultant, survived Y2K and now
looks forward to at least several
more years of steady employment
dealing with the changes required
by the 1996 HIRPA legislation.
“This January we detoured into
Annapolis for a few hours on the
way back to Boston from Richmond
and strolled around the campus,
stopping in to see the new library,”
they tvrite. “We had the sensation
of being ‘ghosts,’ invisible or nearly
so, to the students there, as doubt
less past alumni were invisible to us
when they stopped to gather mem
ories as we lolled around on a donothing Sunday afternoon in 1967,”
Hudi (Schneider) Podolsky (SF)
reports: “I’m now the executive
director of the National Coalition
of Essential Schools-back to the
world of teaching and learning that
I love so much. It has taken me a
long time to come back to this
great work, but my sojourn in the
profit-making world has given me
skills and perspectives that I can
now put to good use. You can see
what we’re up to at www.essentialschools.org.”
1971
Vicki Manchester (SF) is teaching
English and drama at the CIUA
Charter School in Colorado
Springs. “I helped to start the
school four year ago and after three
years of incipient chaos the school
is stabilizing and even has a waiting
list. I get to seminar lots with the
seniors. On the non-professional
side I took refuge vows as a Tibetan
Buddhist in 1998.”
Jane Goldwin Bandler (A) and
Donald Keith Bandler (SFGI73)
are currently living in Cyprus
where Don is serving as the Ameri
can Ambassador at the U.S.
Embassy. Jane is a psychological
counselor with a specialty in par
enting skills. They have three chil
dren: Lara (25), a PR account exec
utive in New York City, Jillian (23),
beginning University of Maryland
Medical School in 8/01, and Jeff
(24), in eighth grade in Nicosia,
Cyprus.
�a8
{Alumni Notes}
The Writer as Addict
Praising a writerfor writing is likepraising a crack addictfor
assiduous smoking. Writing is an addiction, and like all addictive
substances, it stokes thepleasure centers ofthe brain.
Emma Roth in Suspicion by Barbara Rogan
BY Sus3AN Borden, A87
mma Roth, the main charac
ter in Barbara Rogan’s (SF74)
novel Suspicion, is, like
Rogan, a full-time writer and
part-time soccer mom. Like
Rogan, she’s Jewish, has a
love of jazz, and lives on Long Island. But,
Rogan says, Emma is not her. “The main
thing about Emma is that she’s very vulnera
ble, emotionally fragile,” says Rogan,
“whereas I, despite my share of occasional
woes, am as healthy as the proverbial horse.”
Still, even without knowing Rogan, you
get the feeling that the two have a lot in
common, especially when it comes to writ
ing. Rogan agrees with Emma’s comparison
of writing and addiction. “That speaks for
me very accurately. Writing has always been
the thing I do that gives me the most pleas
ure and the fact that I can make a living at it
is great. That reinforces it: when you get
published and get paid and get all the
stroking that goes with it.”
Rogan says she always wanted to be a
writer. “I always could write, even as a kid I
had a talent for writing, a great love for
words. I was a huge reader. That’s what led
me to St. John’s in the first place,” she says.
At St. John’s, Rogan wrote several good
essays, but was nearly silent in class. This
led, temporarily, to an interesting problem:
“There was one essay that was so good and
so out of line with my participation in class,
that I was accused of plagiarizing it. It was a
Jungian analysis oiDon Quixote. I was into
Jung that year and it kind of clicked for me
in one essay,” she says. “There was a great
One of Barbara Rogan’s St. John’s essays
brouhaha, a lot of fuss made in the attempt
WAS so good, she was accused of plagia
to find my ‘source.’” When the smoke finally
rism. She took that as encouragement to
cleared and it was acknowledged that Rogan
BECOME A WRITER.
had written the essay, many of the tutors
involved in the investigation told her that
in 1974 after she graduated from St. John’s
she should be a writer.
and moved to Israel. There she worked as a
Though an accusation of plagiarism is an
production director and English editor for a
unusual source for encouragement, Rogan
Tel Aviv publishing house while she wrote
took it as such and started writing seriously
E
{The College- St. John’s College • Summer 2001 }
her first book, which she describes as a prac
tice book. The following year she opened her
own literary agency, which eventually
became the largest in Israel, supplying over
50 percent of the Israeli market for translat
ed books. In 1980, Rogan met and married
Ben Kadishson, an Israeli musician. Their
first son (they have two: Jonathan, 18, and
Daniel, 14) was born during the 1982 war in
Lebanon. During the same year Rogan’s first
novel. Changing States, was published
simultaneously in England, the U.S., and
Israel.
“Getting my first book published was a
huge thrill and it was published in three
countries. I was so new to the business I
didn’t realize what a terrific piece of luck I’d
had,” she says. Rogan’s good fortune has
continued. She now has seven novels to her
credit and is co-author of a non-fiction book
about the Middle East. Two of her books- A
Heartbeat Away and Rowing in Eden-wcxc
Literary Guild selections. Her 1999 book.
Suspicion, was a Book-of-the-Month Club
featured selection.
“Every book is a thrill. And a heartbreak
usually. It’s a tough career; not the easiest
business to be in. You never really feel suc
cessful entirely,” she says. Rogan explains
the trials that come with a book’s publica
tion: “Very rarely do things just click and go
the way you want them to. I’ve seen it from a
lot of angles: as an agent, as an editor, and as
a writer. There’s always a lot of expectation
built up around publication and it doesn’t
always pan out.” She discusses the econom
ics of book distribution, advertising, and dis
play: “Most books that are published have
little or no advertising budget. They’re just
shoved out the door with the hope that
someone will pick them up. The advertising
budgets go to Nora Roberts and Stephen
King-a guaranteed return on investment.
But publishers do this for sound business
reasons. I have maybe the misfortune of
understanding their point of view; neverthe-
�{Alumni Notes}
less, it is often frustrating for the writer.”
On the whole, Rogan has heen among the
more fortunate writers. Her hooks have
been reviewed in the New York Times and
the San Francisco Chronicle. They have been
released as audio books and published in
eight languages. The movie rights to Rowing
in Eden were optioned and the movie rights
to A Heartbreak Away were sold to MGM.
Rogan says that A Heartbeat Away is a
favorite among her books, combining sever
al subjects important to her: a hospital set
ting, which grew to interest her after her son
dragged her to a number of emergency
rooms when he was little; jazz, an interest
she shares with her husband, a jazz musician
when they met; and Jane Austen-Rogan bor
rowed the plot for the book from Pride and
Prejudice.
Rogan doesn’t always turn to the Great
Books for story lines, but program works are
often present in her books. Whether a char
acter is compared to Don Quixote, shudders
when she thinks of Medea, or hides a piece
of evidence in her copy of Kant’s Critique of
Pure Reason, Rogan’s ease with the great
books will seem familiar to Johnnies.
Not that she feels at ease with all of St.
John’s. “I still have nightmares about
Greek,” she says. “I dream that I took a year
off and came back and couldn’t remember a
single word.”
Although she has long since left Monte
Sol behind, Rogan remains in the classroom.
1972
JuanHovey (SF) reports: “My wife
EUse Cassel and I, being now empty
nesters, have bought a lovely town
house at the far northern end of
Topanga Canyon Road in the San
Fernando Valley, up on a hilltop
among huge stone outcroppings and
oak trees that formed the back
grounds for the Tom Mix movies, for
the Lone Ranger TV series and, it is
said, for one or two scenes from the
John Ford classic ‘Stagecoach.’
There are bobcats up here plus at
least one mountain lion and plenty
of coyotes, of course; people tell us
there is also a small herd of wild
goats in these mountains. I continue
to write a weekly column on business
finance and insurance for the Los
Angeles Times and contribute to a
number of other publications on the
same subjects. Life is sweet!”
She writes quickly,
notpausing to
think, just letting
the words spill out.
Later she will cut
and edit ruthlessly,
hut not now.
First drafts are
playgrounds where
anything goes.
FROM
Suspicion
now as a continuing education writing
teacher. She encourages her students to
write quickly, the way she describes Emma
as writing, but she doesn’t practice what she
preaches, Rogan approaches her first drafts
with a bit more deliberation. “I plan more
carefully and have to rewrite less than I used
to,” she says. “I’m trying to be a httle bit
more efficient. I try to plan out my themes
James Burress (A) notes that his
son, Toby Burress, is entering the St.
John’s class of 2005.
Louise Romanow (SF) sends this
report: “I find it amazing how busy
one can be and not be earning any
money! Bill’s and my son Curt is now
14 and cycles to school every day, a
rare event today. I continue to push
the catbriar back, planting indige
nous shrubs and perennials under
the forest canopy around our house.
I’m active in the League of Women
Voters, a bunch of opinionated
women-always lively discussion, and
I produce our newsletter and do a bit
on our web site. Keeping up with
technology keeps me learning new
stuff every day.”
1973
A medical journalist for more than
20years, Nancy Plese (SF) is cur
29
more and let the story drift less.” Before she
starts a chapter, Rogan writes a list of goals
and makes notes on the interweaving plot
lines she has to work with. She then thinks
up ways to dramatize her goals and invents
incidents that do so.
Rogan says that her new approach to writ
ing might be related to the fact that she’s
now working on her second mystery. “Mys
teries have to be plotted more succinctly,”
she says. “With a character-driven novel,
you can meander a little bit more.” Her new
mystery, to be published by Simon & Schus
ter sometime in aooa, is centered on a
reunion of old school friends who vowed to
get together again after ao years. When the
time comes, one of them is missing-mur
dered by one of the friends.
The idea for the book, Rogan explains,
grew out of real life, when she and a group of
classmates vowed to meet on the eve of
aooo. “For some bizarre reason a lot of us
did remember and six months before the
night we started reaching out and contacting
each other,” she says. “It was a pretty amaz
ing experience and the book grew out of
that.” Any chance that some of her SF74
classmates will recognize themselves in the
book? Unfortunately not. The group that
inspired the mystery was from Rogan’s high
school in Westbury, New York.
rently Executive Editor of The Pfizer
Journal, a bimonthly health policy
publication with an audience of sen
ior health policymakers. She is also
the mother of two, Andrew (17) and
Katelyn (7), and recently celebrated
the 22nd anniversary of her mar
riage to George Lewert. She lives in
Brooklyn, having moved to New York
in 1973, shortly after graduation.
“My son’s search for the right col
lege brought back memories of the
decision to go to St John’s, which
was one of the best decisions I have
made in my life,” she said. “On a
daily basis, I draw on the knowledge
and experiences gained there.”
“A bill has just been introduced in
the Michigan legislature to require
the teaching of ‘creationism’ in our
public schools, which is, of course,
the starter’s gun to revisit Origin of
Species,” writes JoN Ferrier (A).
“Jane Spear (A) and I both begin
our sixth decades this year, hoping
{The College. St. John’s College ■ Summer 2001 }
that the owl of Minerva truly does fly
at dusk. Tuesday’s New York Times
reported on the launching of scien
tific studies to assess the medicinal
properties of hallucinogenic drugs
such as LSD, mescaline, and psilocy
bin in treating alcoholism, phobias,
and other illnesses. Is there no limit
to the powerful strangeness of life?
Let’s hope not. May chaos find us
ready.”
1974
Virginia Newlin (SFGI) is retired
but teaching autobiography, working
as a poet, and volunteering as an
environmental activist.
“I’m a family practice physician
working at Lovelace,” writes Anne
Ashbrook Fitzpatrick (SF). “For
fun I sing with the Albuquerque
Women’s Choral Ensemble and the
Harmony Project.”
�{AlumniNotes}
3°
1975
John A. White (SFGI) has had his
book Kevvy published by Xlibris of
Philadelphia. “Set in future time, it’s
an epic novel with twin themes, a
society that has abolished marriage,
and which has made scientific dis
coveries which are too successful. It
provides ideas and value exploration
for the thoughtful, and adventure,
science fiction, sex, and romance for
folks looking for a good yarn. It’s the
culmination of many years’ work.
Further information is at www.Xlibris.com/Kewy.html.”
Howard Meister (A), having suc
cessfully defended his very cool the
sis, “Media and Metaphor,’’ has
received the MA in media studies
from The New School in New York
City. He is currently looking for suit
able employment as a teacher,
writer, exhibit designer, or curator,
following 20 years as an internation
ally exhibited visual artist. Howard
can be reached at
HMMeister@aol.com.
Jim Jarvis (A) says, “I enjoyed see
ing so many classmates at reunion
time last year. Hope we can have as
good a turnout for #30.”
G. Kay Bishop (A) is commissioning
a “musical commentary” from com
posers Chris Turner and Rich Robe
son. Text for the pieces will be drawn
from her poetry, including poems
from the collections Zero and The
Book ofLillith. Plans are to combine
the five performance and text pres
entation on a CD to appear next
year.
1976
Victoria Hanley (SF) has written
The Seer and the Sword, a fantasy
novel for young adults. Published in
December 3000 by Holiday House,
it is also being published in Britain,
Denmark, Holland, Germany, Spain,
Finland, and Japan. Hanley is a
Montessori teacher and massage
therapist; she says that although she
didn’t finish St. John’s, “the experi
ence of daily dialectic during that
time has influenced my life ever
since.” The novel, which garnered
praise from reviewers, is about a
princess who discovers she has the
power to see the future but must
confront the issues of greed and
revenge and perhaps fight to save
her kingdom.
1977
Ann Worth (SF) writes; “I am an
active member of the Local 510,
Sign, Display, and AUied Crafts. We
set up tradeshows and conventions
in the greater Bay Area and I am fre
quently the steward. Anyone want a
new job?”
Susan Holton (A) reports: “For the
last four years I’ve worked as a senior
designer for Tribune Media Services,
one of the companies, along with the
Chicago Tribune, of the Tribune
Company. I design everything from
sales collateral for our properties,
which include columnists, editorial
cartoonists, and comic strip cre
ators, to corporate brochures and
web sites. Through it all I’ve also
maintained a freelance illustration
and graphic design business. Cur
rently I’m one of the artists on the
Millennium campaign for posters for
the Northwest Indiana Forum.”
Jon is still enraging DAs as he suc
cessfully defends ‘innocent citizens
wrongfully accused of heinous
crimes.’ I am in the lower profile job
of engineering manager at Zairmailsee what my team is doing at
www.zairmail.com.”
1980
Liz Pollard Jenny (SF) was the
organizer of the first Alumni Art
Show, held in July in Santa Fe at the
campus gallery.
Nancy Jene Cline Wright (SF)
writes: “No major changes; still
teaching, still married to the same
fine fellow, still in Richmond, Vir
ginia. I do have a computer now,
with an e-mail address: cornishogre@earthlink.net. I have not
figured out how to forward things to
multiple addresses, and probably
won’t anyway, but enjoy watching
the way things end up moving about
to multiple groups of people with a
few button clicks-a different sort of
‘Great Discussion,’ I guess. I’d enjoy
hearing from fellow Johnnies.”
David Pex (SF) is the director of
finance for RuleSpace, an Internet
infrastructure start-up company. He
got certified as a scuba diver fast
year, dove in the Cayman Islands,
and is off this summer to St. Vincent
and Tobago for more diving and
snorkeling with his family.
1978
Larry Ostrovsky (A) writes: “I
have been living back in Anchorage
for the past seven years. If you can
look beyond the typical western
sprawl, it’s really kind of an undis
covered gem of a city. There’s excel
lent hiking and skiing, long summer
days and crisp winters. There’s even
some big economic scheme every
five or ten years to keep everyone
excited. If anyone comes through
this way. I’d love to hear from them.
My e-mail is Larryostrovsky@h<itmail.com.”
1981
Mary Filardo (A) wrote an editorial
in the May i edition of the Washing
ton Post. As the executive director of
the nonprofit 31st Century School
Fund, she outlined the phght of the
physical facihties at the D.C. public
schools. Her editorial stressed the
importance of planning for the
future and of keeping a good handle
on current design and construction
needs and services.
James Schamus (A) co-wrote and
was producer for “Crouching Tiger,
Hidden Dragon.” He’s worked with
Ang Lee on other films in addition to
the Oscar-nominated surprise hit
about Chinese warriors, such as
“The Ice Storm” and “Eat Drink
Man Woman.” Schamus also wrote
the lyrics for Crouching Tiger’s
theme song, “A Love Before Time.”
Marilynn Smith (SFGI) reports:
1979
Marie Toler Raney (A) and Jon
Raney (A74) report that they are
“still happy in Portland, Oregon in
our house ‘Wits End.’ Soon to be
empty nesters, we expect to find it
easier to come east to see friends.
“I’m still working at Coachella Val
ley High School in the Southern Cal
ifornia desert-and looking forward
to retirement (or is it re-focusing) in
about a year and a half. Teaching
composition and literature at the
College of the Desert is a great joy.
So are my four grandchildren!”
{The College. St. John^s College . Summer 2001 }
1982
Lemuel Martinez (AGI) ran on the
Democratic ticket for the 13th Judi
cial District Attorney post in Albu
querque. He’s an assistant district
attorney and an instructor at the
University of New Mexico who was
formerly a public school teacher for
ten years.
Eileen M. Renno (A) is living in
beautiful southern Oregon on the
east fork of the Illinois River. “I am
the proud mother of two daughters,
Molly (17) and Katy (6). I am work
ing in Human Services as a Job
Coach for The Job Council. I work
with ‘hard-to-serve,’ long-term wel
fare recipients, supporting them in
their efforts toward self-sufficiency.
It’s a challenging and rewarding
position with never a sometimeslonged-for dull moment. I miss the
Chesapeake Bay and look forward to
visiting family in Shady Side and
Frederick, Md., this summer. It’s a
happy thought that I’ll be visiting
Annapolis and St. John’s again, too.”
1984
John L. Bush (SF) says that he has a
new place of employment-he’s work
ing in the office of the university
architect at Virginia Tech in Blacks
burg, Va. “I’m enjoying walking to
and from work every day. Elizabeth
is finishing her masters degree at
Virginia Tech in plant pathology.
Salem is finishing his senior year of
high school at Blacksburg High and
looking at colleges to attend. He is
hoping for an athletic scholarship for
track and cross-country. Loran is
finishing his freshman year of high
school and enjoys playing soccer and
basketball. Hope everyone is well
and prospering.”
Karl and Lisa Walling (both A)
write that Karl is now a professor of
strategy at the Naval War College in
Newport, R.I. Lisa is now the direc
tor of the Tiverton Public Library
system.
Barry and Cynthia Hellman (both
A) have a new daughter, born 11-700, named Abigail Faith Hellman.
They now have three children, Barry
III (14), Joel (7), and the new baby.
Tracy Mendham (A) e-mails: “After
living in Brooklyn, N.Y., for nine
�31
{Alumni Notes}
Thinking in the Future Tense
BY
Barbara Goyette, A73
A
yjobistothink
/I about the
! I future,” says
/ I Robert Bienenfeld(SF8o).As
senior manager
of alternative-fuel vehicle marketing for
Honda, Bienenfeld works to promote the use
of cars that run on fuels other than gasohne.
The present is rapidly approaching the future
as far as internal combustion engine technolo
gy is concerned. What with the energy crunch
in California (and elsewhere), the high price of
gasohne, the arguments about the best ways to
deal with environmental problems like pollu
tion and misuse of non-renewable resources,
hybrid automobiles-which are fueled by gaso
line and electricity-are in the news today.
Bush has proposed a tax incentive to encour
age sales of hybrids. The American auto com
panies are working to develop hybrid versions
of their top-selling SUVs. Honda and Toyota
promote their small hybrids in hip ads in
major magazines like Time and the New York
er. Movie stars, gear-heads, and environmentally-sensitive politicians are buying the Hon
das and Toyotas currently on the market.
“Technology is changing all the time, and
I’m optimistic about how social priorities are
changing, too,” says Bienenfeld. “We’re con
suming way too much petroleum and we need
to be really concerned about that. There’s
been progress, but we need to go further.”
Alternative-fueled cars are one factor in the
mix of regulations, proposals, and products
that aim to help us deal with these current
problems and prepare us for the future.
Bienenfeld has worked for Honda since
right after he graduated. “I knew I wanted to
go into business, and I didn’t want to go to
graduate school right away to do it. I thought
my St. John’s education was great for any
W I
years, my partner Dana Chenier and
I are moving back to Massachusettswe’ll be relocating to Natick in May.
In July, I’ll be graduating from the
MFA in Writing Program at Vermont
College. For the time being, my
e-mail address will be
tmendham@nish.pair.com.”
Sue (Price) Gavrich (A) e-mails:
“My husband Bob and I joyfully
career,” he says.
“At St. John’s I was
used to picking up
a new, difficult
book every week
and then applying
myself to under
stand it. I thought
about the business
world; ‘How hard
could it be?’”
After a threeyear stint as a con
tractworker, Bienen Robert Bienenfeld
WITH the Insight,
feld was hired
Honda’s hybrid.
full-time. He worked
in parts inventory
management and then spent a year and a half
in Japan. In 1993 he was assigned to the alter
native fuel task force. Over the past decade
Honda has developed cars that are fueled by
natural gas, battery electric power, and a
combination of gas and electricity (the
hybrid). The Insight, a hybrid, uses its gaso
line engine for most driving but has an elec
tric motor as a supplement. When the driver
brakes, the battery recharges. “It’s a huge
challenge to provide alternatives to gas-pow
ered vehicles,” Bienenfeld says. “However,
the social and environmental benefits are
great, like reduced dependence on imported
oil and reduced emissions.”
Bienefeld helped Honda launch a battery
electric car in California in 1997. Although
the car was very advanced, battery electric
cars are not new. It turns out that electricity is
a very old method of powering cars. At first,
electric cars outsold aU others. Other fuels
had their drawbacks: steam was dangerous,
and gas engines were smelly and noisy. How
ever, when demand grew for travel between
cities, the battery-powered electric cars fell
announce the birth of our daughter,
Anna Lucy Gavrich on October 18,
2000. You can see pictures of Lucy
on her web site, www.annalucy.com.
We recently moved to a Craftsman
bungalow in Alameda, Calif., which
is basically Mayberry with good
sushi. I’m working from home as a
self-employed fee-only financial
planner. You can e-mail me at
sue_gavTich@moneywell.com.”
into disfavor with the
public, who instead
bought gas-powered
cars that could travel
farther. Now, the
almost perfect infrastructure-with a gas
station every corner
makes introduction of
alternative-fuel cars
difficult. The supply of
natural gas is in the
hundreds of years, says
Bienenfeld, and Honda has developed a car
that runs on natural gas. But there are only
about 1,500 places around the country to
refuel such a car, as opposed to 200,000
places that sell gasoline. Bienenfeld is work
ing with another company to develop a home
refueling appliance for natural gas vehicles.
“The answer to the marketing challenge is
in education,” says Bienenfeld. “We have to
look at innovative advertising, reach key opin
ion makers. A variety of people have to throw
their support behind these new cars-the
automobile magazines, the environmental
groups, even government.”
Bienenfeld is also busy with the next step
in the consideration of the future: product
planning for Honda-thinking about what the
next generation of Accords, Civics, and
Odysseys will be like. He’s been pondering
the difference between speculating and plan
ning. “I read Paul Erlich’s The Population
Bomb while I was in junior high,” he says. “I
was really influenced by that book-what he
thought was going to happen. Yet every pre
diction he made was wrong...In 20 years we’ll
still be planning for the future-after all, we
never really get there. The principles will be
the same: you need to have a really clear
understanding of your goals and mission.”
John Wright (A) has published
short stories in Isaac Asimov’s SF
magazine and in Year’s Best Annual
(David Hartwell, ed.) His two
novels, Golden Age (sf) andLa.st
Guardian ofEverness (fantasy), are
due for publication in aooi and
2,002, by Tor Books. John is a retired
attorney, newspaperman and news
paper editor. He presently lives in
fairy-tale-like happiness with his
{The College .St John’s College ■ Summer 2001 }
wife, the authoress L. JAGI LAMP
LIGHTER (A85), and their two chil
dren, Orville and Wilbur Wright.
1985
Sarah (A) and Dan Knight (A84)
write that they had a wonderful time
at Homecoming weekend. “It was
great to see everyone and we were
�{AlumniNotes}
3^
surprised by how relaxed and ‘at
home’ we felt on campus.”
Robert George (A) is going to be a
regular on a new talking head show
on CNN, airing Saturdays at 8:30
p.m. The show, called “Take 5,” pre
miered on March 17.
Karen Bell-Andrews (A85, also
AGI93) is married to Ben Andrews, a
singer very popular in England and
currently on tour there. She is an athome mom working on her PhD.
With their three children, Amelia,
Eliza, and Ian, they live on a historic
old farm in Fairplay, Md. (near
Hagerstown). Karen raises cows and
chickens as well as bees.
1986
Debbie Jones Humphries (SF) is
stiU teaching part-time. She loves
working with graduate students. She
has also started homeschooling her
two sons, Ranier (5) and CameronJack (3), “and that’s keeping me
busy,” she says.
Julie (Spencer) Moser (SF) sends
this request: “Would anyone who has
experience teaching in a Paideia
high school please contact me? I’m
helping found a new high school and
I need your advice. My e-mail is
rainyday@taosnet.com.”
1987
is so much fun and we love him so
much we can hardly stand it,” says
Claudia. “I would love to hear from
classmates-it seems like just yester
day we were at Homecoming for our
loth reunion. Please e-mail me
stackc@uncwil.edu.”
1989
Pamela Jeffcoat (SF) writes: “I
finally got a job as a Russian inter
preter, and now I’m starting to learn
Turkish. I play ping pong with a lot
of Chinese guys but so far, I haven’t
learned a word of Chinese.”
Koko Ives (A) writes that she now
has two beautiful daughters, Zoe and
Cate.
1988
Alden Joseph Stack was born to
Claudia Probst Stack (A’88) and
Joe Stack on October 29, 2000. “He
Roberta Faux (A91) live
in downtown Baltimore where they are restoring a historic
building that functioned as a pharmacy with living quarters
above. Roberta received her MA in classics in 1999. After
receiving his doctorate in composition from Boston Universi
ty and teaching for several years in Colorado, Travis now
operates a music production studio. The Apothecary, with Frank A
(Ago). “We love doing this stuff and are always looking to work with
on interesting film and video projects. Music from some of our recent proj
ects can be heard at our web site www.mp3.com/TheAp0thecary.”
T
Marion Gunn Jenkins (SFGI) is still
in retirement, living in New Haven
next door to her only grandchild and
her daughter and son-in-law. “I’m
active observing local and regional
government for the League of
Women Voters of New Haven. I hope
to take up my study of Greek which
gives me great pleasure despite the
obstacle of age.”
“Young Adam Pittman was born
April ig, 2000,” writes Clinton
Pittman (SF). “Thought about a
Homerian name, but then decided
against such a radical step-not
everyone gets all those Odyssey ref
erences in Oh Brother, Where Art
Thour
“I am leaving my job as an attorney
in the Antitrust Division of the U.S.
Department of Justice to take up a
one-year Visiting Assistant Professor
post at the Northwestern University
Law School, where I received my JD
in 1994,” writes JOE MILLER (A). “I
will be teaching intellectual property
law courses. My residence at the Law
School starts June 4, 2001. One
thing will not change-namely, my
permanent e-mail address at
findjoemiller@hotmail.com.”
Amanda Dalton (A) played the
parts of Delightful and Nadine in a
Colonial Players production of Dear
ly Departed this spring in Annapolis.
A professional clown who graduated
from Ringling Brothers’ Clown Col
lege, she has appeared in summer
theater productions for the past sev
eral years.
Charlotte Glover (SF) reports:
“I’m living with my husband David
Kiffer in beautiful, wet Ketchikan,
Ala., and we are enjoying our first
child, a darling boy named Liam
Benjamin Kiffer, born December ii,
2,000. So far, his favorite ‘great
book’ is Bugs in Spaced
ravis Hardaway (A91) and his wife
our four-year-old daughter, Imogen,
loves her Montessori pre-school.
Hope all is well with the many
friends I’ve lost touch with.”
Margaret (Meg) Lewis (A) is work
ing at the Academy of Natural Sci
ences in Philadelphia as a Ubrary
specialist. She invites alums and stu
dents to visit.
The MP3 Scene
1990
Margo Maganias Thomas (A)
writes: “What a difference 12 years
makes! My husband Bill and I are
still living in Arlington, Va., and
appreciate its village/urban charac
ter. We’re planning on renovating
and expanding our Cape Cod which
over the past four years has become
too small for our family. Our oldest.
August, is enjoying kindergarten and
GenevaMacDonand Pulgham (SF)
co-authored a book with her sister; it
was published in igg? by Texas A&M
Press- Women Pioneers in Texas
Medicine.
Fritz Hinrichs (A) writes; “I am
very pleased to announce two great
gifts of God to me. On March 25,1
had the privilege of marrying
Christy Hass of Rocklin, Calif. On
January 4, we were blessed with the
birth of a beautiful girl-Annabelle
Faith Hinrichs. With great grief, but
also trust in God’s loving provi
dence, I must also relay that after let
ting forth a short, beautiful cry, she
mysteriously passed into the land of
the living (Job 1:21). We would love
to hear from you all-contact us
through our web site, www.gbt.org.”
Sundance Metelsky (AGI) and Tom
Oehser, her partner of nine years,
were married on May 7 in Luray Cav
erns. More than go people attended,
including their children, Bela Wolf
gang Zoltan Seaton Williams Metel
sky Oehser (son, age 5 ) and Zina
Xena Metelsky Oehser (daughter,
age 14 months). Johnnies in atten
dance included Johnny Metelsky
(Ag4) and Lydia Rolita Metelsky
(Ag6) and honorary Johnnies, John
Metelslcy and Ethan Billotte. Also on
hand was a film crew from the cable
TV show, “A Wedding Story.” The
episode will air sometime in Septem
{The College. St. John’s College ■ Summer 2001 }
ber or October on The Learning
Channel. Sundance says, “The wed
ding was a unique celebration, fea
turing the casting of the circle and
calling of spirits, a hearty group
singing of‘Yellow Submarine,’
humorous legal proceedings featur
ing Tom’s cousin, Tina Oehser, who
asperged the couple with water from
the sacred springs near the Oracle of
Delphi, Tom and Sundance being
wrapped in a blanket held up by four
friends (one doing the holding in
spirit) and time in total darkness in
the cave, a talking stick in which
each attendee had a chance to offer a
blessing, and closing with the Grate
ful Dead song ‘Ripple.’ If you want to
know when the episode airs (or just
want to say hi!), please e-mail me at
sundance@toms.net.”
1991
Nate Downey (SF) is helping to
organize the tenth reunion in Santa
Fe this summer and would like to
gather e-mail addresses for any and
all classmates. E-mail him at
nate@sfpermaculture.com with
“Hegel rocks! ” in the subject line.
Elliott Tullock (SF) writes: “In
December I will complete training at
the Texas Maritime Academy and
receive a third mate unlimited ton
nage any oceans license. Upon
receiving my license I will sail on a
general cargo steamship trading
from the U.S. Gulf to Europe and
Africa. Wife Diana and son James (3)
are doing well. We expect to return
to Belize next year and take up
ranching and tropical fruit cultiva
tion when 1 am home from sea.”
Karen Andrews (SF) recently par
ticipated in a group theme show fea
turing “functional/dysfunctional”
art at the Flux Gallery in Denver.
�{AlUMNiPrOFILE}
33
Democracy Brokering
IN THE Balkans
BY Roberta Gable, A78
hat moment after you graduate
election systems (our
forte!) and party-building
from law school (in the case of
Tia Pausic, A86, Harvard Law
to commercial legal
School) can be one of the most
reform and economicfree moments in life. The rig
related issues like pension
reform, the creation of
ors of the academic world are
small and medium enterprise, and the devel
behind you, and the long grind towards
opment
of trade unions. The CDP opened the
becoming a partner somewhere looms
ahead;
Zagreb office in May of ’92, and Pausic was
but in the meantime, Sisyphus can take a
the first executive director.
couple of weeks off and relax. Pausic cele
She had been back to Croatia three times
brated her freedom by going with her father
on CDP business but now we’re talking
on the Croatian Fraternal Union of Pitts
immersion. There was the language to be
burgh’s more or less annual trip to Croatia
reckoned with (“I tried not to be afraid of
(her father is Croatian and her mother is
speaking”), the lack of consumer goods (“I
Romanian). They had a swell i8-day trip,
including a weeklong cruise on the Adriatic.
developed a scavenger mentality that has
been hard to shake! ”), the toilet paper (“like
Then, back to reality, and Pausic moved to
tree bark”), and her living situation. She had
D. C., where she had a typical entry-level j ob
a small one-bedroom apartment, which was
as an associate at a fairly large law firm. They
did government contract work and also some
not only her home, but also the CDP office
and the crash pad for any CDP visitors.
international and immigration work, which
Pausic set to work developing projects to
was Pausic’s area of interest.
In the meantime, as a result of the Croat
submit to funding agencies, both public and
private. For example, the Children’s Hospital
ian vacation, she became involved with the
in Zagreb was in need of a mobile medical
Croatian American community in D.C.
clinic, since they were basically the only pedi
Young professionals, mostly children of
atric hospital in the country and also tasked
recent emigres, would get together and talk
with health care for refugee children
politics: it was 1989, and change, with the
throughout Croatia. She found funding with
prospect of multi-party elections in Hungary,
the Soros Foundation to purchase and equip
Poland, and Czechoslovakia, was sweeping
the vehicle, and in 1993 they were then able
Europe. And then they did more than talk:
to help children in remote places. (By 1999
they started to host visits from democratic
the local hospitals were enough recovered
political leaders in Croatia, hoping to get
U.S. governmental support for free elections
that the vehicle was then donated to the mili
tary unit in charge of mine-clearing opera
there.
tions.)
Finally they decided they needed to form a
By 1994 she had to face reality once again.
non-profit organization to support this work,
She was making next to nothing working for
and the Croatian Democracy Project (CDP)
a non-profit, and had deferred her law
was born. As the situation in Croatia heated
school loans for two years, but now had to
up, Pausic’s interest in government contract
think about shouldering that burden again.
work cooled down-her pro bono work for the
“I left in December ’93, thinking I was
CDP became her focus.
never going back. I cried on the plane to
In 1991 war broke out in Croatia. The CDP
Frankfurt.”
(and Pausic, the president thereof) realized
Back in Washington, she camped on her
that the only way they would succeed in
sister’s couch and continued to help out at
bringing democracy-building resources from
the U.S. to Croatia would be to open an office
the CDP while she looked for a job. She
talked to the president of America’s Develop
in Zagreb. And what exactly are “democracy
ment Foundation (ADF) about possibly get
building resources,” do you ask? In response
ting involved with their projects. In March
to the democratic changes in eastern Europe
in the eighties, an industry of support grew
1994 he called her and told her that USAID
had issued an RFA (Request for Applications)
up in the United States, for everything from
T
{ T H E C o L L E G E . St. John’s College ■ Summernoot }
Tia Pausic (bottom row, far left) poses with
Croatian friends and co-workers.
for a human rights project in Croatia, and
asked her if she would help write it and be the
Chief of Party (basically, be the person who
would be in charge if the grant were given).
She would, she did, and ADF, a non-profit in
Alexandria, Virginia, was awarded the con
tract for a project to strengthen the abilities
of the human rights organizations in Croatia.
So, having left Croatia expecting never to
return, she moved back in October ’94 to
provide training, give technical assistance,
and bring grant funding to the Croatian
groups. This time her set-up in Zagreb was a
lot different. The grant was for $2.5 million
over a three-year period. She had her own
apartment, and in her office she had actual
equipment, actual staff, and an actual salary;
and she had become fluent in Croatian, fluent
enough even to be a Croatian/English inter
preter. She designed a grant program, but
when they were about to give their first
grants in ’95 the government initiated a mili
tary operation to seize occupied territory
from the Serbs, and Zagreb was bombed,
making for a certain amount of, shall we say,
uncertainty in her life. Nonetheless, they
stayed, the occupied territory was liberated,
and life got back to more or less normal.
A pleasant influx of additional funding
turned the three-year $2.5 million project
into a six-year, $10 miUion project, which
from mid-1996 focussed on displaced persons
and repatriation issues. The pursuit of happi
ness continues abroad for Pausic. She left this
June for her next posting with ADF-Sarajevo,
Bosnia-Herzegovina, where she will be
directing a $4 million, three-year project cre
ated to provide training, technical assistance,
and grants to local nonprofits to encourage
more civic participation, advocacy, public
private partnerships, and coalition-building
among the local groups.
�{AlumniNotes}
34
Christopher Johnson (SF) says: “I
Dianne Cowan (A) is still in Boston,
recently completed my PhD in com
parative literature at New York Uni
versity. My dissertation, ‘Hyper
boles: Exemplary Excess in Early
Modern English and Spanish Poetry,
and its Origins in Classical Epic and
Rhetoric,’ won the Outstanding Dis
sertation Prize in the Humanities for
2000-01 at NYU. Currently, I am
also teaching at New York University
and City College, but this summer
I’m off to a friend’s organic farm in
the Pacific Northwest to clear the
head and get the hands dirty.”
still working for the same software
company. Her e-mail address is diannecowan@mindspring.com.
1992
Kate (Griehs) Sullivan (SF) and
her husband John Sullivan (SF94)
live in Austin, Tex., where John is a
project manager for 7-24 Solutions
and Kate homeschools their four
children, Madeline (7), Jack (5), Lily
(3), and Claire (i). John’s e-mail is
Jsullivan@724.com and Kate’s is
Kate@willdev.com.
Boaz Roth (AGI) recounts his
recent life: 1999, marriage; 2000,
baby #1; 2001, home ownership. He
asks: “Will I ever get a chance to
read Proust again?”
“The charter school I’ve been work
ing on for the last two and a half
years finally got chartered, so we’ll
be opening in September,” says
Taeko Onishi (SF). “It will be a
multi-aged, project-based K-5 school
targeting low income families in
Troy, N.Y. It is an outgrowth of a
community learning space for K-12
in a local public housing neighbor
hood where I work now. I’d love to
hear from any and all Johnnies.
Come for a visit or just get in touch,
ktaeko@hotmail.com.”
Amy Elizabeth Parton (A) says, ‘I
am working as a clinical research
monitor in the pharmaceutical
industry. Still enjoying life in Austin,
Tex., and would love to hear from old
friends. The rest of the world knows
me by my middle name so I can
reached by e-mail at elizabeth.parton@austin.ppdi.com.”
Elyette (Block) Kirby (SF)
reports: “I’m having a baby in May
and soon after will be transferring
from The Netherlands to the UK
with my job at Amazon.co.uk. I enjoy
working at Amazon where every
interview situation seems to fit in a
discussion on who one’s favorite
authors are. I am what’s called a
‘communications specialist,’ which
means I write a lot. My husband I
hope to be settled in the London
area by June and would love to hear
from anyone close by-or far away!
My e-mail is elyette@hotmail.com.”
Trish Dougherty (A) reports that
Sean Donald Dougherty was born
5/5/01; he joins his big brother
Owen and his mom and dad in
Orwell, Vermont.
Simon Bone (SF) sent in a photo of
himself in front of Kant’s grave in
Kaliningrad. “He is still dead,”
notes Simon.
J. Elizabeth Huebert (SF) received
her MD from University of Nebraska
Medical Center, May 5, 2001. She
will do a one-year internship at
Broadlawns Hospital in Des Moines,
Iowa, and then return to Omaha for
three years of specialty training in
anesthesia.
Alec Berlin (SF) released an album
of original jazz in October 2000,
“Crossing Paths.” It is available at
www.cdbaby.com/alecberlin. Since
then he’s been composing a lot and
working in the new media world, all
the while freelancing in bands
around New York City.
1993
Jennifer Council Jones (A) moved
to Newport Beach, Calif., where she
is opening an office for an ad agency
and having a great time learning to
surf.
Nereos Gunther (A) writes, “I am
completing my period of indenture
in the City of Baltimore and plan to
begin an entertainment web site and
educational association for vivisectionists.”
Valerie Duff (SF) is currently
teaching at Boston University and at
Harvard Extension. She plans to
take a year off to attend Trinity Col
lege in Dublin, Ireland. While there,
she will be in an MA program in cre
ative writing. Valerie received an MA
in creative writing from Boston Uni
versity, and has since published
extensively in Agni, Salamander,
Verse, and other literary magazines.
She was managing editor of Agni
(the literary magazine of Boston
University ) for two years.
Aaron Mason (SF) works as a mar
keting writer/editor in the NYC
offices of STV Inc., as an architectur
al consultant; most projects involve
public transportation planning.
Aaron and Nick Gray (SF97) were
both involved with a theatrical per
formance in New York City in
March-Mercury Retrograde: An
Evening of 4 Original Short Plays @
the Sanford Meisner Theatre. Aaron
wrote a lo-minute play called “Mr.
Oedipus,” which is, he says, “artful
ly directed by goddess-on-wheels,
Elysa Marden. Appearing with the
hilarious Laura Agudelo (roles of
Hillary and God), I play the title role
of a man trapped between two
conflicting identities. One personali
ty is an angry white rap star (sound
familiar?), and the other side of him
remains a reclusive author of chil
dren’s books. It is VERY loosely
based on the original Oedipus.” In
another lo-minute play, “Bye Bye
Love” by Milton Johnson, Aaron
plays the proud owner of a trailer
home, a Trans-Am, and a hidden
past... “‘Bye Bye Love’ is directed
with zen-like poise by the
unflappable Beth Ouradnik. And
Nicholas Gray has written a 20minute play, ‘Coat Room,’ directed
by the wise and wooly Sean McGlynn.
‘Coat Room’ is a romantic farce that
takes place (where else!) in the bed
room/coat room of a party. Mr. Gray
plays a lovelorn twentysomething lad
in the midst of a messy separation.”
Anna Vaserstein (A) writes that she
and Warren Ellison announce the
birth of Daniel Vaserstein Ellison on
May 6, 2001 at their house in Jeri
cho, Vt.
Jenna Palmer (SF) and James
Michel (SF92) send word that Jenna
received her MA in literature at San
Francisco State University with a
thesis on Jane Eyre, as well as
certificates in the teaching of com
position and reading. She is current
ly teaching at San Francisco State
and the College of San Mateo and
hoping to hook a permanent posi
tion. Jim’s law practice is in its fifth
year and has recently moved to
downtown San Francisco. You can
{The College. St John’s College ■ Summer aooi }
contact them at jpalmer@sfsu.edu
and jamich@pacbell.net.
Jeff Natterman (AGI) is currently
involved with the Johns Hopkins
Urban Health Council and Baltimore
City Schools. He says, “I could spend
an hour at least describing the
deplorable conditions of the elemen
tary schools in the city. In particular,
their books are in some cases 20
years old (history books with
Richard Nixon as the current presi
dent); their libraries in disrepair and
mostly empty of books of any kind.
The city pleads for more funding
from the state; the state attempts to
meets the needs, but fails...badly! I
have developed a program called
‘Great Books for Great Kids: The
Tench Tilghman Project.’ This pro
gram targets just one elementary
school in Baltimore City. I am hop
ing to solicit either funding or ele
mentary school age resource books
for the school by August 2001.1
believe these children will never rise
above a ‘mediocre at best’ environ
ment without the best possible
resources for learning starting with
books. Please contact me if you’d
like to help out;
jnatterm@jhmi.edu.”
Special greetings to the class of ’93
from Amalia Uribe (SF). She writes,
“I have two pieces of good news to
report. First: Graduated with honors
from Massage Therapy school in
October 2000. Since November I
have been a full time certified Mas
sage Therapist, and I absolutely love
my new career. I work at a chiroprac
tic clinic and at a small day spa, both
in the East Bay of California. Sec
ond; On July 14, 2000,1 eloped!!! I
am now happily married. My hus
band is Mustapha Moutri; he is 28, a
2nd degree black belt in Tae Kwon
Do, and is from Rabat, Morocco. We
are quite happy big smile, and NO,
there are no plans for little ones just
yet. I would love to hear from any of
you, but especially from my class
mates: My e-mail is
amaliacmt@yahoo.com (this is a
new address). If any of you have tried
to get in touch at the old address, I
have not had that for a few months,
so please try again. I would also very
much like to hear from: Jonathan
Bricke Rowan (SF96) Will and
Amy Glusman (A93)
Julie (Girone) Martin (A) and her
husband Eric announce the birth of
their second daughter, Josephine
�35
{Alumni Notes}
April. She was born on April 24.
Says Julie, “I’ve been a housewife
since Charlotte, our first child, was
born three and a half years ago. At
the moment, we’re still in
Somerville, N.J., although we’re
moving to a house on an organic
farm in Hopewell, New Jersey, this
fall, where my husband is the care
taker. He’s still the executive chef
and manager of a fine-dining
restaurant in Hamilton as well. Any
Johnnies interested in either line of
work (especially the farming
apprentices are always wanted),
give a call.”
Matthew Wright (A) writes:
“Hello to everyone. Michelle, Anne,
Emily, John and I are still living in
Philly. We are homeschooling and
living in a small intentional commu
nity we helped get started last
August. I would love to hear from
people at matthew.wright@wholefoods.com.”
1994
Sarah Liversidge (A) and Mike
Afflerbach (A) were married Sept
16, 2000 in the Great Hall. Their
reception was held on the back lawn
of the house of President Chris Nel
son and Joyce Olin. Many Johnnies
were in attendance. The Afflerbachs
are still living in New Bern, N.C. and
are enjoying racing sailboats. Sarah
will be taking her architectural
exams this year and Mike is loving
the radio biz.
Peter Bezanson (SF) has been
appointed tutor at the College of the
Humanities and Sciences in
Phoenix, Arizona. The College of
the Humanities and Sciences is a
great books distance learning col
lege established in 1997; it offers
undergraduate and graduate educa
tion in the humanities with concen
trations in imaginative literature,
natural science, philosophy and reli
gion, and social science.
Kenneth Wolfe (SF) is spending
this year as a visiting assistant pro
fessor at Reed College. He received
his PhD in classics from UC Berkeley
in May 2000.
Paul Barker (AGI) will be moving
back to Maryland from Ohio. He has
been appointed principal of John
Carroll School in Bel Air.
Antique Information Systems
Tracy Whitcomb (A) says she is still
enjoying life in Burlington, Vt.
Michael ViLLACRUsis (AGI) writes
n article about Randolph Stakk (A98) called “Under
that he and his wife Jennifer had
ground Mail Road” appeared on the front page of the New
their first child on February 15,
York Times metro section in May. Stark, identified in the
Emily Rose.
article as an entrepreneur, is interested in the under
ground pneumatic tubes installed in the 1890s to carry
Sarah (Van Deusen) Flynn (A) says:
mail throughout the city. He wants to use them to hold
“We are enjoying Guam. It’s a very
fiber optic cable which would connect with telecommunications nice
systems
place for young families. Ethan
that already exist. The pneumatic system was state-of-the-art in several
is stationed here at the Naval Hospi
East Coast cities until about rgrS, Stark discovered, until it was phased out
tal until September 2002.”
by a quicker and less expensive form of transport that could also carry a
greater volume-motor wagons. It was not until 1953 that the tube system
Thea Agnew (SF) is still living in
was closed. Stark is quoted in the article as saying it would cost “about
Alaska. She’s working for herself
$roo million a mile to repUcate the conduits today...making even five miles
writing grants, particularly working
of them a worthwhile resource.” He’s currently searching for the original
with rural development in Alaska
blueprints for the system.
Native communities. She completed
an MA in history in May 2000 focus
ing on 19th century encounters
and coordinate the distribution of
Patricia Greer (AGI) wiU be a tutor
between Yupik Eskimos and Russian
marketing materials for the various
at the Santa Fe campus next year.
Orthodox and American Protestant
FtvS products. She will be responsi
missionaries.
ble for sales materials and press kits
Dan Farley and Elizabeth Rhodes
on projects as diverse as the upcom
Farley (both A) write: “In addition
ing local Fox World Productions ver
to our daughter, Hannah (now three
sions of “Temptation Island” and
years old), we have a son, Dylan,
the movie based on popular chil
born May rq, 2000 (Mother’s
“John and I are busy planning our
dren’s author R.L. Stine’s story enti
Day!).”
house-to be built this summer on
tled “When Good Ghouls Go Bad.”
our II acres of slightly wet paradise
A
1996
1995
Emily Murphy (A) was one of four
Pennsylvania graduate students to
receive the Outstanding Graduate
Student award from the Pennsylva
nia Association of Graduate Schools.
Of course, she says, “around here
it’s ‘for the Glory of Old State,’ but I
think that a lot of the credit goes to
St. John’s as well.”
Susan Talkington (SFGI) is cur
rently working as a software engi
neer for the Seattle offices of Mer
rill Lynch. She married Ian
MacGillivray of Santa Fe in March
2oor, and the two are currently
residing in Eldorado.
Rontt Koren (SFGI) has been pro
moted to Manager, Marketing, Fox
Television Studios. Ms. Koren will
continue to develop marketing
opportunities for Fox Television Stu
dios, including top series suppliers
Regency Television and the Greenblatt-JanoUari Studio, alternative
studio Fox TV Studios Productions,
international production specialist
Fox World Productions, Fox Televi
sion Pictures and non-fiction pro
duction companies Foxstar and Nat
ural History New Zealand. Ms.
Koren will continue to help design
icksT
in central Maine,” writes Allison
Eddyblouin (SF). “The girls (Mary
Catherine and Thalia) are great
homeschooling is a blast. It was
great to have Jason Voigt come visit.
He will be doing the same boat build
ing program that John did four years
ago! Any other Johnnies want to
come visit? If so, drop us a line.”
Mara Giles (SF) writes, “Just read
Geoff Marslett (SF) currently has
the Spring 2oor The College and
enjoyed reading about a distant and
not-so-distant past of my own. I rem
inisced about my years on both the
Santa Fe and Annapolis campuses. I
am enjoying my life very much with
my non-Johnnie husband, a biology
professor, and our wonderful daugh
ter in Nebraska. I work for a comput
er software company located in New
Mexico and feel quite lucky to be
able to telecommute. I still enjoy the
academic life, can’t seem to get away
from it (married into it), and am pur
suing more (yea!) degrees in litera
ture and philosophy with hopes
of...??? Well, let’s just say it’ll ruin
the surprise if I tell you now. Best of
luck and regards to each of you.”
an animated short film out called
“Monkey vs. Robot.” For more infor
mation, check out his website at
WWW. swervepictures. com.
Rosemary Ingham (AGI) writes: “I
retired from teaching at Mary Wash
ington College in May and am spend
ing the summer at the Utah Shake
spearean Festival where I will be
designing costumes for Two Gentle
men of Verona and The Fantask-
Nada Khader (SFEC) is teaching
French and private tutoring students
at the United National International
School in Manhattan. She’s also a
Girl Scout troop leader.
{The College. St. John ’5 College ■ Summer 2001 }
Jon Stephen Pearson (SF) is com
pleting requirements for an MFA
degree in comparative literature
while teaching literature under an
assistantship at the University of
Georgia in Athens.
Amy (Norman) Morgan (A)
reports: “I was married in June
1998. During the ‘99-00 school year
my husband (Bill) and I taught Eng
lish and methodology to secondary
school English teachers in
Ovorkhangai, Mongolia. Now, we
live in the Cincinnati area where
Bill teaches elementary school
music and I teach English to foreign
business people and their spouses. I
am applying to study applied lin
guistics at Indiana University or
�{AlumniProfile}
Cultural Jam Session
Anthropologist Catherine Allen explores the culture ofthe Andes.
BY SUS3AN
Borden, A87
cattered
throughout
Catherine
Allen’s
(A6g) office
are Andean
textiles-woven pieces in
reds, black, and white
with patterns marching
down one side and up
the other. Allen nods
towards one, a woman’s
shawl, and points out
the seam down its cen
ter. “You’d think that
they’ve just taken two
complete pieces and
sewn them together, but
it’s really a single pat
tern,” she says. “The
two halves are part of
the design. In the
Andes, everything needs
a companion.”
Allen’s knowledge of
Andean culture goes
well beyond textiles. An
anthropologist, she did
her fieldwork with the
Quechua-speaking people in the Peruvian
region of Cuzco, where she lived and partici
pated in community life by harvesting and
planting potatoes, cooking, learning to spin,
and helping to herd animals. She has written
many articles, a book, and a play that draw
on her fieldwork in the Andes. And she has
just won a Guggenheim Fellowship to write a
book examining Andean expressive media
(such as storytelling and weaving) and write
another play.
Allen didn’t start out as an anthropologist.
She was originally interested in classical
archaeology, an interest that led her first to
St. John’s and then to the University of Illi
nois to study archaeology at the graduate
level. It wasn’t long, however, before Allen
found herself frustrated with the narrow
focus of archaeology. “I was interested in
questions of meaning, questions that needed
Catherine Allen (second from left)
SWITCHED from IMAGINARY TO REAL FRIENDS
THROUGH THE STUDY OF QEROS, ARTIFACTS FROM
THE
Andes.
a living context” she says, “but all the peo
ple I was studying were dead.”
In pursuit of her master’s degree in the
iconography of ceramics from the southern
coast of Peru, Allen spent hours staring at
museum collections and studying pictures of
ceramics. She learned plenty about the
ceramics themselves, but little about what
they were used for. “It was like having the
grammar of a language, but not knowing
what any of the words mean,” she says.
When she considered questions of meaning,
she had only her own mind to consult: “I felt
like I was making up my imaginary friends.”
Allen moved from imaginary to real
friends during her dissertation research.
{ The C o llege-St. John’s College • Summer 2001 }
which began with the
study of lacquered
wooden cups called
qeros. Although the
first part of her project
brought her back to
museum work, the sec
ond part sent her into
the world of people,
meaning, and anthro
pology.
Qeros date back to
the 17th century, but
they are still used for
drinking rituals in
some communities in
the Peruvian highlands.
Allen decided to study
one of these communi
ties, Sonqu, hoping
that current drinking
rituals would shed light
on past qero uses and
answer the questions of
meaning she had been
formulating. Allen went
to Sonqu and immersed
herself in the communi
ty’s way of life. While
her academic interests centered on the per
formative aspects of life (storytelling, cere
monies, and rituals), Allen found herself
focusing on the community’s everyday
modes of interaction.
“What I studied was a kind of etiquette,
really,” she says. “Ritual is an intensified
expression of everyday courtesies.” Among
the people of Sonqu, the basic vehicle of rit
ual is the coca leaf, always chewed in a cere
monial context. And so her dissertation
moved away from the qeros that had brought
her to Sonqu. “I ended up writing on coca
chewing,” she says. “Coca is the bare bones
of their ritual life.”
Allen completed her dissertation. Coca,
Chicha, and Trago: Private and Communal
Rituals in a Quechua Community, in 1978.
Ten years later she published The Hold Life
Has: Coca and Cultural Identity in an
�{AlumniProfile}
37
''When Ifirst studied culture, I thought
ofit more as a symphony: each person
has apart to play and the culture gives
you a score. But the class made me realize
there isn i any score; culture is something
that is always emerging ''
Andean Community,
the book that devel
oped out of her disser
tation. It is still in
print today, read pri
marily by anthropology
students; a second edi
tion is in the works.
And as her book is a
perennial at universi
ties, Allen is now a
perennial at George
Washington University in Washington, D.C.
Hired 20 years ago as a newly-minted PhD,
she is surprised to find herself still teaching
there. “I never expected to stay,” she says. “I
thought I would go on to a small experimen
tal college, but I began teaching in an era
when experimental programs were folding
or contracting.”
Allen says her longevity at George Wash
ington is primarily due to the congenial
atmosphere of the anthropology department
and the university’s Division of Experimen
tal Programs. Through this division, Allen
has collaborated with colleagues from the
school’s religion, art, literature, history, and
political science departments. In 1993 and
1994 she wrote a play. Condor Qatay, with a
colleague in the theater department and the
two teach a class together: “Anthropology in
Performance.”
She describes a typical exercise from one
of their classes: “Rather than explore a situ
ation intellectually and analytically, we do
an improvisation. We set up situations like
waking up or harvesting, assign participants
kinship and household roles, and have them
play out these situations without speaking
English.” It is through negotiating these
improvisational roles that students gain
insight into the rituals of another culture.
But Allen says that it’s not just the students
who benefit from the exercises: “I’ve
learned a lot from teaching and watching
the improvs,” she says. “I get flashes,
moments that show me how cultural prac-
Catherine Allen
tices grow out of the dynamics of the inter
action of a group.
“When I first studied culture, I thought of
it more as a symphony: each person has a
part to play and the culture gives you a score.
But the class made me realize there isn’t any
score; culture is something that is always
emerging,” she says. “Culture is more like
jazz. You have some basic sequences in your
head and general expectations of other peo
ple, but the jam session never comes out the
same way twice.”
Starting this Septem
ber, Allen will have the
chance to further her
studies of the cultural
jam session. As the recip
ient of a Guggenheim fel
lowship, she’ll have a year
off to work on two proj
ects. The first is a book
on Andean aesthetic
strategies. It will include
examinations of story
telling, weaving, and ceramics. “It draws on
my original interests,” Allen says. “I’m finally
going to include a chapter on qeros."
The other project is a second play. “My
first play. Condor Qatay, means the Condor
Son-in-Law. The condor carries off the Indi
an maiden and becomes the son-in-law,”
Allen explains. “This play is the converse:
the star woman who marries an Indian man.”
Like the textiles in her office, the two stories
form a single design: they are reflections of
each other, companions.
Catherine Allen’s FAVORITE BOOKS IN
CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY
Argonauts ofthe Western Pacific by Bronislaw Malinowski
The Nuer by E. E. Evans-Pritchard
Tristes Tropique (or The Savage Mind) by Claude Levi-Strauss
The Ritual Process by Victor Turner
The Interpretation of Cultures by Clifford Geertz
Purity and Danger by Mary Douglas
Pigsfor the Ancestors by Roy Rappaport
The Spoken Word and the Work ofInterpretation
by Dennis Tedlock
Unnatural Emotions by Catherine Lutz
Andean Lives by Valderrama, Escalante, Gelles, and Martinez
{The College- St. John’s College ■ Summer 2001 }
�{AlumniNotes}
38
TESOL at the University of Cincin
nati in the fall.”
“I am completing study for my mas
sage therapist certificate and plan to
eventually specialize in maternity
care and rape recovery treatment,”
writes Erin (Hearn) Furry (A).
She’s heen married to William C.
Furhy tV for a year. Erin has plans to
start an Alaska alumni chapter after
this summer. “If anyone is interested
in helping, I can be reached at celebrinthol@usa.net.”
Loreen McRea Keller (AGI)
writes that she and her husband
Greg are expecting their third child
in May-“maybe a third girl? We
can’t wait to find out! ”
Jennifer (Wamser) Deslongchamps (AGI) writes: “The
year after graduation, having just
returned from a year studying
medieval philosophy in Pisa, I met
my future husband in a laundromat
in Fairfield, Conn. Paul Deslongchamps and I were married in
January 1999 and this October we
were blessed by the birth of Thomas
Robert. While I’ve been taking this
year off. I’m currently ‘all but dis
sertation’ at Yale, where I’m work
ing on the notion of infinity in the
work of Meister Eckhard and
Nicholas of Cusa.”
Scott Field (SFGI) and his wife Jes
sica will celebrate their fifth anniver
sary this summer, and they will have
their son Henry (born September 33,
3000) along. “I’m still teaching fifth
grade, although I now have senior
elective psychology and a philosophy
course to teach as well,” says Scott.
“Finally, I’m putting all of that liber
al arts background into my perform
ances each weekend at ImprovBoston, the improvisational comedy
troupe I’ve been performing with for
over three years now.”
Erica Maria Ginsberg-Klennt
(SFGI) writes: “We sailed away from
Annapolis in 1997 and stayed in the
Bahamas for a year before crossing
Panama to French Polynesia. I’ve
been writing articles on technomodism (the use of technology to make
your location irrelevant) for French,
German and Italian magazines. Our
daughter Antonia Tahia was born in
Hawaii in August r999 and we are all
moving to the south of France this
summer with the ‘Pangaea Nui.’
Check out our web site, www.pangaea.to for more stories.”
1997
Ryan ViGUERlE (SF) writes: “Shortly
after graduating from some college
no one’s ever heard of, I moved out
to LA to try and make it as a writer.
Then, after floundering about for a
few years, I decided to go back to
school and am now studying at the
American Film Institute. A swell
place. Greetings maybe sent to
raoulduke@mediaone.net.”
Rebecca Michael reports that she
and Mike Gaffney (A95) are getting
married in Annapolis on June 39,
3003. They are living in Jack
sonville, N.C., where Mike is sta
tioned for the Marine Corps. Rebec
ca is finishing her master’s thesis.
Kit Linton (A) and Sonya Schiff
Linton (Aoo) were married last
September and are living in
Washington, D.C.
Romance novelist HiLLARY FIELDS
(SF97) had an article in Cosmopoli
tan (April 3001) called “The Tough
Girl Trap.” She offers advice to
“strong women” whose independ
ence is seen as a threat by men. She’s
the author of two books. The Maid
en ’s Revenge and Marrying Jezebel.
“I finally got my dream job-working
in the ‘new’ field of agri-tourism,”
writes Mary Beth Stevenson (AGI).
“I am the assistant manager of a site
in Grafton, Wise, called the Family
Farm. It is a 135-year-old, 46-acre
farmsite. I five on site, too, in a stone
farmhouse built in 1890. Any Wis
consin alumni should check it out.”
Postcard from Panama
Luke and Rachel Trares (both A)
have moved to Fort Worth, Tex.,
where Luke is attending Southwest
ern Baptist Theological Seminary in
the hope of becoming a church
planting missionary, probably some
where on this continent. “I am really
enjoying school,” he says. “Please
don’t hesitate to contact us with
questions about Christian ministry
(ltrares@yahoo.com).”
Genevieve Goodrow (A) writes:
“Hooray! I passed the bar exam and
started work, and while it’s nice to get
paid I’m beginning to fantasize about
school again. At least I have plenty of
time to read while commuting.”
Christopher English (SFGI) and
Diane Shires (SFGI98) are getting
married on December 37, 3001 on
Catalina Island, Calif., 170 years to
the day Darwin set sail on the Beagle.
1998
“Lest anyone is interested, I am cur
rently working as a flight instructor
for Swissair at the Flight Safety
International Academy in Vero
Beach, Fla.,” e-mails Ariel Szabo.
“Through the Swissair Aviation
ow I’ve been in Panama with the Peace Corps for
School (SRAS), I train pilots for both
almost four months. I spent three of these months
Swissair and Austrian Airlines. If
in training, in a suburb of a suburb of Panama City.
anyone is interested in information
Had a great host family (whom I visited and partied
concerning airline careers or flight
with for my birthday), and made good friends, both
training under the new European
Panamanian and American. There were 17 other
regulations (JAR/JAA), please feel
free to contact me at Thesmophopeople in training with me. The best of training? Los Carnavales”
they rivaled Brazil and definitely beat Mardi Gras in Newria@mac.com.
Orleans!
Recent graduate Valerie Whiting (Aoo) writes
aboni her assignment in the Peace Corps.
N
Now I live in La Raya de Santa Maria, in the province of Veraguas, almost in the middle of the country. It’s hot, dry, about 800
people. We have TV, water, and some houses have indoor toilets,
but the house I’m renting has a latrine. As an environmental edu
cation volunteer, I work in the school (K-6) doing projects and
teaching English (oh joy!). More so, this community needs organi
zation. I’m a hit because my town meeting actually had 100 people
(out of 800). Trying to end the family feuds, religious clashes
(Catholic vs. evangelical), and pohtical partisanship seems to be
my main goal.
I love Panama-the music’s loud and tacky, the food’s greasy (and
sometimes unrecognizable as to which animal it came from), we all
paint our toenails hot pink and wear tight jeans and tank tops. It’s
my kind of country.
I’m still feeling out the Peace Corps and its effectiveness here.
I’ve only got one month in site, so we’ll see how that goes. If any
one would like to reach me, my mailing address is: Entrega Gener
al, Santiago, Veraguas, Republica de Panama, or
valeriewhiting@yahoo.com.
David Braden (SFGI) teaches fifth
grade math at Casady School, a pri
vate Episcopal day school for grades
K through 13. He and his wife have
three children: Hannah (almost5
years old), John Henry (3), and Paul
(i), and they are expecting their
fourth in October.
Kristina Rodriguez (SF) writes:
“We had another baby boy in Sep
tember 3000. We named him
Matthew. I’m currently living in
Alamogordo, N.Mex., where my hus
band manages an Applebee’s. I’m
fortunate enough to stay at home
with my boys.” Greetings may be
sent to brianandtina@tularosa.net,
or 1454 Columbia Ave., Alamogor
do, NM 88310.
Nathan and Heather Greenslit
(both A) five in Worcester, Mass.
{The College. St. John's College ■ Summer aoot }
�39
{Alumni Notes}
Summa Adlerologica
dler goes with Prank the way
that Reality goes with Week
end.when
Andhis
thetalk
Adler
Prank
has
John’s was in 1937,
lasted
over
a longer pedigree
than Reali
two hours. The following
year, students
were
tysomething
Weekend. Mortimer
determined to do
about the over
Adler
’s first
lecture
at St.
whelming length. They
gathered
every
alarm
A
clock on campus, brought them to the bal
cony of the Great HaU (where lectures were
then held), and timed them to ring one hour
into the lecture. In Adler’s biography.
Philosopher at Large, he recounted his reac
tion to that first prank: “I stood my ground,
waited for the din to subside, and then, with a
smile and bow to acknowledge their ingenu
ity, completed the lecture. The students plot
ted another way to defeat me.”
Such a plot was executed the following year
when, again an hour into the talk, someone
cut the power to the Great HaU. “Utter darkness-and silence-reigned for a moment,”
wrote Adler. “I knew they expected me to rise
to the chaUenge, so I took matches out of my
pocket and continued the lecture by matchlight for the brief interval it took for a mem
ber of the faculty to restore the electricity.”
They were married in June 1998 and
have a beautiful daughter, Emily
Ruth, who is now a year old. Heather
taught middle school math and sci
ence until Emily was born. She now
tutors and sells Discovery toys. Nate
got his master’s degree in cognitive
science from Johns Hopkins last year
and is now in a doctoral program at
MIT called “The History and Social
Study of Science and Technology.”
They are expecting another baby
sometime in August.
Lorna Anderson (A) is engaged to
be married on May 25, 2002, to
Aaron Johnson, a classical pianist,
and they are both living and working
in Chicago. Lorna flirted briefly with
a career in journalism, was accepted
into Northwestern University’s
Medill School of Journalism, and
after two months decided she’d leave
the hot pursuit of the ephemeral up
to someone else. She is now working
part-time and writing poetry, which
she has come to admit was her voca
While the records
of decades of Adler
pranks have been lost
to the coUege, the
pubhc relations
office still maintains
a hefty file stuffed
with reports of lec
ture high jinks.
According to a
igUr clipping, prank
ing seniors scattered
throughout the audi
Adler — named Holy
ence interrupted the
lecture with their own Roman Emperor
DURING A PRANK —
conversation. They
COMPLETES HIS LEC
imphcated Adler in
TURE WITH CROWN IN
some of the world’s
PLACE.
most significant works
and deeds, including
Adler Grossing the Delaware, Adler the
Great, Adler’s Last Stand, The Critique of
Pure Adler, Thus Spake Adlerthustra, Summa
Adlerologica, Cain and Adler, E Pluribus
Adler, Huckleberry Adler, and Wealth of
Adlers.
The 1984 prank featured a “This Is Your
Life” segment where Adler’s parents were
interviewed. Mrs. Adler, played by Nancy
tion all along. She also volunteers for
a great books organization in the city
and has been leading poetry discus
sions at venues throughout Chicago.
She welcomes a visit from anyone
passing through.
Mease (A84), spoke of her son’s early
years: “Even as a baby he had this annoy
ing habit of going on and on, and we
sometimes thought he’d never stop! He
would latch onto some topic. I think it was
the forms first, and ethics later, and he
would just keep talking.”
In 1987, television journalist Bill Moy
ers filmed Adler’s lecture for a series on
the Gonstitution. WeU before the event,
then-president WiUiam Dyal (HA89)
assembled the ringleaders of the senior
class and swore them to a prank moratori
um. When junior class members heard of
their oath, they decided to take matters into
their own hands. They went to Maria’s Pizze
ria, bought a pepperoni pizza, and wrote in
large letters on the box, “From the Junior
Class.” Midway through the lecture Thomas
Burke (SF91), dressed as a delivery boy,
brought the pizza onstage to Adler. Adler
reached into his pocket, pulled out a ten, and
gave it to Burke, who propped up the box on
the front of the lectern to remind the audi
ence who had delivered the pizza-and the
prank.
Moyers declared it fine television. “A little
prank at St. John’s probably keeps the mind
awake,” he said.
Ruth Busko (SF) is currently living
in Columbia, Md., pursuing a mas
ter’s degree in acupuncture at the
Traditional Acupuncture Institute
there.
Tilman Jacobs (SF) has been living
1999
From Scott Larson: “I am writing
this note just to let you know some
recent events in my life. On March
18, 2000,1 married my long-term
girlfriend Jennifer (nee Rodgers)
(AGI99). On December 7th 2000,
we had a son, Oliver Scott Larson,
weighing 6 pounds 15 ounces. We are
both (my wife and I, not our son)
working at Thomas Jefferson School
in St. Louis.”
Kelly O’Malley (A) is pursuing a
master’s degree program in forestry
and ecosystem management at Duke
University’s School of the Environ
ment.
in Sweden since last August and
plans to stay for another year in
Europe.
2000
Andre Rodriguez (SFGI) is cur
rently teaching eighth grade Ameri
can history; he’s applying to law
school.
Stacy Allen (AGI) reports that
she had a son, John Brady Allen,
9 lbs., 5 oz., born one month after
graduation.
“I am now a student in the psycholo
gy department at New School Uni
versity in Manhattan,” reports James
Lewis (SFGI).
{The College .St John's College . Summer 2001 }
Calling All Alumni
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
November; copy deadline is
September 20.
In Annapolis:
The College Magazine, St. John’s
College, Box 2800, Annapolis, MD
21404; b-goyette@sjca.edu.
In Santa Fe:
The CoUege Magazine, St. John’s
College, Public Relations Office,
1160 Camino Cruz Blanca,
Santa Fe, NM 87505-4599;
classics@mail.sjcsf.edu.
Alumni Notes on the Web:
Read Alumni Notes and contact
The College on the web at:
www.sjca.edu - click on “Alumni.”
�{Letters}
On The College
Whether it is a work slowdown
from the world of writing ency
clopedia articles, anticipation of
Jon Ferrier’s 50th birthday this
coming Wednesday, or my own
youthful longings, I do not know.
But my week has been full of
dreams of Prince George Street,
Thucydides, (never really TOO
far from my psyche, I confess) the
scent of boxwood, and the glories
of an Annapolis spring.
When I opened my mailbox
this Saturday morning, I found
the new issue of The College. On
this Saturday afternoon when I
would rather be enjoying Reality
weekend than cleaning house,
please know what a joy and com
fort this brilliantly-conceived,
marvelously-executed “new”
magazine brought to my soul, my
heart, and, ah, my mind!
Some mail days are better than
others. Thank you for being such
an integral piece of a pretty good
mail day.
—Jane E. Spear, A73
I have just completed The College
cover to cover and take my
(proverbial) hat off to you all for
the obvious work and resulting
high quality. My wife graduated
from the Graduate Institute in
1991 and I only completed half
the program before 1 went on to
(gasp) make money! The one
regret of my life is not complet
ing the, G1 program. The concept
and the execution of The College
is wonderful! Please keep up the
hard but great work!
—Sean P. Scally, AGI89
In your introduction to the new
alumni periodical, you asked
readers to “Let us know what you
think.”
Here’s what I think.
I think the new format is excel
lent. It allows for lengthier and
more serious treatment of issues
than The Reporter. The content
of the first issue was excellent
and thought-provoking. It invites
alums to reflect on how they
might interpret their current
lives in light of the program. The
professional format is appealing.
I hope to see wonderful things in
the future.
“This hath offended; oh, this
unworthy hand! ”
-James A. Cockey, A71
—Michael Ciea, A78
I’d like to commend the staff of
The College for a wonderful new
format for your publication. It’s
much more enjoyable to read. In
fact, for once, I read every arti
cle.
—Lisa Lashley, SF80
Good show-big improvementexcellent start. And only
St. John’s could offer a wrestling
bout with Aristotle and then deal
with the technicalities of dehcate
training of the very, very young a
few pages later.
Go to it. St. John’s ranks near
the top (or at the top) of Ameri
can educational institutions. And
I’m glad that at least one of my
children had the benefit of it.
—Donald Harriss
Historical Accuracy
I enjoyed your article about the
r95i St. John’s production of
Thomas Cranmer ofCanterbury
[“St. John’s Forever”], but I must
point out the obvious error,
about which I suspect you have
already heard many times.
Archbishop Thomas Cranmer
did not “suffer martyrdom as a
result of his stance on the king’s
divorce from Catherine of
Aragon.” His stance on the
divorce actually made his career
with Henry VIII, and led to his
appointment as the first Protes
tant archbishop of Canterbury.
He continued in his position
under Henry VIII and Edward VI,
and only got into trouble under
Queen Mary. She imprisoned
him because of his Protestant
involvement, and coerced him to
a recantation of his Protestant
views before his execution. He
then dramatically reversed his
position again before he was
burned at the stake, asserting
that his only sin was his previous
recantation of his Protestant
position. Before dying, he put the
hand which had signed the recan
tations into the fire, saying.
More Great Books on
Parenting
I loved the parenthood piece in
the spring issue [“The Education
That Is Parenthood”]. The Pro
gram is surely an excellent prepa
ration for parenthood, since,
whatever the great books may be
about, it trains you in open and
respectful dialogue, the proper
relationship with one’s child. Of
books about parenting, I have
fond memories of Children the
Challenge, by Rudolph Dreikers,
Hawthorn Books, New York,
1964. It too fosters such dialogue.
And for little children of course
Dr. Spock. With reference to
Janette Fischer’s letter on
Galileo’s talents, it’s evident
from Dava Sobel’s recent
Galileo’s Daughter that he was an
attentive and loving father too.
—John A. White, SFGI75
I am breaking a 25-year silence to
share this one thought with the
St. John’s community. The best
book on parenting I have ever
read, in fact the best book I have
ever read, the book I would keep
if I had to give away every other
book I own, the book I have
bought ao copies of over my life
and given away to troubled par
ents and been thanked again and
again for the gift.. .was not
included in the list. From the
first time I read it 15 years ago, I
said if there ever was a book writ
ten about parenting for a mem
ber of the St. John’s community,
it is Whole Child/Whole Parent
by Polly Berrien Berends.
—George Kiberd, A7a
I read your recent article on par
enthood with enjoyment. I am a
mother of two, a La Leche
League leader and something of
a “birth junkie,” and I’d like to
recommend a few more books.
For birth. Dr. Bill and Martha
Sears’s The Birth Book, and
Birthing From UY'zAzzibyPam
England and Rob Horowitz.
{The College- St. John's College • Summer 2001 }
La Leche League’s The Woman
ly Art ofBreastfeeding is essen
tial for nursing moms, and
Dr. Sears’s The Baby Book is a
wonderful book on parenting
and baby care. The Sears books
promote attachment parenting
breastfeeding and holding the
baby whenever he wants it, carry
ing him in a sling, co-sleeping.
This produces secure, independ
ent children, contrary to what
advocates of the old “don’t pick
that baby up or you’ll spoil him”
school might say.
I also wanted to mention the
large part that breastfeeding can
play in the first year or more of a
baby’s life, since it wasn’t dis
cussed in your article. Breastfed
babies are smarter, have stronger
immune systems, and have a
lower risk of leukemia, MS, obe
sity and heart disease later in life.
Breastfeeding moms have a lower
risk of breast, ovarian, and cervi
cal cancer, as well as a lower risk
of osteoporosis. In addition to its
many, many health benefits for
mother and baby, breastfeeding
helps to forge a stronger bond
between them, and gives the
mother a wonderful parenting
tool as the baby gets older. Nurs
ing is a wonderful way to soothe
the bumps, bruises, hurt feelings
and tantrums of toddlerhood,
and I didn’t think it should be left
out of a discussion on parenting!
For more information on breast
feeding, check out www.lalecheleague.org and www.breastfeeding.com.
—Tamara Steblez Ashley Aga/gs
Hurray for Planning
I was excited to read in “One Col
lege-How to Make it Really
Work” (Springissue) that “...the
Management Committee pre
pared a framework for a college
wide strategic plan that considers
needs and resources well into the
future.” What a great idea!
—James Laws, SF86
Corrections
Probably due to my somewhat
illegible scrawl/penmanship
�{Obituaries}
C. Thomas Clagett Jr.
Class ofiQsg
C. Thomas Clagett Jr., a retired business
executive who graduated from St. John’s in
1939, died on June 18. Mr. Clagett served in
the Navy during World War II and became a
lieutenant commander. He worked for the
Zeigler Coal Company beginning in 1947; he
was board vice chairman and head of the
board’s executive committee when the com
pany was bought by Houston Natural Gas in
1973. Mr. Clagett continued to serve on the
board of the new company until he retired in
1985A lifelong resident of Washington, D.C.,
Mr. Clagett was involved with many civic and
church groups, including Decatur House,
the Navy League, the Masons, the Sons of
the American Revolution, Washington Hos
pital Center, Washington National Cathe
dral, and the Chesapeake Bay Maritime
Museum. He was also a yachtsman and sailor
who established the Leiter Trophy, in honor
of his wife, who died in 1977.
He is survived by a son, a daughter, and
four grandchildren.
Constance Darkey
Constance H. Darkey, who was known to
every generation of New Program students
and tutors, died May a6 at her Santa Fe
home of a cerebral hemorrhage at the age of
eighty-four.
She is survived by her husband, tutor
emeritus William Darkey; a son by a previ
ous marriage, Peter Nabokov, professor of
anthropology at UCLA; by a daughter,
Catharine Darcy, who works with a real
estate firm in San Bernadino, Calif; by a sis
ter, Sally G. Holladay of Schroon Lake, NY;
and by a number of grandchildren.
Mrs. Darkey was born and grew up in Min
neapolis, Minn.; she graduated in 1938 from
more letters
there were a number of typos in
the Alumni Notes for a listing I
submitted which appeared in the
1986 section in the Spring 2001
issue:
Firstly, I married Graham Gar
ner, not Grant as listed once in
the note. I work for the Friends
General Conference of the Reli
gious Society of Friends (not the
Religions of Friends) and my email address is lucyd@fgcquak-
Wells College in Aurora, NY, where she
majored in Engbsh literature and drama and
then did graduate study in literature with
Professor Lane Cooper at Cornell University.
In Annapolis she became deeply persuad
ed of the rightness of the St. John’s curricu
lum, a conviction which never waned. For
several years she was manager of the College
Bookstore in Annapolis, resigning in 1944 to
take an editorial position in New York with a
trade publication.
Returning to Annapolis in 1947 she, with a
group of other parents of young children,
became involved in an enterprise which
resulted in the Key School. She was first the
librarian and had great fun buying books and
then devised the school’s history program,
which she taught delightedly.
She understood and was an enthusiastic
supporter of and participant in both the
intellectual and social life of St. John’s, well
understanding that these were not separable
provinces.
She favored the idea of the western cam
pus and once in Santa Fe took up her resi
dency with all of her considerable energies,
making new friends, reading widely and
deeply in the literature and history of the
Southwest, and traveling throughout the
entire region. She put her new knowledge to
work first as a docent in local museums, and
then became the librarian of the Wheel
wright Museum of the American Indian.
When her husband became the dean of the
Santa Fe campus, she again turned her ener
gies to the social life of the college, acting
for five years as hostess to visiting lecturers
and to generations of students.
She was a regular and excellent partici
pant in Gommunity Seminars, and for one
year she was happily a co-leader of an under
graduate seminar.
er.org not lucyd@fgquaker.org.
The wedding was really beautiful
by the way-a really perfect day.
—Lucy Duncan, SF86
Editor’s Note
Due to a computer software
glitch, many households received
multiple copies of the first issue
of The College. We hope the soft
ware problem is corrected and
apologize for loading up your
Donald S. Elliott
Class oftg48
Donald S. Elliott, who taught at Garrison
Forest School for 30 years, died on March 13.
Mr. Elliott also wrote children books devoted
to teaching about music, “Alligators and
Music,” “Frogs and Ballet,” and “Lamb’s
Tales from Great Operas.” At the private
school in Owings Mills, Md., where he
taught, his favorite course was an interdisci
plinary one that combined art, literature,
history, and music.
Mr. Elliott was born and raised in
Lutherville, Md., and entered St. John’s
when he was 14. He received his degree in
1948 and went to work for the Baltimore Life
Insurance Company in the actuarial depart
ment. He left to become a teacher at Garri
son Forest School. He is remembered as a
Renaissance man who taught himself to play
the piano, read philosophy and literature
constantly, and built his own swimming
pool.
He is survived by his wife, Cielito Obina,
and by three sons, two daughters, and four
grandchildren.
ALSO NOTED:
Elizareth D. Hatch, A76, died in Decem
ber 1998
John A. Joh, Class of 193a, died in March
2000
Craig Allen Johnston, A95
Kenneth Lenihan, AGI88, died in May
2001
Jesse Elhert Morgan, Class of 1954
F. Scott Seegers, Class of 1967, died in
February 2001
Tad Sanwick, Class of 1938, died in May
2001
George F. Wohlgemuth, Class of 1919,
died in June 2001
mailboxes unnecessarily.
Contacting The College
The College welcomes letters on
issues of interest to readers. Let
ters 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 Maga
{The College- St. John’s College . Summer soot }
zine, Public Relations Office,
St. John’s College, 1160 Camino
Cruz Blanca, Santa Fe, nm
87505-4599-
Letters can also be sent via email to:
b-goyette@sjca.edu, or via the
form for letters on the web site
at www.sjca.edu - click on
“Alumni,” then on “Contact
The College Magazine.”
�{Obituaries}
42,
In Memory of Leo Raditsa
emarks delivered by tutor
Nick Maistrellis at a
memorial service for Leo
Raditsa, tutor in Annapo
lis from 1973 to aoor. Mr.
Raditsa died in January.
R
I first met Leo in the mid-yos when we
shared a sophomore seminar-the first of
three seminars we shared over the next
35 years. We may have a record. I liked him
immediately although we disagreed, almost
from the beginning, about many things; poli
tics, the college, the purpose of seminar. I
thought of him as a political conservative
because of the passion with which he
believed in the inherent evil of the Soviet
empire. But he himself rejected that label.
He thought of himself as a partisan of free
dom and humaneness. He was also deeply
skeptical about the college’s approach to the
books. He did not believe they could be read
without the context of the struggles which
surrounded their birth, and without the con
stant guidance of a teacher.
At bottom, Leo believed that the task of
the tutor is to show students what is impor
tant in the extraordinary books we read
together. I, being more conservative,
thought that no such thing can be done in
seminar, and that all we can do is to allow
students the occasion to examine their own
insights into the books. For me, the main job
of the seminar leader is to wait and listen,
whereas for Leo it was to assert and provoke.
What he cherished most in seminar was oneon-one exchanges between himself and a stu
dent who was responding to something he
had said. He told me that he didn’t believe
students could sustain an important conver
sation just among themselves. This made for
seminars in which there was always at least
the possibility of tension between the tutors.
I found being in seminar with Leo difficult
and wearing, but also very exciting. If we had
not been in seminar together, I do not know
if I would have ever allowed myself to know
and care for this extraordinary man.
Many people one meets are interesting for
what they know or for what they have done. It
is much rarer to meet one who is interesting
in himself. Leo was one of these. I have
often, over the
past many
years, experi
enced a lack
which on
reflection
turned out to
be a need to
have lunch
with Leo, just
to be with him.
In every
encounter with
him you knew
you were in the
presence of
someone.
Every opinion he expressed had that in it
which marked it as one of Leo’s utterances.
In this way he had of always being truly pres
ent in every conversation, Leo was one of the
most intimate human beings I have known.
Leo always said what he thought, and what
he thought was never ordinary. His thinking
had for me the following quality; he seemed
to be the conduit for opinions coming from a
deeper source, rather than the originator of
them. His own awareness of this quality of
his thinking is probably reflected in his
respect for the discovery of the unconscious
by classical psychoanalysis, and especially for
the work of Freud and Wilhelm Reich. I
remember so many occasions when he said
things I could not possibly have expected, or
expressed opinions I could not imagine any
one holding, that I could spend hours relat
ing them. One in particular happened 25
years ago in the sophomore seminar we
shared. In those days we read John Calvin’s
Institutes ofthe Christian Religion, a formi
dable book best known for its austere teach
ing on the predestination of souls for salva
tion. Leo had never read it before, and came
to the seminar very excited. It was his open
ing question. He looked at the class and said,
“Isn’t this the sweetest, the warmest, the
most humane author you have ever read?” Of
all the things I could have imagined being
said about Calvin, this was the least expect
ed, and yet, it became the beginning of a very
good discussion, for it challenged us to
reassess our own first opinions. What Leo
saw was that the doctrine of predestination
{The College. St. John’s College ■ Summer noot }
removed an unbearable burden of
responsibility from human beings.
This story also has its own irony, for
it shows Leo being a seminar stu
dent in the best St. John’s tradition
in spite of his own doubts about
being a seminar leader.
Leo cared about his students.
His manner was often abrupt and
challenging. He was sometimes
grumpy. It is hard to know how
much of this was from the chronic
pain in his leg, for he never com
plained. He could be unfairly criti
cal, and judgmental. He often mis
judged students. But, he cared
deeply both for their learning and
for their personal welfare. He didn’t talk
about students very often, but when he did
he surprised me by how much he knew about
them. He was impatient with what he saw as
phoniness, and much of his harshness was
directed against perceived laziness, or what
he thought was the mere parroting of fash
ionable opinions for effect. But if he thought
a student was doing his best Leo could be
extraordinarily gracious and encouraging. I
remember two occasions when he saved me
from unfairly undervaluing the written work
of students, when I had allowed myself to be
too critical of superficial defects. He was
often more generous in formal evaluations
than in oral exams. We were together on
more than one occasion on senior essay com
mittees when he was very harsh in person to
a student to whom he gave a good grade on
the essay itself. His response to this apparent
discrepancy was to say that he thought the
student was too pleased with himself, and
needed to be woken up.
My favorite times with Leo were outside
class, and especially when we were not talk
ing about college matters where he was usu
ally furious about a decision that had just
been made by some officer of the college in
which, all to often, I was implicated. I loved
to hear him talk about Italy. He cared deeply
about the world, and in his presence I cared
about it more too. We had both adopted chil
dren at about the same time, and it was with
him that I shared my feelings about the spe
cial joys and challenges of being an adoptive
parent. He gave the best dinner parties.
�43
{History}
HUNT HOUSE
The sprawling Santa Fe-style adobe home with the courtyard
perfectfor viewing sunsets once belonged to a colorfulpoet.
BY Alexis Brown, SFoo
new president for the Santa Fe campus travels to Asia, Bynner had a newfound love
and appreciation for poetry. He settled down
occupies the Hunt House, and as he and his in the hills of Santa Fe and began to expand
on his poetic expression, using the simple,
wife begin planning for their future there, elegant styles of Asian poetry.
is it, exactly, that the house named
one wonders about the house’s history. Not forHow
Robert Hunt, Witter Bynner’s partner, is
much is known about the house in the hills now being used by the college as a home for
president? This isn’t the house Bynner
across from campus, even less of our con its
lived in on Santa Fe Trail-the house where
famous parties
were held. Instead, it’s a
nection with the man who donated it to thethecollege,
poet
sprawling set of buildings, a main house with
Witter Bynner (1881-1968).
two guest houses surrounding a courtyard.
A
In 1922, Witter Bynner moved to Santa Fe, a
place he would call home the rest of his life.
For decades, Bynner was a prominent citizen
in Santa Fe and an active participant in the
cultural and political life of the city. He had
no official affiliation with the “new” college
that was built in Santa Fe in the mid-sixties.
His association with St. John’s was a result of
his appreciation and respect for the college
and its program.
Bynner and Robert Hunt, his companion
of more than 30 years, lived in a house on
Old Santa Fe Trail. There they held parties
that attracted artists, literary figures, and
celebrities who lived in or were visiting
Santa Fe-people like D.H. Lawrence, Ansel
Adams, Errol Flynn, Robert Oppenheimer,
and Georgia O’Keefe.
In his 87 years Witter Bynner produced
many volumes of poetry, translated Greek
and Chinese works into English, taught
poetry classes at Stanford and Berkeley, trav
eled throughout the world, and made numer
ous friends. Yet despite his achievements few
Americans recognize his name. Bynner’s
obscurity is mostly due to the 1916 “Spectra
Hoax,” in which Bynner and Arthur Davison
Ficke, writing under pseudonyms which they
later revealed, established “Spectrism,” a
supposedly new school of poetry that attract
ed many advocates. When Bynner and Ficke
revealed this “new” type of poetry as a hoax.
and their
identities,
they offended
many of their
peers, and
thus lost
respect in the
literary
world.
Despite lack
of recogni
tion from his
contempo
raries, Byn
ner contin
ued to
Santa Fe president John
produce many Balkcom and his wife carol
excellent writ are new residents of the
Hunt House.
ten works
throughout his
lifetime. He also translated Iphigenia in Tauris from the original Greek to English in
1915. During these years, he lectured
throughout the United States on poetry and
women’s suffrage.
In 1917, soon after the Spectra Hoax, Byn
ner visited Japan and China, spending
approximately two months in each country.
He wished to explore Asia and to escape
America’s involvement in World War I. A
staunch pacifist, he loathed Europe’s war
and strongly denounced violence. After his
{The College -5f. John’s College ■ Summer 2001 }
Up in the hills, it affords wonderous views of
Santa Fe sunsets.
The story goes like this:
Hunt and Bynner were travel
ing south to sell a house they
owned in Chiapas, Mexico,
because they were planning
to move into a new house in
Santa Fe designed andbuUt
by Hunt. On the way, though.
Hunt died suddenly. Bynner
was so grief-stricken that,
although Hunt left the house
to him, Bynner could neither
move into the house by him
self, and nor could he sell it.
A year later, Bynner had his
first stroke, and was confined
to living in his own house, the one that had
been site to so many parties.
Neither Hunt nor Bynner ever lived in the
house Hunt built, but they are now both
buried near there, in a spot marked by a
bronze statue of a dog once loved by Hunt.
When Hunt died, Bynner acquired the titles
to both houses. Bynner himself died in 1968,
leaving both houses to St. John’s, presum
ably because he admired something about its
philosophy of education. The college sold
the Witter Bynner House on Old Santa Fe
Trail because it was too expensive to main
tain. But, luckily, the Hunt House still
stands strong, home to a new president.
�44
{Alumni Association News}
From the Alumni
Association President
Senior Dinners:
Welcoming the
Newest Alumni
Dear Johnnies,
St. John’s may have you for four years, but the
Alumni Association has you forever after. That’s
the message alumni pass along to their newest fel
low alums—the soon-to-be-graduated seniors-during Senior Dinners. These dinners, which take
place in Santa Fe in January and Annapohs in
April, have become an important tradition for the
seniors and for their alumni hosts alike. It’s a
chance for Johnnies who’ve been out in the “real
world” to welcome students into the Association.
The hosts, the college, and the Association all
work together to make the evening a success. The
Alumni Directors, Tahmina Shalizi and Roberta
Gable, choose the local restaurants (with input
from participating alumni). The students choose
the friends they want to go out with. And the
alumni hosts put their social skills to good use in
bringing the evening together.
Leo Vladimirsky, a member of the Annapolis
class of 2001, says he enjoyed his dinner at North
woods with Mark Middlebrook (A82) and Robert
Bienenfeld (SF80). “The food was great-Northwoods being one of the best places to eat around
Have you received your copy of the St. John’s College Alumni Register aooi? Have
you checked to make sure your own info is right? Have you seen who’s lost and
who’s found? (More about that later.) Have you scanned your
class to see who’s married or divorced? Who’s moved or
changed johs? Have you used the new e-mail section to send ehellos to old friends? I certainly have, especially because I’m
getting ready for the 25th reunion of my class!
Glenda Eoyang
We owe a note of resounding thanks to Roberta Gable, Direc
tor of Alumni Activities in Annapolis, and her team for the
tremendous work they did preparing the Register. Every five
years, the Alumni Association and the college fund the effort to collect data about
alumni and to publish that information for all of us to share. The Register is an
excellent tool to help us stay connected with each other and with the college.
Many thanks to all!
Now, about those lost alumni.... As you browse the new Register, you’ll note that
some names are marked with an asterisk for “address unknown.” These are alum
ni who have lost contact with the community. The Alumni Association and the col
lege will be making an effort over the next few months to rebuild connections with
these missing persons. You can help! If you’re in touch with ones who are “address
unknown,” please contact them and encourage them to get in touch with the col
lege (or call or e-mail the Alumni Office so that they can follow up). A phone call, a
note, or an e-mail will provide the information tie that hinds us.
I hope your summer is joyous and rewarding and that you have a chance to partici
pate in some of the summer’s alumni activities: Homecoming in SF, Summer
Alumni Weeks, GI graduation, various chapter gatherings, listserve conversa
tions, or a private visit to one of the campuses.
For the past, the present, and the future,
Glenda Holladay Eoyang, SF76
ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE
ALUMNI ASSOCIATION
Whether from Annapolis or Santa Fe,
undergraduate or Graduate Institute,
Old Program or New, graduated or not,
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 Alumni
Association news and events of interest.
President - Glenda Eoyang, SF76
Vice President - Jason Walsh, A85
Secretary-Barbara Lauer, SF76
Treasurer - Bill Fant, A79
Getting-the-Word-Out Action Team ChairTom Geyer, A68
Web site - www.sjca.edu/aassoc/main.phtml
eoyang@chaos-hmited. com
Mailing address - Alumni Association,
St. John’s College, Box 2800, Annapohs,
MD 21404 or 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca,
Santa Fe, NM 87505-4599.
{The College- St. John's College ■ Summer 2001 }
�{Alumni Association News}
Annapolis. It was a nice conversation among
people who didn’t know each other,” he says.
The students knew each other, he hastens to
add-“we all decided to list each other on the
forms the Alumni Office sends out, to be sure
we’d be with our friends.”
After an initial discussion in which each sen
ior talked about his or her future plans, the con
versation turned to more general matters about
college life, graduate school, the business world,
working as an engineer, and other matters, says
Vladimirsky. There wasn’t any purposeful net
working, but the students all got the feeling that
their alumni hosts cared about what happened
to them and would be willing to help out in job
searches or with graduate school advice. They
also learned a fife skill-how to “taste” wine.
Mark Middlebrook, who lives near the Napa Val
ley wine region, demonstrated how to swirl the
wines around in their glasses before smelling
and tasting.
“AU around, it was a nice evening, and it’s
great of the Alumni Association to do this for
seniors,” says Vladimirsky. Himself, he’s not
sure what he’ll be doing come fall. After some
rest from academic matters, he’ll probably go to
graduate school. He knows he can count on
alumni for advice or networking once he has an
idea of where he’d like to study. One thing for
sure, though, “the chocolate cheesecake at
Northwoods was great.”
Amending the
Amendment
Mechanism
In order to make it easier to explain proposed
changes in the Alumni Association By-Laws to
the alumni ofthe college, the Alumni Association
Board isproposing thefollowing amendment to
the By-Laws:
In accordance with Article XIII, Section I of the
By-Laws of the St. John’s CoUege Alumni Associ
ation, notice is hereby given that the following
by-laws amendment has been proposed by the
Alumni Association Board of Directors. This
amendment will be voted upon at the Special
Meeting, September 29, 2001, 2:00 p.m. in the
Conversation Room in Annapolis.
The amendment to Article XIII is indicated in
capitals.
ARTICLE XIII
AMENDMENTS
SECTION I. Any and all provisions of these ByLaws may be altered, amended, added to, or
repealed by a majority of the membership of the
Association, present in person or by proxy, at
any regular or special meeting of the member
ship, provided that a copy of any proposed
amendment shall have been mailed to each
member at least six weeks prior to that meeting
OR PROVIDED THAT A NOTICE, AS SPECI
FIED HEREUNDER, SHALL HAVE BEEN
MAILED TO EACH MEMBER AT LEAST SIX
WEEKS PRIOR TO THAT MEETING. THE
NOTICE SHALL INDICATE THE ARTICLE(S)
AND SECTION(S) PROPOSED TO BE AMEND
ED; AWEB SITE ADDRESS DETERMINED BY
THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS AT WHICH A
MEMBER MAY ACCESS THE COMPLETE
TEXT OF THE PROPOSED AMENDMENT;
AND A STATEMENT INFORMING EACH
MEMBER HOW THEY MAY RECEIVE A COPY
OF THE PROPOSED AMENDMENT BY MAIL
OR FAX.
Amendments to these By-Laws shall be sub
mitted to the membership upon the vote of the
Board of Directors, or by Petition of at least fifty
members in good standing which is received at
least ten weeks prior to the date of the meeting.
SECTION IL Unless so stated, any amend
ment to these By-Laws shall take effect immedi
ately foUowing its adoption.
The Croquet Match is a favorite gathering
SPOT FOR 1980s AND I99OS ALUMNI (lEFt).
At the Match Alumni Association Board
MEMBERS sported SHADES PRINTED WITH
“Beat Navy” — in Greek, of course.
CHAPTER CONTACTS
Call the alumni listed belowfor information
about chapter, reading group, or other alumni
activities in each area.
ALBUQUERQUE
PHILADELPHIA
Bob & Vicki Morgan
505-880-2134
Bart Kaplan
215-465-0244
ANNAPOLIS
PORTLAND
Valerie Garvin
410-280-6119
Dale Mortimer
360-882-9058
AUSTIN
SACRAMENTO
Jennifer Chenoweth
512-482-0747
Helen Hobart
916-452-1082
BALTIMORE
SAN DIEGO
Roberta Gable
410-295-6926
Stephanie Rico
619-423-4252
BOSTON
SAN Francisco/
NORTHERN CALIFORNIA
Ginger Kenney
617-964-4794
CHICAGO
Lorna Anderson
847-467-3069
DENVER
Elizabeth Pollard Jenny
303-330-3373
LOS ANGELES
Elizabeth Eastman
562-426-1934
MINNEAPOLIS/ST. PAUL
Carol Freeman
612-822-3216
NEW YORK
Fielding Dupuy
212-974-2922
NORTH CAROLINA
Susan Eversole
919-968-4856
{The College- St. John’s College ■ Summer soot }
45
Jon Hodapp
831-393-9496
SANTA FE
John Pollak
505-983-2144
SEATTLE
Kyle Kinsey
206-715-1081
WASHINGTON, DC
Jean Dickason
301-699-6207
ISRAEL
Emi Geiger Leslau
15 Aminadav Street
Jerusalem 93549
Israel
972-2-6717608
boazl@cc.huji.ac.il
�{Campus Life}
Say It Isn’t So
What happened to St. Johns domination in croquet?
VI Sus3AN
Borden, A87
e were, perhaps, a bit smug. We
were, you might say, a tad over
confident. And we were, no doubt,
somewhat drunk. But still, it doesn’t
add up. When did smugness become
an obstacle for a Johnny? What good
is a croquet team that’s not overconfident? And why would a
martini or two ever keep us from the Annapolis Cup?
And yet it happened. After a nine-year win
ning streak and a 15-3 series record, St.
John’s lost the 19th croquet match against
the Naval Academy, held the last Saturday in
April on the front campus.
While we were unahle to contact Imperial
Wicket Paige Postlewait (Aoi) for this story,
her teammate and next year’s Imperial
Wicket, Jonathan Polk {A02), has some
insight into the loss. “We might have heen a
little overconfident,” he says, “but I’m
tempted to think of it as just a combination
of bad luck-lots of people’s different bad
luck in combination.”
“It’s been a pretty rough year for us,” Polk
says. “We didn’t compete in the National
Championships and we didn’t start practic
ing until about a month beforehand.” (Why
the team didn’t go to the Nationals, where
they were three-time champions, is another
story-involving a change in the game from
traditional nine-wicket to something called
“golf croquet.”) Still, he says, even with the
late start the team logged so much playing
time they felt they were ready to play and
prepared to win.
An article in the Trident, the Naval Acade
my’s newspaper, suggests that the win may
be a result of strategy, the players’ lucky ties
and lucky mallets, or brainpower-the team
included two Trident Scholars and a Pownall
Scholar. Word around town is that the Acad
emy brought in a croquet coach from Yale to
beef up the middies’ strategy and skills.
Whatever the reason, says former Imperi
al Wicket Bob DeMajistre (A88), the mid
shipmen deserved to win. DeMajistre attend
ed this year’s match, as he does most years.
One of the college’s four losing Imperial
Wickets {1987), DeMajistre is well qualified
to analyze the play. “I watched the court
where we played the first lost game and the
mids were shooting very well, they were dead
on. They were making long shots, they were
hitting balls. And we weren’t.”
Johnnies, as usual, were a bit more fla
grantly OUTFITTED THAN THEIR OPPONENTS.
{The College. St John’s College ■ Summer zooi }
�47
Steven Werlin (A85), St. John’s first
defeated Wicket, recalls that losing was no
surprise to him in 1985. “Two separate cro
quet things were happening at St. John’s that
year,” he says. “There were serious croquet
players and then there was the croquet team.
The only person who fell into both groups
was James Hapner (A85).” Only later, Werlin
says, did croquet play become more serious
and practice become intense.
Once practice did take hold, it became St.
John’s secret weapon. Or perhaps not so
secret, as it was revealed in a Sports Illustrat
ed article, “The Best of Everything” ( April
28,1997, special issue on college sports).
Citing the croquet match as the Most
Obscure Rivalry, the article quotes a Naval
Academy plebe explaining St. John’s strate
gy: “They’re out practicing croquet every
afternoon! Alabama should take football this
seriously.”
Louis Elias {A91), another former Imperi
al Wicket, recalls the year his team lost the
match (i99r). “I sort of knew we were going
to lose all along,” Elias says. “I lost heart
Jonathon Polk lines up a long shot (top).
Polk AND Imperial Wicket Paige PostleWAIT WAIT THEIR TURN (BOTTOM LEFT) WHILE
CURRENT Johnnies enjoy the festivities
(bottom Right).
{The College -St John’s College ■ Summer 2001 }
that year. The hype and media attention [G<2
covered the event] and the reaction to the
attention seemed, to me, to detract’from the
spirit of the event.” Still he says, the loss was
not without a silver lining: “I figured we
were due for a loss if only to keep the Acade
my interested.”
DeMajistre agrees that an occasional loss
can serve a strategic purpose: “The main
reason to lose is so that the mids will come
back. You got to throw them a bone every
once in awhile. ” *
�48
{St. John’s Forever}
These photos of student desks were
TAKEN BY EdWARD GrAY, CLASS OF I934.
The date on the photos is 1933.
From the 1933 yearbook,
THE Rat Tat, describing the
TENOR OE COLLEGE LIFE AT
St. John’s:
...Like all other freshman classes we gave lit
tle evidence of ability, although we did study a
bit between building bonfires, attending rat
meetings and football, basketball and lacrosse
games...One of the outstanding features this
year was the inauguration of the new presi
dent of the college [Amos W. Woodcock].
Another was the coming of Hopkins. What a
fight! If you don’t believe me, ask the
Annapolis police, the Annapolis firemen or
the jail keeper...By the time we were juniors,
we had forgotten most of our high school and
prep school training and were beginning to
realize that it takes a smart man to admit
there is plenty he doesn’t know...Each one of
us came here with ideals and aims. Some of us
have done things we set out to do, others have
done more, others have met with disappoint
ments. Most of us brought little to St. John’s
with us. The amount of knowledge and the
number of friends we take away with us
depends on the individual. Everything the
school could offer us was placed at our feet.
Who picked it up and who trampled it is
another question.
{The College. St. John’s College ■ Summer zoot }
�{Alumni Events Calendar}
Homecoming 2001 - Annapolis
Friday, septemDcrau-siwflay, September 30
Reunion Classes: 1936,1941,1951,1956,
1961,1966,1971,1976,1981,1986,1991,
and 1996
Homecoming Highlights
Friday, September 28
• Homecoming Lecture by Abraham
Schoener (A82): “The Biology of the
Fermentation Vehicle”
• Wine and Cheese Party in the
Dining HaU
• Rock Party in the Boathouse
Saturday, September 29
• Memorial Service for Mortimer Adler
• Saturday Morning Seminars
• Children of alumni seminar on Harry
Potter (followed by croquet)
• Freshman Chorus Revisited led by
Elliott Zuckerman
• West Street Story, a reprise of the Class
of 1981’s senior prank show
• Alumni-Student Soccer Classic
• Autograph Party
• Cocktail party in the Great Hall and
McDowell classrooms
• Homecoming Banquet: Tom Williams
(A51) and Warren Spector ( A81) will
receive the Alumni Association Award
of Merit; Nancy Lewis, John Moore,
and Beate Ruhm Von Oppen will be
recognized as new Honorary Alumni
• Waltz Party in the Great Hall
Sunday, September 30
I
• Rock Party in the Coffee Shop: Robert ■
George (A85) will make a cameo DJ 3
appearance
i
• Champagne Brunch at the President’s
House
-
?
‘
I
t
A Johnnie is a Johnnie—no matter if their
GRADUATION YEAR WAS IN THE 1950’s OR THE
1990’s.
Inauguration of John Balktom as
Santa Fe President _____ - '
-1
Friday, September 14 and Saturday;
September 15
“Inviting Conversations” is the theme of
this inaugural weekend where festivities
will include:
Friday, September 14
• Picnic on the soccer field
• All-college Chicago-style softball game
• Performance at the newly renovated
Lensic Performing Arts Center
Saturday, September 15
• Inauguration at 10 a.m. on Meem
Library Placita
• Reception for all in attendance will
take place on the Upper Placita
• Waltz Party in the Great Hall
For information on events, contact the
Offices of Alumni Activities:
Tahmina Shalizi,
Director of Alumni and Parent Activities
Santa Fe - 505-984-6103;
alumni@maiLsjcsf.edu
Roberta Gable,
Director of Alumni Activities
Annapolis - 4io-6a6-253i;
alumni@sjca.edu
�STJOHN’S COLLEGE
ANNAPOLIS • SANTA PE
Published by the
Public Relations Office
Box a8oo
Annapolis, Maryland 21404
ADDRESS service REQUESTED
Periodicals
Postage Paid
�
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<em>The College </em>(2001-2017)
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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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48
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The College, Summer 2001
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Volume 27, Issue 3 of The College Magazine. Published in Summer 2001.
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St. John's College
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Santa Fe, NM
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2001
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The College Vol. 27, Issue 3 Summer 2001
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Goyette, Barbara (editor)
Mulry, Laura J. (Santa Fe editor)
Borden, Sus3an (assistant editor)
Behrens, Jennifer (graphic designer)
Johnson, David
Harvey, Keith
Eoyang, Glenda Holladay
Brown, Alexis
Maistrellis, Nicholas
Hellner-Burris, Janet
Goyette, Barbara
Moreno, Ed
Fridrich, Sarah
Flaumenhaft, Harvey
Rankin, John
Knight, Mirabai
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/0bd44156c9f84843eddbc2e136e30cc6.pdf
4dc90856929b9dcb6391ce739c3f9bb1
PDF Text
Text
S T. J O H N ’ S C O L L E G E
S P R IN G 2017
VOLUME 42, ISSUE 1
Lincoln
Leading by
Teaching
�OPENING NOTE
A remarkable coincidence occurred
when Chris Nelson first announced
publicly his plans to retire this
spring: it was 25 years to the day that
he was named president of the Annapolis campus. Stumbling upon this
realization, I immediately swapped
my editor’s pen for my detective’s
magnifying glass, searching for clues
to some deeper, hidden meaning.
Alas, to no avail. But the opportunity
led me to explore Chris’s influence as
president. While the coincidental timing of his announcement may remain
a mystery, one thing which can be
said with certainty is that the pages
dedicated to him within this issue of
The College only begin to describe the
impact of his legacy and his devotion
to the St. John’s Program.
In honor of President Nelson, members of the Annapolis community
joined tutors for an afternoon of reading and discussing works by some of
his favorite authors. Among them was
Abraham Lincoln. A fascinating and
complicated figure in American history, tutor George Russell describes
Lincoln as “a man with a true moral
compass.” Lincoln inspires us today
through his eloquent speeches, and
his gift for the written word. He also
inspires by his actions as a leader,
revealing that a moral compass is capable of shifting when flawed notions
give way to enlightened thought.
Gregory Shook, editor
ii THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 017
THE COL L E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | SPR I NG 2 017 1
�SPRING 2017
VOLUME 42, ISSUE 1
“� incoln appeared on the earth in the right place at the
L
right time to preserve and protect a constitution constructed
to provide against the fortuity of prudence in human affairs.”
—George Russell, tutor
FEATUR E S
P A G E 1 2��
DEPAR TM ENTS
PA G E 1 8
PA G E 2 4
LEADERSHIP IN
FACTIOUS TIMES
PROTECTOR OF
OUR PROGRAM
MODERN
GLADIATOR
In a politically and morally
divided United States,
Abraham Lincoln, our nation’s
16th president, displays
leadership through teaching.
After 26 years, Christopher
Nelson says goodbye to his
role as president of the
Annapolis campus—but not
to his love for the Program.
Ingenuity, empathy, and a
passion for learning lead to
a technological breakthrough
that may save the skulls of
athletes everywhere.
��FROM THE BELL TOWERS
BIBLIOFILE
FOR & ABOUT ALUMNI
4 �
Growing the Graduate Institute
28 �obert Wolf (Class of 1967)
R
envisions a self-reliant rural
America in Building the
Agricultural City.
30 �JCAA Elections: Cast Your Vote!
S
6 Lincoln’s Walk
8 �
Tutors Talk Books:
Krishnan Venkatesh
9 Open to Inquiry
10 Civility on the World Stage
11 �idden Talent:
H
Joan Haratani (SF79)
31 Alumni Leadership Forum
32 �hilanthropy: Ron Fielding (A70)
P
and Warren Spector (A81) pledge
their commitment to St. John’s.
29 �elson Lund (A74) aims to revive
N
the ideas of a major philosophic
critic of the Enlightenment era
in Rousseau’s Rejuvenation of
Political Philosophy.
33 Alumni Notes
38 In Memoriam
� Stickey (A04) takes readers
Sarah
on a poetic journey through life’s
big questions about love, death,
beauty, and desire in Portico.
�Brann (H89), Peter Kalkavage,
Eva
and Eric Salem (A77) offer a
new translation of Plato’s most
popular dialogue, Symposium or
Drinking Party.
ON THE COVER:
Lincoln illustration by
Sébastien Thibault
43 �rofile: Robert Morris (SF04)
P
soars above the competition.
JOHNNIE VOICES
40 �omer in China
H
42 �irst Person: Yosef Trachtenberg (A15)
F
ST. JOHN’S FOREVER
44 �orward Edge of History
F
EIDOS
45 Anyi Guo (A15) photographs the world.
ABOVE:
Chris Nelson with Arcadia,
the campus dog
2 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 017
THE COL L E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | SPR I NG 2 017 3
�From the
BELL TOWERS
“� or adults out of college,
F
I don’t know of a more
vital part of that education
in necessary citizenship
than that provided by the
opportunity to participate
in true liberal education as
offered by the St. John’s GI.”
50TH ANNIVERSARY
Growing the Graduate Institute
In the summer of 1967, on the three-year-old St. John’s Santa
Fe campus, the Graduate Institute came to life as the Teachers
Institute. The GI, as we know it during this 50th anniversary,
offers a master of arts in liberal arts on both campuses year-round.
In 1994, Santa Fe established a master of arts in Eastern classics,
including two semesters of Sanskrit or classical Chinese.
“I characterized it this way,” says tutor emeritus
Elliott Zuckerman, one of a handful of tutors
in the GI pilot year: “Bringing inner city high
school teachers” from Baltimore and New Mexico “to the high desert to read Aristotle.” As GI
director that second and third year, Zuckerman
found that, for at least one student, 7,000 feet
wasn’t high enough. “I thought I had prepared
for everything that first night. But the next
morning, a number of students came to me and
said their mattresses were missing.” The mystery
was solved when “one young man claimed to
need to sleep higher than everyone else.”
Zuckerman describes how Richard Weigel,
president and founder of the Santa Fe campus,
and Robert Goldwin, first-year GI director
(from Kenyon College), “invented the institute.”
Politics and Society, designed by tutor Laurence Berns, was the only segment offered that
first summer, with Freud’s Civilization and Its
Discontents heading the list for 35 students in
two seminars.
“We lost money in the early years. We got
scholarships for the students” from the Hoffberger and Cafritz foundations, “covering tuition
and compensating for their summer salaries. But
we forgot to include the overhead. We always
planned to have it in Annapolis but,” in the first
years, as a summer institute only, “Annapolis
wasn’t air conditioned.” Segments were added
and the enrollment quickly doubled. By 1969,
Literature and Poetry, Philosophy and Theology,
and Mathematics and Natural Sciences joined
Politics and Society. “The curriculum was pretty
much the same as now,” he says.
Zuckerman remembers when he and GI student William Yannuzzi (SFGI69)—a high school
teacher who became musical director for the
Baltimore Opera—criticized the previous night’s
opera. “He and I would give an informal and
scathing review to an audience at breakfast. It
was a favorite event.”
“Weigel wanted to start something; he didn’t
know it was the GI. From the first day, it was
a success,” says Sam Kutler (Class of 1954),
retired tutor and dean emeritus. “The Carnegie
Foundation paid me six hundred dollars to formulate a math program. I would have paid that
much to be able to do it. I think it’s been very
successful. It was started for teachers; that
was Bob Goldwin’s influence.” After the initial
years as a summer-only institute in Santa Fe,
“without [tutor] Geoff Comber (H95), I don’t
know what would have happened in Annapolis,”
Kutler says.
“I had been in Santa Fe two or three summers,” says Comber, “and I was so impressed.
I thought we were doing important work and
we should do it here.” He remembers “quite
strong objections,” with some Annapolis faculty
saying: Why should we take on the risk? It
took two years to get it off the ground, and in
1977 Comber operated as Annapolis GI director
from his tutor’s office while he continued to
teach full-time. “People were saying, ‘You can’t
just do the same thing as Santa Fe,’ so I made
up the history segment.” In 1988, the history
segment was approved on both campuses as a
fifth segment.
The vice president, Burch Ault, presented
Comber with potential funding contacts around
the country. “Everyone was impressed that
we grew so fast,” Comber says. In 1980, while
Comber was on sabbatical, Ben Milner took
4 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 017
—David Carl, past Santa Fe associate
dean for Graduate Programs
over the directorship and hired Sharon Hensley
as full-time GI assistant. Over decades, “she
was invaluable. A wonderful person to follow up
on things,” says Comber. “It was going so well
with the five segments, there was no reason to
change anything.”
David Carl, who recently completed his term
as Santa Fe associate dean for Graduate Programs (the title replacing director), knows well
the administrative tasks “constantly going on
behind the scenes, so that when tutors and students sit down at a table to talk about a book,
it’s as if there’s nothing going on but that one
activity.” Carl found it particularly appealing
to work with “adults from amazingly diverse
backgrounds. From firefighters to retired doctors, school teachers to surgeons, international
business men and women to lawyers, bartenders, veterans, and physicists. They are giving
For the past 50 years, the GI has provided an
integral role in the SJC community.
up jobs, moving across the country, asking
enormous sacrifices of their families.”
Part of the value of the Eastern Classics
program, Carl explains, is how it exposes “the
influence of Buddhism on Hume, or Hindu
philosophy on Hegel, or Eastern thought in
general on Nietzsche.” He describes how the
EC program, developed with the help of past
GI Director Krishnan Venkatesh, keeps the
college in touch “with the deep-rooted notion of
experimentation, which inspired the founders of
the New Program.”
Carl stresses the necessity of education in
a true democracy. “For adults out of college, I
don’t know of a more vital part of that educa-
tion in necessary citizenship than that provided
by the opportunity to participate in true liberal
education as offered by the St. John’s GI.”
Tom May, who served his first term as
Annapolis GI director in 1986, reflects on the
challenges of the early year-round program.
May taught half-time, while he and assistant
Hensley shouldered recruitment, alumni relations, budgeting, class assignments, and other
student matters. They supervised high school
visits, the Continuing Education and Fine Arts
Program, and various publications. It was “truly
prodigious labor, with no down time over the
course of the year,” May recalls.
By May’s second directorship in 1995, the
ancillary programs had “migrated to other
offices. The GI was finally fully and solely itself.
In the midst of these years of expansion, the
program remained essentially the same.”
Recalling the GI in the 1970s, tutor David
Starr refers to the Barr-Buchanan vision. “The
concept of the college as a possible model for
educating citizens of all backgrounds was alive
and well in what we thought of as The Teachers
Institute.” A past Santa Fe GI director, Starr
reflects on “the resilience and range of the
program” over the years. He writes of “a shift
in demographics, from teachers funded to
strengthen their competence, toward younger
academics seeking to broaden their scope.” He
explains that “people who specialized prematurely now come here to look into alternative
philosophic, social, and spiritual studies.”
The current GI associate dean in Annapolis,
Emily Langston, announced plans for a 50th
celebration in her Commencement address last
year. A number of events throughout this year
will culminate at Homecoming on each campus.
This anniversary year will highlight “the role of
the GI as an integral part of the SJC community,” Langston says. “There’s a hunger for the
sort of thing we offer at the GI. Someone who’s
eighty and someone who’s twenty-four talk
about a text together. I think the GI is the sort
of thing that Barr and Buchanan were envisioning when they talked about how these books
could speak to anyone.”
—Robin Weiss (SFGI90)
THE COL L E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | SPR I NG 2 017 5
�F R OM T H E B E L L T OW E R S
IN ANNAPOLIS
LEFT:
An aerial view
of the St. John’s
campus, circa 1868.
BOTTOM: Lincoln tours
the battlefield after
the Battle of Antietam
in October 1862.
Lincoln’s Walk
Members of the St. John’s community are
aware that dedications have brought two
American presidents to the Annapolis
campus: William Howard Taft took part in
the French Monument ceremony in 1911,
while Dwight Eisenhower, after landing in
a helicopter on back campus, charmed the
faculty in 1959 when the Mellon-Key complex
was dedicated.
Few are aware that several weeks before
his assassination, Abraham Lincoln walked
the width of the campus during a 45-minute
visit to Annapolis. That occurred on February 2, 1865, when Lincoln was headed for
the deep water wharf on the grounds of the
Naval Academy. From there he sailed to what
became known as the Hampton Roads Peace
Conference in Virginia, leading to the end of
the Civil War.
By then, St. John’s had been transformed
into U.S. General Hospital Division 2. Tents
for wounded and ill federal forces were
pitched on back campus. At the Naval Academy, midshipmen and professors had been
moved to Newport, Rhode Island, and that
campus was serving as a large supply depot
and hospital facility for Division 1.
Details of Lincoln’s visit, which also suggest
what St. John’s College’s environment was like
during those wartime years, are revealed in
a history written by Rockford E. Toews and
published by the Maryland State Archives:
“Lincoln in Annapolis February 1865.”
Traveling by train from Washington, Lincoln
arrived at 1 p.m. at the Annapolis & Elk Ridge
Railroad, located at the corner of Calvert and
West streets, from where Lincoln set off by
foot for the Naval Academy wharf about half
a mile away. Toews noted that the traffic was
too heavy for him to go by carriage while the
streets were unpaved and almost certainly
muddy. He thinks that the most likely route
Lincoln followed may have been along the
route of the railroad extension laid out in 1861.
A map accompanying the article shows the
route Lincoln is believed to have taken, based
upon research by the Annapolis Lincoln Bicentennial Commission, the group that funded the
booklet. Lincoln’s path is shown in a red line.
“� o quiet and unobtrusive
S
was his arrival and
departure from the ancient
city that scarcely a score
knew of it until after the
steamboat sailed.”
After leaving the rail station, it is thought
that Lincoln walked over the Bloomsbury
Square area on what was then known as Tabernacle Street—today’s College Avenue. He
would have walked down Tabernacle, passing
Prince George and King George streets on his
right, and into the Naval Academy through a
gate at the end of College Avenue. St. John’s
would have been at his left. He would have
seen the Paca-Carroll House, Humphreys Hall,
McDowell Hall, Pinkney, Chase Stone, all built
by 1865, and, of course, the then flourishing
Liberty Tree.
6 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 017
Lincoln’s walk took him close to the State
House, where the Maryland Senate was
considering ratification of the Thirteenth
Amendment, ending slavery. No account of his
visit from the Annapolis paper survives, but
a Baltimore American correspondent, who
signed his name “Mac,” wrote:
“[H] Excellency, the President of the
United States, arrived in Annapolis, entirely
unannounced, and without any ostentatious
ceremony whatever, but, like the Democratic
Republican that he is, he quietly proceeded to
the Naval Academy, where he embarked on
the steamer Thomas Collyer and proceeded, I
suppose, to City Point. He was accompanied
only by a servant. So quiet and unobtrusive
was his arrival and departure from the
ancient city that scarcely a score knew of
it until after the steamboat sailed. Had it
become known that he was present in the
Naval Academy’s Hospital, he would have had
a gratifying and pleasing reception from the
wounded and sick inmates of the institution.
Many of the members of the Legislature
expressed great regret at not having the
pleasure of seeing the Chief Magistrate.”
The red line on the
map illustrates the
route Lincoln is
believed to have taken
weeks before his
assassination.
News accounts differ on the number who
accompanied Lincoln. The Crutch, published
weekly by Hospital 1, reported:
“President Lincoln arrived here on Thursday by special train from Washington. No one
was aware of this distinguished arrival until
it was heralded by the Hospital Band, playing
patriotic airs of welcome as he passed from
the wharf to the boat.”
After boarding the Thomas Collyer, which
Toews described as a “fast side-wheel”
steamer, he departed from the mouth of the
Severn River into the Chesapeake Bay, leaving
Maryland for Virginia. The following day, on
February 4, after an overnight trip, he steamed
back to Annapolis to catch a 7:30 a.m. train.
Back in Washington two hours later, Lincoln
was never able to return to Annapolis.
—Rebecca Wilson (H83)
The College
is published by St. John’s
College, Annapolis, MD,
and Santa Fe, NM.
thecollegemagazine@
sjc.edu
Known office of
publication:
Communications Office
St. John’s College
60 College Avenue
Annapolis, MD 21401
Periodicals postage
paid at Annapolis, MD.
Postmaster: Send
address changes to
The College Magazine,
Communications Office,
St. John’s College,
60 College Avenue,
Annapolis, MD 21401.
Editor
Gregory Shook
gregory.shook@sjc.edu
Contributors
Anna Perleberg Andersen
(SF02)
Samantha Ardoin (SF16)
Carol Carpenter
Martha Franks (SF78)
Jonathan Llovet (A17)
Paula Novash
Tim Pratt
George Russell
Aisha Shahbaz (A19)
Yosef Trachtenberg (A15)
Robin Weiss (SFGI90)
Andrew Wice
Rebecca Wilson (H83)
Design
Skelton Design
Contributing Designer
Jennifer Behrens
THE COL L E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | SPR I NG 2 017 7
�F R OM T H E B E L L T OW E R S
TUTORS TALK BOOKS
“Tutors Talk Books” is a new series on the St. John’s College
website that features interviews with tutors discussing a
favorite subject: books. The following is an edited excerpt from
the debut interview in which Samantha Ardoin (SF16) chats
with longtime Santa Fe tutor Krishnan Venkatesh about his
appreciation for early Buddhist texts—and Frodo. Visit sjc.edu to
read the complete interview and learn more about Venkatesh.
Have you been working on any
writing projects?
A book of essays on the Discourses of the
Buddha, and on Lord of the Rings (LOTR). I
think they are fairly unique because I’m trying
to approach them as a literate, thoughtful
human being first, and not as, say, a Buddhist
or a Tolkien scholar—which I’m not anyway.
The essays have been posted on my blog
(kappatsupatchi.wordpress.com).
What inspired you to write on the
Discourses of the Buddha?
I’ve been thinking about the Discourses for
over twenty years, studying them in the [St.
John’s Eastern Classics program] as well as by
myself—but I’ve never made time to sit down
and articulate those thoughts. I have also
practiced various forms of meditation, including
mindfulness meditation, and have always been
struck by the depth of psychological insight
in these early Buddhist texts. I’ve learned a
lot about myself through studying them, and
they have given me some necessary tools for
understanding my own experience. Sometime
last year I found myself spontaneously writing
down reflections on the passages that moved
me, and here I am.
In what ways have the Discourses
affected your life?
The Discourses have affected me deeply in
many ways. Among them: greater awareness
of body and motion as well as of my emotions,
the ability to sit still and watch feelings as they
change from moment to moment, a greater
awareness of change as it happens, and a
generally calmer state of mind. I have become
better at handling stress, but also more aware
Early Buddhist texts and Tolkien novels provide
tools for critical thinking.
8 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 017
of other people’s feelings than I was before.
Being by nature a dreamy person easily given
to reverie and getting lost in my own thoughts,
I had a lot of work to do in these respects, and
the Discourses have been invaluable guides.
What prompted you to start writing
critically about Lord of the Rings, and
what have been some highlights of this
process of going deep into such a story?
I’m not a big Tolkien fan and also not a big
reader of fantasy fiction, but prompted by
conversations with (tutor) Richard McCombs
I started to reflect more on whether it was
a great book or not, and if so, why. Over the
course of reading it slowly with a wonderful
community seminar, I began to form a genuine
admiration for Tolkien’s genius as a writer.
He has his weak points, but on the whole the
man can write. I found out that [in] all the
crucial moments in the book he is laconic and
suggestive, and some of the characters are
richly enigmatic: Gollum, Sam, Frodo, Eowyn.
Best of all was finding out for myself that
the Lord of the Rings is not a book meant for
children, but speaks deeply to “mature” people
who have experienced struggle. Frodo is 50
when he starts his quest. It ends up being about
what Jung calls “enantiodromia”—the “turn”
halfway in life to seek completion by developing
our incomplete halves.
Was there a particular book, poem, or
film that, in your formative years, inspired
a healthy dose of skepticism?
In my intellectually formative years, ages 14
to 16, I was a voracious reader. Reading itself
tends to loosen up inherited and congealed
opinions, because one has to take seriously
other worlds than one’s own, and other
authorities than the people around us. In
school we had a lot of history: lots of detailed
study of European wars, the fight for universal
suffrage, and the industrial revolution. I didn’t
appreciate it at the time, but I think it went in
deep—so much so that I am always shocked at
how ignorant many Americans are of subjects
like labor history. Ancient history was also
important for me—and I remember the thrill
of learning to read Caesar, Suetonius, and
Tacitus critically. I didn’t have much of a social
life. I remember reading Sartre and Camus
very passionately; I still have a file folder
full of notes from that period! And I studied
The Discourses have
affected me deeply in
many ways. Among them:
greater awareness of body
and motion as well as of
my emotions.
Ibsen, Strindberg, and Chekhov—the fathers of
modern drama—every weekend by myself for
two years. All of that changed me. I never felt
I belonged to my time and place. The seventies
and eighties mostly passed me by…
How are you involved in the St. John’s
Film Institute?
I was one of the founder-developers, along
with (tutor) David Carl. I taught both summers
with (tutor) David McDonald. I believe strongly
that in our period we can’t consider ourselves
liberally educated if we don’t have a developed
critical relationship to audio-visual media,
especially the moving photographic image.
Apparently in 1936 Scott Buchanan thought
so too, because in the blueprint for this college
he called for a four-year great books program
like ours and a fifth year called the St. John’s
College Institute for Cinematics.
What are some essential films that
Johnnies should watch and discuss?
The Passion of Joan of Arc, Tokyo Story, Early
Spring, Bicycle Thieves, Nights of Cabiria,
Andrei Rublev, Mirror, Rules of the Game—to
give you a few to start with.
Venkatesh’s blog, The Old Pearl Bed, layers
reflections on Tolkien with Tolstoy, on Chekhov
with Buddhism, and many other unexpected
connections abound. One of Venkatesh’s essays
on the Discourses was recently published in
Tricycle, a popular Buddhist magazine.
STUDY GROUP
Open to Inquiry
While the study of great books is central to
a St. John’s education, authors outside the
Western canon recently got some attention
thanks to efforts spurred by junior Emily
Krause (A18). Inspired by a preceptorial on
Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex, led by
tutor Rebecca Goldner (AGI02), Krause and
her classmate Nathan Dignazio (A18) formed
a study group on modern writers and issues
surrounding traditionally marginalized communities. Focusing on such authors as Warsan
Shire, Audre Lorde, and Sojourner Truth, the
study group takes aim at political and social
questions that are not usually explored in
other classes in the Program.
During this spring semester, the group met
bi-weekly for lunchtime seminars, focusing on
short readings that are taken from literary,
historical, and philosophical works. Average
attendance was about the same as a tutorial—
large enough to have significant momentum,
but also small enough that it was intimate and
conducive to sincere and productive inquiry.
The group’s readings included “Conversations about home (at a deportation centre),”
Kenyan-born Somali poet Warsan Shire’s poem
about a refugee’s troubled relationship with
her home and the alienation that vexes her
relationship to herself, her new surroundings,
and her origins; “The Master’s Tools Will Never
Dismantle the Master’s House,” an address by
Audre Lorde critiquing the lack of representation of black and lesbian women at conferences
on feminist writing; and “Ain’t I a Woman?”
a speech by African American abolitionist
Sojourner Truth, who brings forward inconsistencies between professed and actual attitudes
towards women, and calls for equality of rights,
regardless of one’s intellect or race.
For the group’s fourth meeting, it returned
to its origin by reading the introduction of
The Second Sex, in which Beauvoir discusses
in Hegelian terms how woman is Other to
man and describes the relation between
woman and man that arises because of this
antithesis. She encapsulates the tension
pointedly, saying, “Woman’s drama lies in this
conflict between the fundamental claim of
every subject, which always posits itself as
essential, and the demands of a situation that
constitutes her as inessential.”
Krause and Dignazio hope that by looking
at perspectives of those whose lives and
experiences are vastly different than their
own, they can better understand the social
and political forces that are at work among us
in the world now. “Something is lost when we
don’t take into account the differences among
people,” Krause says. Goldner adds that the
study group shows something central to the
college, that the conversations that we have
in the classroom spill out and continue after
class (and from time to time find their way
back into class). “And hopefully,” Dignazio
says, “[the seminars] provide some wisdom
about the human experience.”
—Jonathan Llovet (A17)
ROSE S. PELHAM (A20)
ONLINE SERIES
The study group shows
something central to
the college, that the
conversations that we have
in the classroom spill out
and continue after class
(and from time to time find
their way back into class).
THE COL L E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | SPR I NG 2 017 9
�F R OM T H E B E L L T OW E R S
C O N V E R S AT I O N
Civility on the
World Stage
comfort zones,” Mullen said. Several members
of the public asked questions about Trump,
immigration, and media coverage of Russia’s
purported role in the presidential election.
And when a woman asked if Democratic Sen.
Bernie Sanders, who lost the primary to Hillary
Clinton, could have won the general election,
Mullen leaned back on a lesson he learned early
on when dealing with the press: Don’t comment
on hypotheticals.
It was a strategy that suited Mullen well in
his conversations with Brokaw over the years.
The men had a longstanding professional
relationship, one that was based largely on trust
and respect. “I trusted him, he trusted me, and
we could do real business together,” Brokaw said
during a gathering before the event. “I needed
to know some things, and he knew things that
he didn’t want to tell me, and I respected that.
But that’s how it’s supposed to be.”
—Tim Pratt
TOP RIGHT:
Michael B. Mukasey, the 81st
Attorney General of the United States Judge,
opened the 2017 Dean’s Lecture Series.
BELOW:
TV journalist Tom Brokaw and former
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike
Mullen spoke at an event on February 19.
NEED FOR FREE SPEECH
To a capacity crowd in Santa Fe’s Great Hall,
the 81st Attorney General of the United States
Judge Michael B. Mukasey argued passionately
against forces of political correctness and the
“concrete pressures” that these forces can exert
on speech. Mukasey’s talk opened the 2017
Dean’s Lecture Series, which hosted Supreme
Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor last spring.
Concerned that America has become a nation
whose people live in narratives rather than
facts, Mukasey, who was appointed by the
George W. Bush administration and served
from 2007 to 2009, bemoaned trends in which
“personal taste and preference have started to
impinge upon how people view reality.” He also
touched on human rights, judicial activism, and
the threat of radical Islamic terrorism, which
he was careful to define as a political ideology
and distinct from the religion of Islam. Mukasey
concluded his short talk by encouraging attendees to “hold fast,” to uphold high standards of
free speech as well as the U.S. Constitution.
In the lively question period that followed, audience members pressed Mukasey on a number
of issues, including the need for criminal justice
reform, anxieties about the current presidency,
and threats from the Supreme Court decision commonly known as Citizens United. The
Citizens United decision restricted government
from limiting the rights of corporations, labor
unions, and associations to make unlimited,
independent political expenditures. Despite a
number of differing opinions from the audience,
the discourse remained civil and Mukasey held
fast to his beliefs while also retaining a sense
of humor. When a student began his question
with, “I’m a freshman,” Mukasey laughed and
said: “Me too.”
TONY J PHOTOGRAPHY
“� he thing I love to do
T
more than anything in
life … the thing that
gives me the greatest joy
is playing the drums.”
Mukasey’s lecture is available on the SJC Digital
Archives at digitalarchives.sjc.edu.
—Joan Haratani (SF79)
CAROL CARPENTER
The Francis Scott Key Auditorium erupted into
applause as veteran TV journalist Tom Brokaw
and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff Adm. Mike Mullen took the stage. Dubbed
“A Conversation with Brokaw and Mullen,” the
event held on February 19 featured a discussion between the renowned newsman and highranking military official on topics ranging from
the 2016 presidential election to America’s relationship with Russia, China, and North Korea
to ongoing conflicts in the Middle East.
The pair also spoke about the Trump administration and problems with the ways people
get their news. Brokaw urged those in the audience to check the veracity of stories found on
the internet. Social media has led to the easy
sharing of fake news stories, knee-jerk reactions, and heated, polarizing opinions, he said.
“You have to put as much effort into where you
get your news over a long period of time as you
do into buying a flat-screen television,” Brokaw
said. “You just can’t take it blindly off the internet because it’s there and it seems to be done
in a very sophisticated manner.”
Brokaw and Mullen later turned the conversation to issues surrounding immigration,
racism, and exposure to different cultures and
political beliefs. “We have to get out of our
H I D D E N TA L E N T
She’s Got the Beat
When Joan Haratani (SF79), visited the St.
John’s College campus in Annapolis last fall,
she made sure to visit the “rock room” in the
basement of Mellon Hall. The small, concrete
room was filled with amplifiers, guitars, a
piano, and drums. But the room had seen
better days. Graffiti was splayed on one of
the walls; stained, worn out furniture abutted
another. Equipment, some of it broken, some
of it covered in dust, cluttered the space. So
Haratani, who serves on the college’s Board
of Visitors and Governors, decided to do
something about it: She bought a new Yamaha
drum kit for the room and donated it to the
college. The donation spurred plans to spruce
up the room, an effort now under way. The only
stipulation? Haratani gets first dibs on playing
the kit when she visits campus.
While Haratani has a long and distinguished
law career—she now works for the firm Morgan
Lewis in San Francisco—she also is an avid
drummer. It’s a skill she is continuing to hone.
“The thing I love to do more than anything in
life … the thing that gives me the greatest joy
is playing the drums,” she says.
Although Haratani has always been musically inclined, she didn’t begin to play the
drums until about three years ago. She was a
violinist growing up. At the same time, she had
an admiration for musician Karen Carpenter,
not only for her “gorgeous voice,” but for her
ability to play the drums while she sang. “I
wanted to be Karen Carpenter,” Haratani says.
When she arrived at the St. John’s Santa Fe
campus in the mid-1970s, Haratani enjoyed the
two years of music theory classes she took. She
also listened to music while she studied, saying
it helped her focus on her work. Haratani went
on to law school at University of California at
Davis. Since then, her law career has spanned
more than three decades. Her practice includes
state and federal law, including the Alien Tort
Statute, California’s Unfair Competition Law,
pharmaceutical and medical device liability
doctrines, and national mortgage foreclosure
issues. In her free time, Haratani enjoys ice
climbing and other outdoor activities. But a
few years ago, while Haratani was taking voice
lessons, she had an opportunity to begin taking
drum lessons and jumped at the chance.
Haratani quickly realized regular practice
was the key to improvement. She took lessons
online and in person, and began attending
camps with drummers from all over the world.
Rudiments. Paradiddles. Stick control.
Haratani practices as often as she can. “I’m a
lawyer—that’s not easy—but I think drumming
is way harder because it’s so slow to get good,”
Haratani says.
She eventually began playing in a band with
her coworkers, many of whom had lengthy
musical backgrounds. The band won a competition last summer and will be performing again
for a charity in June, raising money for legal aid
for domestic violence victims. “I’m a big sucker
for helping people,” Haratani says. Performing
with a band also has helped Haratani improve
her drumming skills. “There is no faster way to
get good than to play live as a band,” she says.
When Haratani travels she makes efforts
to find places to practice. That’s what brought
her to the rock room in Mellon Hall last fall.
She was in town for the BVG meeting when
she learned of the room, saw the condition
of the existing drum kit—it had been pieced
together—and decided to do something about
it. She hopes Johnnies take advantage of the
new kit and the practice space. “There’s nothing like playing in a space that’s nice,” Haratani
says. “It makes you up your game.”
Music is an important part of life as a
Johnnie, with classes, singing and instrumental
opportunities abound. Those opportunities
create a more well-rounded educational experience, Haratani says. “I think music heals the
soul, I really do.”
—Tim Pratt
—Samantha Ardoin (SF16)
10 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 017
THE COLL E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | SPR I NG 2 017 11
�12 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 017
IN
FACTIOUS
TIMES:
LEADERSHIP
LEFT:
Lincoln's "Gettysburg Portrait" by Alexander Gardner, taken on November 8, 1863, two weeks before the Gettysburg Address, with photo of James Campbell, born in slavery, c.1936-38, Library of Congress
TUTOR VIEW: LINCOLN
LEADING
BY
TEACHING
by George Russell
The paradox of Abraham Lincoln’s appearance in the
United States’ sectional conflict becomes manifest if
one considers a passage written by James Madison in
Federalist No. 10. In that paper, Madison, apologizing
for the Constitution that he had authored, cautions
his reader to resist the impractical expectation that
in the clash of the interests that naturally spring up in
the republic, prudent and “enlightened statesmen” will
appear to resolve those conflicts. He explains that the
Constitution is a contrivance of sorts which will control
the effects of factions by blunting the worst tendencies
of majorities. In doing so, the Constitution will obviate
the need for the prudence of an “enlightened statesman”
to solve conflicts of interest as they arise and escalate.
THE COLL E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | SPR I NG 2 017 13
�TUTOR VIEW
M
adison, however, lived long
enough to see the precursor of
the sectional crisis and secession, the nullification crisis
of 1832, precipitated by John
Calhoun.1 He lived long enough
to see that factious men were
to arise in the republic who
ranked their interests above
the good of constitutional rule;
factious men who sought a
“union” in which the parts, the
states, superseded the whole,
the union of states. As those
men rejected constitutional
rule, they undermined the
implicit remedies of the Madisonian constitution, at
the same time as they speciously obfuscated what it
meant to be an American citizen.2 It was into that
turmoil that, Providence providing, the enlightened
statesman, Abraham Lincoln, entered.
Lincoln’s leadership displays itself in that wellknown political scene in which two crises intersect,
the moral crisis of possible slavery expansion and
the political crisis of secession. In the context of
those crises, Lincoln agrees with Madison that
Lincoln teaches that
government of the people
is government by majorities,
properly restrained, not
government of minorities
over majorities.
factious men are the great danger to the republic.
To counteract those factious men, Lincoln, from
the time of his earliest speeches, takes on the role
of a teacher. Indeed, leading by teaching, Lincoln,
both before he became president and during his
presidency, did his utmost to instruct the American
citizen on what it means to be an American.
14 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 017
Three major tenets emerge as central in Lincoln’s understanding of what it means to be an
American. First, one must be devoted to rule by
law. This tenet, he sets out in that early and precocious speech, Address to the Young Men’s Lyceum,
Springfield, Illinois. Second, according to Lincoln,
the true American believes in universal freedom
and a basic equality with respect to that freedom.
The principles of the founders as they expressed
them in the Declaration of Independence were
meant to be principles of the nation going forward.
Third and last, the true American believes that the
United States is a perpetual union of states.
Lincoln’s own exemplary submission to the law
is most easily discernable in his handling of the
two great factions of the sectional crisis, namely,
the radical Southern planters who claimed rights
to be able to move their property in human beings
everywhere in the Union, and the abolitionists,
who wanted to abolish the institution immediately. Lincoln maintained against both sides that
the law had to be respected against the factious
impulses of each. While he was in agreement with
the abolitionists that slavery was wrong, Lincoln
argued against the abolitionists that the institution
enjoyed legal protection in the states in which it
existed. As the institution enjoyed the sanction of
law, it had to be respected in those states. Against
the Southern planters, Lincoln cited as precedent
the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, in which the
institution was prohibited in those territories. In
his view, the same legal spirit that protects the
institution of slavery also limits slavery to where it
exists. Particularly in the factious times in which he
lived, Lincoln believed that adherence and submission to the law was the most needful thing for the
health of the republic.
In regard to the second tenet, that the true
American believes in universal freedom, especially
regardless of race, Lincoln’s view was mightily
contested by Southerners—and not only radicals.
As evidence of that contest, here citations from
one speech must suffice, the so-called “Cornerstone
Speech” of Alexander H. Stephens, an erstwhile
“Union man” from Georgia. In a speech that he
delivers on March 21, 1861, Stephens asserts the
following regarding the principles of the Declaration of Independence: “The prevailing ideas
entertained by Jefferson and most of the leading
statesmen at the time of the formation of the old
Constitution were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature, and that
it was wrong in principle, socially,
morally, and politically…[T]he general opinion of the men of that day
was that, somehow or other in the
order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass
away…Those ideas, however, were
fundamentally wrong. They rested
upon the assumption of the equality of races…This was an error…
Our new government is founded
upon exactly the opposite idea; its
foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests upon the great truth,
that the negro is not equal to the
white man; that slavery—subordination to the superior race—is his
natural and normal condition.”
In opposing those views and
other similar views, Lincoln never
seems very interested in such
statements as philosophical or
abstract statements. Rather he
contents himself with pointing out
and instructing his hearers in the
American way. In teaching that the
true American is an egalitarian, he
asserts the precise way in which he
understands all men to be equal; at
the same time, he likens the situation of the enslaved people to that
of the revolutionary era Americans.
Here I cite from two speeches:
First, from the Kansas-Nebraska
Act speech, at Peoria, Illinois, we
have a statement which repeats in
slightly different versions throughout Lincoln’s speeches. “…I hold
that…there is not reason in the
world why the negro is not entitled
to all the natural rights enumerated
in the Declaration of Independence, the right to life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I hold that
he is as much entitled to these as the white man. I
agree with Judge [Stephen] Douglas he is not my
equal in many respects…But in the right to eat the
bread, without the leave of anybody else, which his
own hand earns, he is my equal and the equal of
Judge Douglas, and the equal of any living man.”
Arguing in favor of universal equality, equality in
respect of property-engendering labor, Lincoln
rejects Douglas’s “popular sovereignty” doctrine
Madison termed Calhoun’s doctrine of nullification, the claim
that federal law could be “nullified” within a given state,
“preposterous and anarchical.”
1�
To be sure, the states in rebellion drew up a constitution.
However, they made sure that they explicitly asserted the
sovereignty of the individual states as supreme over the
central government. In effect, they did not ultimately submit
to the constitution and the government set up therein. They
rejected that sort of constitutional rule.
2�
THE COLL E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | SPR I NG 2 017 15
�TUTOR VIEW
that slavery in the territories should not be a concern of American citizens outside the territories.
Lincoln maintains that the question of slavery was
the concern of every citizen. Every American citizen
should be concerned to keep slavery, the expropriation of labor and its fruits, on the road to extinction.
Second, from his debate with Douglas in Alton,
Illinois: “It is the eternal struggle between these
two principles—right and wrong—throughout the
world. They are the principles that have stood face
to face from the beginning of time; and will ever
Lincoln was a man with a
true moral compass. Whatever
he thought about the legality
of enslavement and the
necessity of upholding the
law, he knew and over time
persistently maintained that
in itself it was wrong.
continue to struggle. The one is the common right
of humanity and the other the divine right of kings.
It is the same that says, ‘You work and toil and
earn bread, and I’ll eat it.’ No matter in what shape
it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who
seeks to bestride the people of his own nation and
live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of
men as an apology for enslaving another race, it is
the same tyrannical principle.”
Whereas Stephens understands the founders to
be misguided in their adherence to the principles of
the Declaration of Independence, Lincoln maintains
that these are the ideas and principles for the sake
of which Americans shed their blood and gave their
lives; these principles are the founders’ legacy to
the republic for all times. He sets forth the view
that the founders “meant to set up a standard
16 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 017
maxim for free society, which should be familiar to
all, and revered by all; constantly looked to, constantly labored for, and even though never perfectly
attained, constantly approximated, and thereby
constantly spreading and deepening its influence,
and augmenting the happiness and value of life to
all people of all colors everywhere.” The assertion
that “‘all men are created equal’ was placed in the
Declaration…for future use. Its authors meant it to
be…a stumbling block to those who in after times
might seek to turn a free people back into the hateful paths of despotism.” The principles, then, were
not merely to be held but to be lived by. To repeat,
the true American believes in universal freedom:
that is what Lincoln taught.
The third tenet of Lincoln’s Americanism is the
belief in the perpetuity of the union of the states
in the United States. What that amounts to, as is
known, is that there is no right of secession possessed by the citizens of the states. Lincoln saw the
secessionist view of the 19th century as a rejection
of the principle of majority rule. Lincoln agreed with
Madison that restraints needed to be imposed on
majorities in order to protect rights of minorities;
however, he also believed that once those restraints
were in place, the minority party must follow the
lead of the majority or dissolution of popular government ensues on the basis of minority secession.
Lincoln teaches that government of the people is
government by majorities, properly restrained, not
government of minorities over majorities.
There are those who might question Lincoln’s
qualifications as a teacher of what it means to be
an American. Lincoln was a man who had faults,
and because of his general candor, visible faults.
His views were at times what we would call today
“racist” views. For example, he acknowledged the
social inferiority of black people as a fact, and said
that he was not inclined to raise their status, or
change that state of affairs. Again and again, in
dealing with black Americans, he catered to the
feelings and prejudices of his white constituents
rather than treat the blacks equitably. Repeatedly,
he maintained that enslavement in the Southern states was legally sanctioned and protected
although he believed and taught that the enslavement of human beings is both wrong by nature and
un-American. In his speculations about emancipation, Lincoln for a long time favored the deportation of black Americans from the country. Charges
such as these continue to be leveled by some who
reflect on Lincoln’s career.
However, in the face of his faults and defects,
Lincoln was a man with a true moral compass.
Whatever he thought about the legality of enslavement and the necessity of upholding the law, he
knew and over time persistently maintained that in
itself it was wrong. Whatever he observed about
the social equality of blacks and whites, he knew
and repeatedly argued that politically, blacks and
whites were all fundamentally equal—that is, that
they all had rightful claims on the fruits of their
own respective labor. And Lincoln, in accord with
that true moral compass, knew that, as he put it
once when referring to Douglas, a man “may rightfully change when he finds himself wrong;” Lincoln
could and did change his mind.
If we come back to the matter of Lincoln’s attitude toward the black American, we can say the
following: Twice Lincoln gave personal audiences
to Frederick Douglass at the White House, once
in the summer of 1863 to hear Douglass’s complaint about his (Lincoln’s) tardy response to the
way in which the Confederates were treating captured black soldiers; and again a year later, when
Lincoln wanted Douglass’s opinion on the lack of
movement by the enslaved people who had been
legally freed. Lincoln came to see that these
United States were the true home of the latest
posterity of those Africans forcibly transported
here as long ago as 250 years. However tardily,
he came to see that the Americans of African
descent deserved to fight for their freedom. And
thereafter, he saw, too, that the darker-skinned
soldiers fighting to preserve the country founded
on freedom and equality did not deserve deportation to some foreign land. Rather, they deserved
citizenship in that homeland where through them
and in them a new freedom was being born. It
was in changing his mind in the ways that he did
that Lincoln really indicts those who clung so
tenaciously to what they knew to be wrong. At
the same time, in doing so, he exhibited, as he so
often did in his speeches, the kind of nobility that
his most ardent opponents wanted to claim for
themselves but could not.
In those exemplary ways discussed here, Lincoln
did all that he could to preserve Madison’s constitutional rule by trying to teach his fellow citizens
what it means to be an American. Paradoxically,
he appeared on the earth in the right place at the
right time to preserve and protect a constitution
constructed to provide against the fortuity of
prudence in human affairs.
THE COLL E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | SPR I NG 2 017 17
�LEADERSHIP
Protector of
Our Program
Annapolis President
Chris Nelson (SF70)
Leaves a Mighty Legacy
By Tim Pratt
When Chris Nelson was a child, he often found
himself engaged in battle. Tomato plant stakes
from the family garden were used as swords.
Trashcan lids served as shields. The rug in
the living room was the river Skamandros as
Nelson and his siblings re-enacted the Trojan
War from the Iliad, bouncing on furniture and
avoiding the water below. “I slew countless
Trojans, over and over,” Nelson says with a
smile. “My siblings were very accommodating.”
DEMETRIOS FOTOS
While as a 12-year-old Nelson immersed
himself in the Iliad and Euclid’s Elements,
his journey with the great books of Western
civilization was just beginning.
18 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 017
THE COLL E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | SPR I NG 2 017 19
�LEADERSHIP
It was a trek that took him to St. John’s College
as a student in the 1960s, to Chicago for a lengthy
law career, and eventually back to his alma mater to
serve as president. During that time, Nelson became
a champion for the liberal arts, played a prominent
role in higher education at the national level, and
oversaw vast improvements at the college. But now,
Nelson is preparing to step down as leader of the
place that has been a part of his life since childhood.
He will retire in June after 26 years as Annapolis
president. “Chris is kind of the rock on which the
college has operated for over a quarter of a century,”
says Mike Peters, who served as president of the St.
John’s Santa Fe campus from 2005 through January
2016. “He leaves a pretty amazing legacy.”
TONY J PHOTOGRAPHY
The Early Years
Nelson is an outspoken
advocate of the liberal arts.
Nelson’s connection to St. John’s came as a “birthright,” tutor and former Dean Michael Dink said during a recent Saturday Seminar event in Annapolis
held in Nelson’s honor. Nelson’s father graduated
from St. John’s in 1947—a decade after Stringfellow
Barr and Scott Buchanan founded the college’s great
books curriculum—and was a long-serving member
and chair of St. John’s Board of Visitors and Governors. Although Nelson’s
father didn’t talk a lot about
St. John’s at home, Nelson
says his childhood was permeated with elements of
the Program, from refighting the Trojan War with
his siblings to redrawing
the diagrams from Euclid’s
Elements, with and without
drafting instruments.
In high school, Nelson grew
tired of the lectures given by
his teachers, who would tell
students “what the answer
was and what to think,” he
says. He knew that if he
attended St. John’s, he would
be able to explore topics for
himself. Nelson arrived in
Annapolis in 1966. He never applied anywhere else. “I
was one of those people who come to St. John’s with
the attitude that the opening question only needs
to be ‘Ready, set, go.’ The desire to try to make the
books we were reading our own, and to take them in
and accept or reject the things in them as judgments
we were making for ourselves, was just thrilling.”
20 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 017
Nelson spent part of his time in Annapolis, where
he was an accomplished athlete and active in student government, before transferring to the Santa Fe
campus and graduating in 1970. College board chair
Ron Fielding (A70)—one of Nelson’s classmates, a fellow intramural sports captain, and officer in student
government—says he saw flashes of Nelson’s potential when they were students. “The leadership aspect
is without question,” Fielding says. “He was a natural
leader of the athletics teams and … of the polity.”
Following Nelson’s graduation, it was off to law
school at the University of Utah, where he founded
and directed the university’s student legal services
program. He graduated in 1973.
Nelson practiced law for 18 years in Chicago and
was chairman of his law firm when he was tapped
to become president of St. John’s in 1991. He had
served on the college’s Board of Visitors and Governors since 1986.
A Natural Leader
When Nelson returned to campus as president in
the summer of 1991, he faced a budget deficit and
aging facilities. Nelson immediately got to work,
coming up with a list of projects and working with
former Vice President of Development Jeff Bishop
and Treasurer Bud Billups to raise funds, make “prudent” cuts and balance the budget, he says. “Those
guys saved this college,” says Bishop’s wife, Sue.
In the two-plus decades since then, new dormitories
and other structures have been erected; every building on campus has been renovated; even the grounds
have improved. The four-year graduation rate, which
was 36 percent when Nelson arrived, has nearly
doubled. Enrollment applications also have increased
in recent years following a slight downturn after the
economic crisis of 2008—a crisis that affected enrollment at liberal arts colleges all over the country.
But some things, like the St. John’s Program, have
remained largely the same, with students now reading many of the same works as their predecessors.
That is one of the things Nelson takes most pride in
as he looks back on his career. “I think it’s protecting as much as I could the community of learning at
the college,” Nelson says. “I’d say that has been most
important to me.”
That’s not to say there haven’t been changes. Nelson is excited about the recent focuses on biology
and quantum mechanics in senior lab. A new quantum mechanics lab was recently completed in the
basement of Mellon Hall. Nelson says he has tried
to give faculty and staff the autonomy they need
to be successful. At the same time, he says he was
sure to question and discuss the recommendations
and decisions being made. “Everybody on the faculty has ideas about how to improve the work of the
academic program in the classroom,” Nelson says.
“I’ve wanted them to feel that they could continue
to work on the Program. I’ve wanted to provide as
much freedom from constraint as I could.”
Others share a similar view of Nelson’s management style. Dink, who served as dean from 20052010, said in his Saturday Seminar comments that
Nelson was friendly and supportive during his term.
Deans are drawn from the faculty for five-year terms,
which means they often come with no prior administrative experience. “But Chris well understood the
virtue, indeed the necessity of this practice, and did
everything in his power both to assist with the learning curve and to respect and support the authority of the dean,” says Dink. Leo Pickens (A78), who
served for years as athletic director before working
as alumni director and now director of Leadership
Annual Gifts, describes Nelson as “a great listener.”
“His door has always been open,” says Pickens. “He’s
very approachable, he’s extremely fair-minded … and
I think it became very clear early on that he was
dedicated to the college.”
“� t was clear when we met and has only
I
been reinforced during our time working
together that Chris’s affection for the
college is deep and fierce and abiding.
He has been a St. John’s force of nature.”
—Santa Fe President Mark Roosevelt
The Man
Like many others who have known Nelson over
the years, Pickens has stories to tell. He attended
St. John’s with Nelson’s younger brother, Ted, and
recalls hearing about Chris’s intramural sports
awards and team championships when he was a student. “I had not met Chris, but had only heard tales
of his athletic prowess,” Pickens says with a laugh.
Having witnessed Nelson’s skills on the badminton
court when he returned as president in 1991, Pickens
took note of Nelson’s resilience and coolness under
pressure. “Those kinds of qualities he demonstrated
as an athlete, even under the most difficult of circumstances … are qualities he also demonstrated as
a president here.”
Pickens got to see more of that determination
on a cross-country bike ride he took with Nelson,
Bishop, former Santa Fe Vice President for Development Jeff Morgan, and Bob Gray in 1993. Sue
Bishop saw it, too, as she drove the support van.
She and Pickens fondly recall Nelson “flying” down
steep mountain roads, a smile on his face. And while
the group had agreed not to talk about college business on the trip, Nelson would read Gilgamesh out
loud during rest stops as his colleagues relaxed in
the shade. “He demonstrated on that ride just how
strong of a human he is,” says Pickens. Through
it all, Nelson has maintained his love of the great
books, often quoting passages from works he has
read over the years. And he often invites students,
faculty, and staff to his home for special occasions.
Some who spoke of Nelson recalled lengthy conversations over a glass of wine, or of Nelson’s love
for chopping wood, or of the pleasure he gets from
working in the garden. There were stories of Nelson, while still a student, presiding over a hearing
for fellow Johnnies who were involved in a series of
food fights. And there were stories of Nelson going
out of his way to help faculty, staff, and students,
leading study groups, and teaching classes. Nelson’s
dedication to the college stands out, says Peters. “I
think Chris bleeds Johnnie black and orange,” says
Peters. “He is going to be a hard act to follow, but
he has smoothed the path for those folks who are
coming after him.”
Above: Leo Pickens,
Jeff Morgan, Bob Gray,
Chris Nelson, and Jeff
Bishop wearing bicycling
outfits, medals and
wreathes, and holding a
photo of Albert Einstein
on a bicycle, outside of
McDowell Hall in 1993.
THE COLL E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | SPR I NG 2 017 21
�LEADERSHIP
“� e want to have people who
W
can think for themselves rather
than being ... useful tools for
someone else’s purposes. So
that’s asking each individual to
take responsibility for the public
good. Each of us has a leadership
responsibility in that respect.”
A National Voice
Nelson has served as an ambassador for the college, traveling around the country, giving talks—he
estimates he has given more than 1,000 since he
took office—on issues like government regulation
in higher education. He has met with lawmakers,
donors, and others; the National Association of
Independent Colleges and Universities on February 1 announced Nelson as chairman of its board of
directors. And two years ago he received the Association’s highest honor, the Henry Paley Award for his
“unfailing service toward the students and faculty of
independent colleges and universities.”
Nelson is well-known as a proponent of the liberal
arts. A liberal arts education creates more thoughtful,
well-rounded people, he says. “We want to have people
who can think for themselves rather than being driven
to, or useful tools for, someone else’s purposes,” he
says. “So that’s asking each individual to take responsibility for the public good. Each of us has a leadership
responsibility in that respect. To get there, we need
to cultivate the arts of intellect and imagination, and
that’s exactly what we do at St. John’s College.”
Nelson’s 26 years of work toward reaching that
goal are commendable, Fielding says. An American
Council on Education survey found the average term
of a college president is less than 10 years. “There’s
22 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 017
something comforting about having a leader who
doesn’t aspire to do anything other than making
this current institution better,” Fielding says. “That
is uncommon, whether it is a politician in a political
office or a college president. It’s very special.”
Senior Alina Myer, who served as president of the
student Delegate Council in 2016, says the college
is lucky to have someone as dedicated to the liberal
arts as Nelson. “It’s kind of an incredible thing to
have such accessibility to someone who has worked
tirelessly and on such a large scale to ensure that
people understand the value of what we do here at St.
John’s,” says Myer. “He is the first person who speaks
to us as Johnnies at convocation, and for my class he
will be the last, as our commencement speaker. He is
emblematic of our St. John’s experience.”
The Future
After Nelson retires, he plans to travel, visit family,
and catch up on some reading. “There’s a book in
there somewhere too,” he says. He hopes to relax a
bit after a career which included an 18-month stint as
president of the Santa Fe campus and often found him
working seven days a week. But Nelson won’t be completely absent from campus. He has been appointed a
member of the teaching faculty and says he will make
himself available to lead seminars, preceptorials, or
anything else asked of him. “For the sake of intellectual engagement, it will be good to spend some time
with the students,” says Nelson. “I get a great deal
of satisfaction out of the study groups I have now
when I’m not teaching a regular class, which I used to
do, and I can’t imagine not having that intellectual
vibrancy in my life going forward.”
Left: Nelson on
back campus, with
College Creek in the
background.
DEMETRIOS FOTOS
DEMETRIOS FOTOS
—Chris Nelson
A toast from Eva Brann (H89),
tutor and former dean, in honor of
Chris Nelson, at Homecoming 2016:
I’ve heard it said that a proper toast begins by
making people laugh. I’m feeling a little more
like crying than laughing myself. And moreover,
those glorious six years when I worked with
Chris to make this college of ours stay itself and
be what it was meant to be, weren’t as productive of funny stories as happy solutions. Yet I do
remember an incident which, when I told it to my
fellow deans at other schools, aroused laughter—
incredulous laughter. So I’ll tell it here.
Some of you may remember Miss Beate von
Oppen, a fellow tutor, my friend, and next-door
neighbor. She always collected more books than
she had places for. So I persuaded her to get yet
another bookcase. We picked up one of those
assemble-it-yourself cheapies, and, of course, no
picture in the instruction booklet matched reality,
and no word in it was in our human vocabulary. I
was dean then, and when in major trouble, such
as over-budgeting by thousands, I looked for salvation in one direction: to our president. So what
did I do? I phoned Chris at home, and within half
an hour he and Joyce were at the door, and within
another half hour the rickety thing stood erect and
ready. This, I’m here to tell you, was not the relation I used to hear about at deanish get-togethers.
What was normal was open warfare, uneasy
peace, all the way down to cowed submission.
The thing about Chris, an unusual thing, is that
he knows how to govern. There is not a smidgen
of pretentiousness in him, which means that he
meets ready respect for his decisions. There isn’t
even a ghost of power assertion, which means that
authority accrues to him naturally. There is no taste
in him at all for cliques, which means he’s everyone’s president. There isn’t even a little bubble
of hot air in him, which means that when he says
something is so, it’s because he’s costed it out,
or remembered it correctly, or really thought about
it. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if after dinner he
gently lets me know what facts I’ve got wrong.
Chris Nelson and
Eva Brann overlook
the campus, as they
did when Chris first
became president.
When I spoke of the years I was dean as glorious,
I meant it. We were known as “the four B’s and
the C”: our beloved Jeff Bishop and fondly remembered Bud Billups and me, the eternally amateurish
dean. And then Chris, who made it possible for us
so-called administrators to live up to the meaning
of the word, which is “to minister to” those in our
charge. Or better put, to be fulfilled by our offices
in Aristotle’s sense of happiness, the soul at work
in behalf of a good thing: the Program, the folks
busy here in its service, and the students who’ll
soon be our “nurslings,” alumni in Latin.
I’ll end with a vision I’ve held in my imagination
for a long time. Very near the beginning of his
presidency, Chris and I were standing on the quad
looking down from the top of the stairs onto our
irreplaceable bronze steal – the one that promises
to make free adults of children by means of books
and laboratories – and out across the back campus.
Chris heaved a deep sigh and said words to this
effect: “Here is where I want to spend my life.” And
so he has, and we cannot thank him enough for it.
So please raise your glasses in a toast to our
incomparable president, our Chris.
THE COLL E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | SPR I NG 2 017 23
�BY
PA
UL
A
NO
VA
SH
GL MO
AD D
ER
IA N
TO
R
LEADERSHIP
Michelle Urban (SF08) is convinced there
is major value in having to figure things out.
“When I was at St. John’s writing a paper, I
usually wouldn’t know how to prove what
I wanted to,” Urban says. “But then it would
come together—and succeeding at something
you have struggled with is a great feeling.” It
is a philosophy that translates well to Urban’s
current situation as an entrepreneur running
a tech startup. As CEO of Albuquerque-based
Pressure Analysis Company (PAC), which designs and manufactures wireless technology
to track head injuries in athletes, Urban says
that her biggest challenge is inexperience.
“We’re creating an innovative product in an
emerging field,” she says. “Every day there’s
something new we need to learn how to do.”
THE COLL E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | SPR I NG 2 017 25
�A
mid increasing concerns about
sports-related head injuries
–
particularly those that affect
younger players – the company’s
idea is timely. According to
a 2016 article published on Sports Illustrated’s
website, si.com, the rate of youth concussions rose
500 percent between 2010 and 2014.
Although high school-age athletes are most
likely to suffer concussions and the highest
percentage of injuries occur playing football,
Urban says the problem spans a wide range
of ages and sports. “There are complexities
at different levels. Younger players have not
been hit over and over yet, so having cumu-
lative data can be helpful for parents and
physicians,” she says. “And coaches of older
players need to be able to see exactly where
they’ve been hit and how hard, so they know
if someone needs to be pulled out of a game
and examined.”
Urban and her partners have developed
The Duke City Gladiators put Urban’s SmackCap technology to the test.
a tool to help. Called the SmackCap, it
resembles the slightly slouchy skullcap that
is popular with hipsters and other fashionminded individuals. But inside, SmackCap
is an array of pressure sensors, connected
in a spiderweb pattern, that can track every
impact to a player’s head in real time and
send the data to a wireless device such as
a cellphone or iPad. Besides showing if and
how badly a player may be injured over time,
SmackCap technology also has potential to
change the techniques coaches recommend.
“For instance, if a kid is getting hit repeatedly
in the same spot, the coach might notice that
he’s leading with his head,” says Urban.
Urban grew up in Santa Fe and was homeschooled. Although her first job during high
school was as part of the St. John’s campus
Buildings and Grounds crew, she did not
initially consider applying there. But she
says she loved the curriculum and skills she
learned as a Johnnie—and they were a com-
plement to her graduate studies at the University of New Mexico (UNM). “In business
school I was the one who was always asking
questions and analyzing during group projects and discussions,” she says. “I think some
people found it annoying, but I was used to
thinking deeply and critically.”
It was at UNM that Urban became interested in entrepreneurship. After earning
her MBA she did contract work for the New
Mexico economic development department,
and while creating resources for businesses
she realized she had skills she wanted to
leverage. “I was writing website content on
advice about how to start a business, and
I thought, I know all of that,” Urban says.
She wanted to do something that contributes
good to people’s lives, and became aware of
the problem of head injuries in sports. “It’s an
issue that for a long time was shoved under a
rug,” she says. “It seemed logical that having
technology to track even smaller level hits,
and provide a history of all hits taken, would
be valuable to physicians and researchers as
well as parents.”
Urban met her partners in PAC at a networking event. Together she and Lori Upham,
who handles business activities, and Scott
Sibbett, a UNM research professor who created the SmackCap technology, are engaged
in a hands-on, collaborative effort.
“When we built our first prototypes, Lori
handled the fabric, Scott the electronics and
laptop software, and I assembled the sensor array,” Urban says. A pilot partnership
with the Duke City Gladiators, a professional
indoor football team based in Albuquerque,
New Mexico, had players wearing SmackCaps during their practices and games and
allowed the PAC team to conduct field tests
and collect data.
At the 2016 South by Southwest (SXSW)
technology conference held in Austin, Texas,
Urban participated in a gathering of women
entrepreneurs who were pitching to investors; with fewer than 3 percent of tech companies run by women, she is one of an elite
AY
D
Y ’S ING ED
ER RE TH NE
�EV HE E E
“ T M W N O.”
O W AR D
S E E O
N OL T
T OW
H
cadre. “It was a great
opportunity—the first
time we were able to present about the company outside of New Mexico,” she says.
SmackCap is available for preorder with the target of making the
product available to consumers in 2018;
Urban and her partners are excited about
the future of the company’s idea. “Things are
moving so fast—we’re marketing, talking to
investors, dealing with intellectual property
issues, and expanding our team. I’m not sure
how it’s all going to work, but I’m sure we’ll
be able to deal with it.”
KEVIN LANGE
LEADERSHIP
Michelle Urban (SF08) protects athletes’ heads by using hers.
26 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 017
THE COLL E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | SPR I NG 2 017 27
�BIBLIOFILE
ROBERT WOLF
(CLASS OF 1967)
Building the
Agricultural City
S
ince moving to the small town of Decorah,
Iowa, in 1991, former Chicago Tribune
columnist Robert Wolf has been concerned
with the decline of rural America. The upper Midwest’s Driftless bioregion, of which
Decorah is part, once easily fed its inhabitants with its
agriculture and fishing; now, despite much of the area’s
being farmland, it must import most of its food and
other manufactured goods. “I began to think,” writes
Wolf, “about how such a region could escape
the trauma of another national depression,
and realized only a region that was self-reliant and relatively self-sufficient could do this.”
How, then, to create such a region? The
solution, Wolf believes, lies in the concept
of “the agricultural city,” coined by Chicago
architect Joe Lambke. In Lambke’s vision,
rather than viewing themselves as a series of
towns or villages separated by fields, several
rural communities would join together to
form one “city” with multiple nodes of population. Cooperating rather than competing
would allow the inhabitants of an agricultural
city to develop a self-supporting economy less
dependent on centralized corporate interests.
Wolf first put forth these ideas in a
six-part editorial for Iowa Public Radio in
1994, “Developing Regional, Rural Economies”; the piece won the Sigma Delta Chi
Award and Bronze Medal from the Society
of Professional Journalists for Best Radio
Editorial, and was reprinted in the Des
Moines Register. Now he has expanded this
work into a book, Building the Agricultural
City (Ruskin Press, 2016), whose publication costs were raised on the crowdfunding
website IndieGoGo. Crowdfunding itself is
an example of the democratic, grassroots
actions that Wolf feels “democratize our
economy” and help decentralization.
Building the Agricultural City outlines
several practical steps towards building a self-sufficient regional economy: “a
community development bank, numerous
worker-owned cooperatives, and one or two
closed-loop agricultural systems to provide
fresh [fruit] and vegetables year round. Each
municipality would have a publicly owned
utility powered by renewable sources.” Each
of these tools has been successfully implemented by communities around the world.
Writers, artists, and
musicians are vital forces
to “[foster] a regional
consciousness, by offering
dying rural towns an
alternative to bitterness
and passive acceptance
of a System that works
against them.”
28 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 017
Locally sourced food, trendy on upscale urban
menus, might seem easy to achieve for the agricultural
city; unfortunately, most American farmland is owned
by corporations who ship crops out of the region in
which they are grown. Wolf believes small farmers can
maximize their local impact by turning to “closedloop” agricultural systems, “in which the waste from
one part of the system [becomes] the nutrient for
another”—e.g., Chicago’s The Plant raises tilapia, and
removes their waste from the water to use as fertilizer
for edible plants. The clean water is then recirculated
into the fish tanks. Ironically, Wolf finds examples of
such projects only in cities.
Another urban innovation that Wolf recommends in
a rural context is that of the community development
bank. The first of these in the U.S. was founded in
1973 by four black friends in the South Shore area of
Chicago, which was losing capital as whites moved out
of the neighborhood. Its investors included “nonprofits,
churches, banks, insurance companies, community
organizations, and individuals,” and the bank “invested
in minority-owned businesses and financed apartment
renovation that created affordable housing.” Placing community before profit, banks like ShoreBank,
Bangladesh’s Grameen Bank, and the Bank of North
Dakota, help keep small economies strong.
These economies can be further strengthened, Wolf
argues, by the creation of worker-owned cooperatives,
modeled on European examples. The Emilia Romagna
region of Italy, for instance, has approximately 8,100
cooperatives, in which businesses producing the same
product collaborate rather than compete—and it is this
power of collaboration that allows them to compete at
a global level and enjoy a high quality of life.
One last piece of the puzzle, Wolf writes in an
epilogue, is the necessary re-emergence of regional
arts and literature, “almost instinctively understood to
be the best means available for developing regionalist
sensibility.” Writers, artists, and musicians are vital
forces to “[foster] a regional consciousness, by offering
dying rural towns an alternative to bitterness and passive acceptance of a System that works against them.”
In this way, the humanities can add their persuasive
power to advances in science and technology, Wolf
hopes, in order to build “a cooperative society in which
meaningful, remunerative work is available to all…a
culture rooted in the land and created with tools that
enable a people to live harmoniously with the land.”
—Anna Perleberg Andersen (SF02)
Rousseau’s Rejuvenation
of Political Philosophy:
A New Introduction
By Nelson Lund (A74)
Palgrave Macmillan, 2016
How does one revive the ideas of a major philosophic
critic of the Enlightenment era, a figure both widely
misunderstood and widely influential? Nelson Lund’s
new book, Rousseau’s Rejuvenation of Political
Philosophy, aims to do just that by introducing
readers to Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s thoughtful
political wisdom. In reading Rousseau authentically,
“as Rousseau read Plato,” Lund, a professor at George
Portico
By Sarah Stickney (A04)
Emrys Press, 2016
The 26 poems collected in Sarah Stickney’s new book
of poetry, Portico, are inspired, in part, by her love
for the Italian city of Bologna. With an artist’s eye
and a passionate heart, she observes the beauty and
wonder found in life’s everyday moments—young men
on Vespas buzzing in the streets, steam rising from
a bowl of pasta, cedar trees bending in the breeze—
and she takes the reader along for a soulful ride. In
“Song” Stickney writes, “From under a carved arch /
this morning Bologna brought me a woman / whose
Plato Symposium or Drinking Party:
Translation with Introduction,
Glossary, Essay, and Appendices
By Eva Brann (H89), Peter Kalkavage,
and Eric Salem (A77)
Focus Philosophical Library, 2017
A two-year labor of love, this new edition of Plato’s
most popular dialogue, Symposium or Drinking Party,
marks the fourth Plato translation by this trio of St.
John’s tutors. While grasping the mechanics of the
ancient Greek language requires a certain aptitude,
the translators delve deeply to explore the tone
and nuance of the original text, thus enhancing the
Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School, helps
shed light on what Rousseau can do for mainstream
political issues, including feminism, religion in secular
society, and the behavior of the American constitutional
government. Rousseau meditated on fundamental
human issues such as the soul’s nature and the nexus
between our more primitive origins and civilization’s
achievements. Even so, the political reflections of
those meditations have not been taken seriously. Lund
endeavors to show readers that Rousseau, like his
muse Plato, is a not simply a dogmatist, and that we
ought to refrain from hastily attributing substantive
conclusions to these great authors.
—Aisha Shahbaz (A19)
hair-loss and stiff perm met / at the skeleton of a leaf
and a branch of dried coral.” The poems, several of
which first appeared under different titles in journals,
weave in and out of time and echo certain themes:
desire and loss, comfort and longing, the familiar
and the uncharted. Throughout the book there is a
subtle, universal reminder that our own shared human
experience is fleeting and meant to be embraced.
reading experience. As with the trio’s previous Plato
translations, the end result is faithful to the original
Greek vocabulary and syntax, and artfully transmits
Plato’s humor, drama, and artistry. In addition, the
trio pays careful attention when providing English
translations of the Greek rhymes, ensuring that the
text is pleasing when also read aloud. The volume is
sure to satisfy Plato scholars; however, it is friendly
to newcomers, too, offering a number of aids—an
introduction that sets the scene and introduces the
main characters; an interpretive essay; a select
bibliography of both classic and contemporary works;
and two illustrated appendices—to help readers
navigate this translation.
THE COLL E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | SPR I NG 2 017 29
�For & About
ALUMNI
PIRAEUS 2017
SAVE THE DATE!
Annapolis: September 8-10
Santa Fe: September 15-17
At Homecoming, new memories and
deepened friendships emerge, as the past
and present come together. Share your
love for St. John’s College by celebrating
Homecoming 2017 with the special people
in your life—family, friends, and the SJC
campus community. Registration opens on
June 2. Visit sjc.edu/homecoming to register
and view the full schedule of events.
Highlights from the weekend in both
Annapolis and Santa Fe include:
Seminars: A wide variety of seminars are
offered for all alumni. Reunite with fellow
alumni around the seminar table and
engage in great conversations.
All-College Graduate Institute 50th
Anniversary Celebration: In honor of
the 50th anniversary of the Graduate
Institute, the college community is invited
to a reception to celebrate the history of
the Graduate Institute and GI alumni.
CAST YOUR
VOTE
in the 2017 Alumni
Association Election:
May 15-June 2
This June, the SJC Alumni Association
will elect a new president, six at-large
members of the Alumni Association Board
of Directors, and one alumni-elected
member of the college’s Board of Visitors
and Governors. Alumni will also consider
an amendment to the by-laws to address
recent changes in the organization of the
Alumni Relations Office.
Pub Trivia: Form a team with your fellow
alumni to test your mettle while enjoying
some pub style fare and drinks. In addition
to bragging rights, prizes will be conferred
to the winners.
Alumni and Student Networking
Luncheon: Whether you are well into
your career or searching for a new one,
our networking luncheon has something
for everyone. Share your career guidance
with curious students and/or network with
fellow alumni over lunch. Meet our career
counselors, and learn about resources that
are available to students and alumni.
All SJC alumni are encouraged to
participate in these elections. Early voting
by fax, mail, or online ballot will open
on May 15 and continue through June 2.
The election will be held during the 2017
Alumni Leadership Forum (ALF) on June
4 at the Santa Fe campus. (See next page
for ALF details.)
Accommodations
Alumni are
encouraged to
book their accommodations early.
On-campus housing
is not available in
Annapolis or Santa
Fe, though alumni
receive special SJC
rates at the hotels
listed below. Be sure
to contact hotels directly for specific rate
information; please note that there is a
home Navy football game schedule during
Homecoming weekend in Annapolis.
Annapolis: SJC rates offered at Historic
Inns of Annapolis, O’Callaghan Hotel, and
the Westin.
Santa Fe: SJC rates offered at Sage Inn,
Hotel Santa Fe, and Drury Inn on the Plaza.
Contact
alumni@sjc.edu | 410-972-4518
At Piraeus, St. John’s College welcomes
alumni back to the seminar table. Held on
both campuses June 8-11, Piraeus’ tutorled seminars provide an opportunity to
relive the rigorous classroom experience
over the course of a leisurely weekend.
Named for the port city that served Athens,
Piraeus brings alumni from all career
paths and geographical areas back to
their educational roots. Said Thucydides
of ancient Piraeus, “From all the lands,
everything enters.” In that spirit, we invite
you to bring your voice back to the seminar
table and share in the reflection, discussion,
and community that Piraeus offers. Upcoming Piraeus offerings include:
In Annapolis:
The Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins, led
by Zena Hitz (A95) and Eric Salem (A77)
In Santa Fe:
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by
James Joyce, led by Grant Franks (A77)
and Maggie McGuinness
Selected Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges, led
by Michael Wolfe (SF94)
Tuition: $655 (includes five seminars,
opening and closing receptions, breakfasts
and lunches, and Saturday night social
gathering). Recent alumni from the
classes of 2007-2016 may receive a
discounted rate of $475. On-campus
Housing: $180 for three nights, June 8, 9,
and 10. Housing available on June 7 and
11 for an additional $60 per night. Dinner
in the dining hall is included.
• Diversifying regional chapter events and attracting
new participants
• St. John’s admissions efforts, staffing college fairs,
and the Adopt-a-School program
Online and paper ballots must be
received by June 2, 2017.
Online:
http:/
/community.stjohnscollege.edu
For an online ballot, log in and select
the link under Notice of Elections and
Annual Meeting.
30 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 016
Alumni Association Mission
To strive for the continued excellence of our
college and fellow alumni by celebrating our
distinctive educational experience, connecting our community in efforts toward shared
support and benefit, and fostering a culture
of intellect, generosity, and service.
For more information and to register
online, visit http://community.stjohns
college.edu/piraeus or call 505-984-6114.
training will be provided, including sessions on:
By Mail or Fax:
Request a Paper Ballot
Contact Sarah Palacios, director of
Alumni Relations, at 505-984-6121
or sarah.palacios@sjc.edu.
• An overview of the Career Services strategic plan
for the upcoming year
HOW TO VOTE
In Person:
Alumni Leadership Forum 2017
The Association’s Annual Meeting will
be held during ALF weekend on Sunday,
June 4, from 9 to 10:30 a.m. on the
Santa Fe campus.
Two offerings in Annapolis—The Aeneid
by Virgil, led by Tom May and David
Townsend, and Persuasion by Jane Austen,
led by Eva Brann (H89) and Erica Beall
(A07)—are already fully subscribed. To
place your name on the waiting list,
please contact the Alumni Office at
alumni@sjc.edu or 505-984-6114.
This three-day program gives the college’s most active
volunteers a forum to come together, share successes and
challenges, and learn best practices from one another. It also
provides an intimate opportunity to hear from the presidents
and college leadership on the evolving strategic plan for
St. John’s, and to learn more about ways in which you can
be of significant service in these efforts. In-depth
• The capital campaign, peer-to-peer giving efforts,
and building a culture of philanthropy
In appreciation for your service to the college, the
Alumni Leadership Forum is offered at no cost.
To register and view information, visit sjc.edu/alf.
THE COLL E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | SPR I NG 2 017 31
�PHILANTHROPY
ALUMNI NOTES
Gifts to Inspire
1952
Ron Fielding (A70) and
Warren Spector (A81)
Seed the Ground for
a New Century of a
Flourishing St. John’s
St. John’s experienced history in the making last fall when Ron Fielding (A70) and
Warren Spector (A81) each pledged $25
million gifts to the college. The twin gifts
are each the largest individual gifts ever
donated to St. John’s. “This commitment is
our rallying cry to fellow board members,
alumni, and friends at the dawn of our
capital campaign,” Fielding said. “It’s a
signal of confidence in the college’s direction and a call to action. While $50 million
is an important foundation for the future
of St. John’s College, it is only the beginning. We are calling on fellow supporters
of the Program to come forward, and we
hope to inspire gifts both large and small.”
The gift was announced November 5 at
the college’s Board of Visitors and Governors meeting in Annapolis, where Fielding
and Spector expressed enthusiasm for the
college’s recent progress toward financial
sustainability through fiscal prudence,
strategic management of the endowment,
and attention to student revenues and philanthropy. The two said that the board and
alumni must now step forward to protect
the institution for generations to come and
acknowledged the sacrifices that have been
made by staff and tutors.
“Belt-tightening has been painful,” Spector said. “But the commitment of staff and
faculty has given supporters of the college
the confidence that we are dealing with our
challenges. Now it’s the job of the board,
alumni, and friends to take the next steps
in ensuring the integrity of the Program.
It’s an exciting moment: for me, this means
giving future generations the opportunity
to grapple with problems of great complexity, of viewing problems through the long
Pierre Grimes (A) published two
articles in 2016, “The Philosophy
of the Self” and “The Betrayal of
Philosophy: Rediscovering the
Self in Plato’s Parmenides, in
Philosophical Practice: Journal of
the APPA (American Philosophical
Practitioners Association).
1955
Helge Leeuwenburgh, husband of
Carolyn Banks Leeuwenburgh (A),
died on January 10 after a long
illness. During the 1980s, Carolyn
and Helge arranged St. John’s
tours to Europe and China.
“St. John’s is unlike any
other college in the world,
and its Program is a
precious, singular gem.”
—Santa Fe President Mark Roosevelt
lens of human history, and of understanding that seemingly new problems are
actually part of an ancient continuum. The
Program gave me comfort in addressing
challenges and finding answers where no
research was yet available. What could be
more valuable than that?”
Santa Fe President Mark Roosevelt
thanked Fielding and Spector for their
extraordinary leadership, adding, “Our
task now is to live up to their faith in the
administration and faculty—to continue
to make the hard choices that allow us to
focus on what is really important here: our
students and their success.”
True to St. John’s history and values,
Fielding’s and Spector’s support will
primarily be directed toward strengthening the Program and ensuring that all
students with a desire to attend can afford
to do so. Both gifts will be made as cash
and not estate gifts. The largest share will
be designated for the college’s endowment,
where it will provide ongoing support
32 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 017
Ron Fielding and Warren Spector
for academics, financial aid, and career
services. A smaller share will go towards
the Annual Fund, thereby ensuring that
donors’ gifts in the coming years will be
protected as long-term investments in the
Program.
Fielding’s and Spector’s philanthropy
has already galvanized additional support.
“Others are now working with us to match
areas of need with their giving priorities,”
Roosevelt said. “It’s so important, and so
inspiring to see people stepping forward.
St. John’s is unlike any other college in
the world, and its Program is a precious,
singular gem. It must be preserved for the
unique students who come to us, and preserved by those who came before them.”
Annapolis President Chris Nelson
(SF70) noted that the gifts acknowledge
the importance of securing the future of
the college for the sake of our country and
many generations of students to come. “St.
John’s has a long history of alumni and
friends stepping forward to safeguard the
college’s distinctive and highly regarded
program of study,” Nelson said. “These two
gifts are extraordinary in their size and in
the message they send about our future.
I dare say that Spector and Fielding have
seeded the ground for a fourth century of a
flourishing St. John’s College.”
1968
Mary (Howard) Callaway published
“Medieval Reception of the
Prophets” in The Oxford Handbook
of the Prophets, ed. Carolyn Sharp,
pp. 423-441. She still teaches a
course in ancient literature to
honors students at Fordham,
around a big table furnished with
Clore chairs. Homer and Virgil,
she says, seem more pertinent
every year.
John Farmer (A) recently closed his
family practice after 37 years. He
is currently treating patients with
heroin addiction.
Thomas G. Keens (SF) gave the
Margaret Pfrommer Memorial
Lecture on long-term mechanical
ventilation at the annual meeting
of the American College of Chest
Physicians, held on October 25 in
Los Angeles. This prestigious lectureship is given to a person anywhere in the world who has made
pioneering contributions to home
mechanical ventilation. Keens and
his interdisciplinary team have
discharged more than 600 children
on mechanical-assisted ventilation
in the home, allowing them to live
outside the hospital, attend school,
and reintegrate with their families. Keens is a professor of pediatrics, physiology, and biophysics at
the Keck School of Medicine of the
University of Southern California,
and the Division of Pediatric Pul-
Emily Langston, associate dean for the graduate program in Annapolis, Dale Mortimer (A75),
and Grant Mortimer (A17) take a tour of Oregon’s Columbia River Gorge.
monology and Sleep Medicine at
Children’s Hospital Los Angeles.
Bart Lee (A) recently published
The Long Road from Mount Moriah
to Mount Moriah: A Meditation on
Kindness, Killing and the Voice of
God, available on Amazon.
Last summer, while at his cottage
on Lake Okoboji, Iowa, Rick
Wicks (SF) developed breathing
problems after spending time
planting prairie flowers and
grasses. He returned home to
Sweden, where he is thankful for
the excellent medical care and
universal medical insurance.
Fortunately, atrial ablation (plus
a daily cocktail of medicines) has
his heart now pumping slowly,
steadily, and strongly.
1969
Joseph Baratta (A) wrote an editorial to the Italian journal, The
Federalist Debate, entitled “The
Response of Federalists to the
Trump Election.”
1972
Melissa Kaplan Drolet (SF) writes
that she and the late Raymond
Drolet’s (SF69) daughter Megan
Josephine Drolet (SF08) is engaged
to be married to Earl Joseph
Jordan. Megan received a master’s
degree in social service from
Bryn Mawr College in 2014 and
is working as a social worker at
The People’s Emergency Center in
Philadelphia. Megan’s aunt Sharon
Kaplan Wallis (Class of 1964) and
her uncle Bart Kaplan (Class of
1965) are expected to attend the
wedding.
1976
Class co-chairs Bridget Houston
Hyde (SF), Christopher Graver (SF),
and Christian Burks (SF) report
that the Santa Fe Class of 1976
came together to celebrate their
40th reunion. Members became
reacquainted nine months earlier
by e-mail, on a private Facebook
group, and by videoconferences. Of
the 145 graduates, many reconnections were established, and more
than 30 showed up in Santa Fe for
official and unofficial, registered
and unregistered “reunioning.”
1975
Dale Mortimer (A75) welcomes St.
John’s tutors to visit the Mortimer
family in Vancouver, Wash., where
they can enjoy the magnificence of
the Pacific Northwest.
THE COLL E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | SPR I NG 2 017 33
�ALUMNI NOTES
1984
David Simpson (SF)
recently won an Emmy
for Editing on Life Itself,
the biopic documentary
about Roger Ebert. Other
recent editing credits
include Abacus: Too
Small to Jail, which will
be in selected theaters
in May and will air on
Frontline in September,
David Simpson (SF84) and a colleague
and Maya Angelou: And
pose with their Emmys.
Still I Rise, which premiered on the PBS series
American Masters in February. Last year saw the release
of Hard Earned, a series on getting by in America, which
Simpson co-directed and edited, and which aired on
Al Jazeera America. When he can escape from the edit room,
the father of two looks for chances to travel and be in nature.
1977
Marlene Benjamin’s (SF) new book,
The Catastrophic Self: Essays in
Philosophy, Memoir and Medical
Trauma, was published by InterDisciplinary Press in 2016.
1982
Peter Griggs’s (A) novel No Pink
Concept is now an ebook. He has
also finished a second, currently
unpublished novel, Paisley Jubilee,
about a middle-aged man with
diabetes and his life in the mental
health system. He welcomes suggestions for a publisher.
1984
Elizabeth A. Povinelli’s (SF) new
book, Geontologies: A Requiem to
Late Liberalism,was published by
Duke University Press in 2016.
Monika V. Schiavo (A) recently
joined The Potomack Company,
an auction gallery based in
Alexandria, Va., as the director
of books and manuscripts and
manager of consignor relations
and systems. She invites Johnnies
to contact her to help determine
the value of the company’s
rare books, maps, autographs,
34 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 017
antiques, and collectibles. Or just
call to chat. She is still married
to John Schiavo (A82) and still
the mother of Hellena (SF11) and
Anthony.
1985
Lora Keenan (SF) writes, “After
twenty years
working as a
lawyer for the
Oregon appellate courts,
I recently
launched my
own business
as a writing consultant and freelance attorney. As the ‘brief doctor,’
I offer writing improvement
seminars and coaching, appellate
advice, and complex legal drafting
in the litigation context. I live in
southwest Portland (not the cool
Portlandia part), surrounded by
fir trees. I recently visited Palm
Springs with Maya (Bajema)
Butterfield (SF), Judy Houck (SF),
Caryn Hunt (SF), Mary-Irene Kinsley
(SF), and Terri Luckett (SF). We all
still dance like glorious maniacs.”
L. Jagi Lamplighter (A) is writing a
young adult fantasy series titled
The Unexpected Enlightenment of
Rachel Griffen, which takes place
in a magic school that is based, in
part, on St. John’s. The story idea
and overarching plot were made
up by Mark Whipple (A96); John C.
Wright (A84) and Bill Burns (A94)
also helped with the project.
1988
Síofra Rucker (SF) moved six
years ago from San Diego back
to Louisville, Ky., with her two
daughters. She is the director
of Advancement at St. Francis
School, a progressive independent
PK-12 school, where she herself
attended. Rucker oversees the
school’s fundraising, marketing,
and communications. Her youngest is now in eighth grade there,
and her eldest is an alumnus.
1990
Elaine Reiss Perea (SF) was
recently named director of the
College and Career Readiness
Bureau for New Mexico’s Public
Education Department. In this
position, she oversees Career
Technical Education and Accelerated Learning programs (such
as dual credit and advanced
placement). “We have several
innovative programs to encourage student engagement and are
making a push for more student
internships. Although a tight fiscal
environment can make challenging the day-to-day work of
managing costs, the policy work is
rewarding, and I’m grateful for a
dedicated and effective staff.”
Julie Rehmeyer (SF) has a book
coming out in May, Through the
Shadowlands: A Science Writer’s
Odyssey into an Illness Science
Doesn’t Understand. It chronicles
her experience with chronic
fatigue syndrome and describes
the science, politics, and history
of poorly understood diseases.
She’s currently living in Santa
Fe in a straw bale house that she
built herself.
1993
Christopher D. Denny’s (A) new
book, A Generous Symphony:
Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Literary
Revelations, was published by
Fortress Press in 2016.
Chris Dunlap (A) works in sales
and marketing for San Francisco’s Arion Press, whose catalog
includes several books on the
1996
1991
After two years of hard work
building a free app designed
to help homeowners manage
their homes and everything in
them, Shubber Ali’s (SF) startup
company Centriq won the firstever Platinum “Game Changer”
award from the National Association of Home Builders in January.
Kemmer Anderson (AGI) published
Palamedes: The Lost Muse of
Justice, a cycle of poems begun
after discovering the rhetoric
of Palamedes while reading
Phaedrus at Annapolis in 1991.
1992
Thomas Cogdell (SF) and his wife
Amy look forward to celebrating
the 500th anniversary of the
Protestant Reformation on
October 31 in Wittenberg,
Germany.
Alice Mangum Perry (SFGI) misses
her fellow Johnnies in Santa
Fe. Having returned to the East
Coast, she’s been an editor, writer,
proofreader, and “word-nerd-forhire” for books, magazines, newsletters, websites, and blogsites.
She keeps busy and appreciates
having a flexible schedule.
St. John’s Program. Arion Press
continues the tradition of fine
presswork, hand-binding, and
artful typesetting rejuvenated by
William Morris and the Arts and
Crafts movement. The company
fabricates its own metal type
through its on-site sister business,
M&H Type—the last remaining commercial type foundry
in America. Anthony Bourdain
featured Arion Press in his series
Raw Craft, available on YouTube.
1996
Stephen Conn (SF) writes, “For
Johnnies interested in working as
an extra in films, the Albuquerque/Santa Fe area is booming.
This year alone I’ve been in scenes
with Paul Rudd, Jeff Bridges,
and Jessica Chastain. Just go to
the New Mexico Actors & Extras
Forum on Facebook and look for
listings that fit your description.
It’s a fun way to make some extra
money and learn the mechanics of
big-time filmmaking.”
be offered through Western State
Colorado University’s Honors
Program, for which she also serves
as director.
2001
Congratulations to Talley Kovacs
(A01), an associate with the
Baltimore area law firm PK Law,
on being named one of the Daily
Record’s Leading Women.
Luke Mitcheson (SF) and his wife
Daphne are overjoyed to announce
the birth of their first child Henry
Michael. Little Henry arrived on
November 14, and he’s been filling
the Mitcheson home with wonder
and excitement ever since.
1999
Michael Barth (AGI) and Elizabeth Norwood (AGI10) founded
and recently launched the Bhutan Fund. Barth notes that the
Bhutan Fund is the first private equity fund for the country of
Bhutan, and the only one in the world that applies the country’s core principles of Gross National Happiness to its investment criteria and investment monitoring framework. According
to Barth, the Bhutan Fund will establish a committed pool of
capital for growth equity investments in areas that capitalize
on Bhutan’s natural, sustainable competitive advantages which
include abundant clean power resources; a well educated, English-speaking workforce; unique culture; pristine environment;
stable political climate; and firm emphasis on strengthening
the private sector. The Fund’s pipeline has more than 15 deals
covering over $200 million, with opportunities for co-investment
and debt finance. Barth and Norwood believe it has the potential to set an ethical example for other markets.
“Hello from Pittsburgh to all
Annapolis and Santa Fe former
classmates!” writes Maureen
Gallagher (SF), who is currently a
visiting assistant professor in the
English Department at Duquesne
University. “Teaching a full course
load of composition, literature,
and research literacy skills, all
while raising two young daughters Molly (4) and Jane (1) with
my husband, Laurence Ales, is
keeping me busy indeed.”
2000
Kelsey L. Bennett (SF) is the
recipient of a two-year National
Endowment for the Humanities
Enduring Questions grant. The
grant supports the development of
a new university honors course to
investigate several among many
questions she first confronted
during her time at St. John’s. The
guiding question of the course is:
What is Art For? The course will
2002
James Marshall Crotty (SFGI) is
the director of communications for
U.S. Congressman Jeff Fortenberry (R-NE).
2003
Johanna Omelia (SFGI) is delighted
to report that Come Fly With Us
Magazine is celebrating its third
anniversary this spring. The
publication is now read in 128
countries, across every ocean and
across every continent.
THE COLL E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | SPR I NG 2 017 35
�ALUMNI NOTES
2005
Jared Ortiz (AGI) and Rhonda
(Franklin) Ortiz (A04) are awaiting
their fourth child in March 2017.
Jared teaches Catholic theology at Hope College in Holland,
Mich., and recently published
his first book, You Made Us for
Yourself: Creation in St. Augustine’s
Confessions (Fortress, 2016). He
is also the executive director and
co-founder of the Saint Benedict
Institute for Catholic Thought,
Culture, and Evangelization
(www.saintbenedictinstitute.org).
Rhonda writes fiction and does
freelance graphic design work.
2006
Michael Bales (SF) recently started
at the Mitre Corporation as a
senior data scientist, a nonprofit
that runs federal research centers.
He is also finishing his master’s
in government analytics at Johns
Hopkins University.
Alumni interested in
careers in data and
public service may
contact him at mike.
bales@gmail.com.
2016 was a good year
for Jacqueline KennedyDvorak (AGI). She and
her husband had a baby
in April, he got a new job
in November, and she got
a new job in December.
In January she saw great friends,
Melody (AGI07) and Everett Reed
(AGI07), and their three children.
She looks forward to seeing them
again, as well as Camille Stallings
(AGI07) in May.
Sarah Rera (A) was named to the
2016 New York Super Lawyers
Upstate list. She is an attorney,
and recently became a shareholder, with the law firm Gross
Shuman Brizdle & Gilfillan, P.C.
She is admitted to practice in New
York State and Federal Courts, as
well as before the U.S. Supreme
Court and Bankruptcy Court,
Western District of New York.
Russell Max Simon (SFGI) recently
wrote and directed his first feature
film, titled #humbled, about an
idealistic young theatre director who leads her vagabond cast
and crew through the pitfalls of
a fledgling indie theatre production. The “play within the film”
is a modern-day adaptation of
Aristophanes’s The Frogs, which
Simon read while at the Graduate
Institute in Santa Fe. He writes,
“The film explores relationships,
egos, and competing perspectives
on the true meaning of art and
mediocrity. You can get updates on
the film by going to 7kfilms.com/
humbled and signing up for the
newsletter there, or liking the 7k
Films Facebook page: facebook.
com/7kfilms.”
For the past five years, Susan
Swier (AGI) lived in Taiwan and
visited more than 80 cat cafes. Her
new book, published in Taiwan in
both Chinese and English under
2006
Caelan MacTavish Huntress (SF)
has returned to Portland, Ore.,
after living for three years in Costa Rica,
where he and his wife Johanna homeschooled their three children— two sons
and a daughter. Huntress took his wife’s
last name, noting that the Huntress Clan
ruled the Isle of Mann as a matriarchy for
300 years, and their male descendants
have had mostly daughters for five generations. The couple’s
youngest child Taos was born in Costa Rica in an unassisted
water birth. They made their living in the jungle with his
website design business, which was recently absorbed into
the consulting agency Stellar Platforms. This branding and
strategy firm works with authors, coaches, and teachers on
their digital marketing, and packages their teachings into a
curriculum that can be sold as a course on their website. He is
also active in the local Parkour community, teaching and training in the new sport that has its philosophical underpinnings
in Stoic philosophy. This connection is revealed in Ryan Holiday’s book The Obstacle Is the Way, which Huntress suggests
every Johnnie should read. You can follow his adventures at
http://caelanhuntress.com.
notes the timing with the election
was only coincidental.
the title Come in and See the Cats,
introduces 62 of them. The book
is available on www.kinokuniya.
com and is only searchable by the
Chinese title, 這裡有貓, 歡迎光臨.
Swier works as a freelance writer
and recently moved to Kuala
Lumpur, Malaysia.
2007
Lucas Smith (SF) and his wife
Miriam had their first baby,
Verity Linnéa Sihn-Sze Smith,
born May 13. The provenance of
their daughter’s middle name is
from Linnaeus. In early 2017 he
immigrated to Canada, though he
36 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 017
Michael Wu (SF) recently completed an appointment in the
Obama administration, leading
renewable energy and energy
resilience efforts for the U.S.
Air Force. He is now starting an
energy consulting company and
beginning work on a book on the
history of energy in warfare.
2008
In August, Tammie Kahnhauser
(A) accepted a job as a software
engineer at Uber. She is currently
working on tracing tools that will
help other engineers make their
code more efficient.
Nate Okhuysen (A) has been
promoted to the rank of captain
in the U.S. Air Force. Okhuysen graduated from his Judge
Advocate Staff Officer Course in
September of 2016 and currently
serves as chief of Administrative
Investigations for the 86th Airlift
Wing’s legal office at Ramstein Air
Base, Germany. He loves the work
but misses the robust seminar
schedule of the Boston Alumni
Chapter.
children, Meir (2) and Adele, (two
months).
2014
2011
2009
2012
Kyle Lebell (SF) (pictured right) is
completing her final year of rabbinical school and will be ordained
at the Ziegler School of Rabbinic
Studies in May 2018. She and
her husband Sam, who is also
studying to be a rabbi, have two
Chloé Annick Ginsburg (SF)
writes, “When I was studying at St. John’s College never
in my wildest dreams did I think
that a Great Books Program could
ever prepare me for a Hollywood
creative life. When I moved back
to Los Angeles, I pursued accounting in a law firm, but I found that
Ryan Burnett (AGI) shares the following: “Seminar at St.
John’s College has gravity. This comes from the genius of the
writer, the skill of the tutor and the openness of the student.
What we feel is a spirit of shared urgency to get things right.
It is no surprise, then, that my new-found career in water
conservation in California reminds me of my alma mater. Both
St. John’s and my career share the need to get to the heart of
essential things. Clearly,
state-wide drought and
a set of Great Books are
different. However, what
they share is a life-giving
focus on what matters
most. That tenor guides
me every day and has
helped me focus studies,
earn certifications and
Ryan Burnett (AGI14) with his wife
gain a footing on a body
Kate and son Teddy.
of knowledge as big as
you can imagine.”
Virginia Harness (A) left her corporate gig in Los Angeles for a life in
public service as the architectural
historian for the South Carolina
State Historic Preservation Office
in April 2016. She is enjoying a
return to life with four seasons
and a traffic-free commute.
In January Brittany French
(SF) received her master’s
degree in philosophy from
Simon Fraser University
in Vancouver, Canada,
where she is also a teaching
assistant. She plans to study
medicine somewhere in the
U.S. starting this summer.
Nicholas H. Loya (A15) visited the cloisters under renovation at Canterbury
Cathedral while touring with Sidharth Shah (A). Presumably, Anselm saw a
similar scene.
life was not fulfilling enough. So
I reevaluated and discovered my
true passion: costume design. I
then enrolled in a Theatre Conservatory last year where I have had
opportunities to costume design
AFI short films and school plays.
The biggest news I have is that
I was nominated for my costume
designs by the Kennedy Center for
the Performing Arts for Waiting for
Lefty by Clifford Odets. Little did I
know that a liberal arts education
would be the perfect education to
prepare me for such a task. I was
able to analyze the script in such
detail that I think only a liberal
arts major could possibly do. With
these tools I was able to translate
the author’s intent and words into
physical embodiment through
the costumes. I have always been
interested in history, literature,
and fashion, but St. John’s honed
my interests and led me to a
rewarding profession.”
2014
Micaela MacDougall (A) thanks
everyone who donated to her fundraiser to attend the University
of St Andrews in Scotland. She
graduated in November 2016 with
a master’s in theology, imagination, and the arts. Now back in
Annapolis, she is planning her
next steps.
Do you have news to share
with The College? Send your
note, along with your name,
class year, and photo(s), to
thecollegemagazine@sjc.edu
THE COLL E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | SPR I NG 2 017 37
�IN MEMORIAM
Leroy Edward Hoffberger
Office of Personnel Management,
and several conservation
organizations.
Most of Dobert’s clients
worked with him for years and
often decades. And many of
those same clients became dear
friends. He won more than 50
CINE Golden Eagle Awards as
well as numerous other video
and film recognitions. Today his
films are viewed and used in
national parks throughout the
U.S. and have become part of the
nation’s environmental legacy.
He is survived by his wife,
Claire Guimond Dobert; brother,
Peter; daughter, Sabrina; sons,
Pascal and Alexander; and
numerous grandchildren.
Stefan Sebastian Dobert
Class of 1962
October 22, 2016
Stefan Sebastian Dobert
(1938-2016), photographer,
documentary film maker, and
video producer, died peacefully
at his Maryland home. He
was 78 years old. Born in
Geneva, Switzerland, Dobert
spent his formative years in
Bethesda, Maryland. After St.
The Shining Youth/Shining Walls
mosaics at the American Visionary Art
Museum bears Hoffberger’s name.
John’s, Dobert enlisted in the
U.S. Army. While stationed
in Germany he discovered
his passion for filming and
photography. After completing
his military service, he returned
to Germany to work for Screen
Gems at Studio Hamburg.
There, he met his first wife,
Urte Petersen, the mother of his
three children.
For a decade Dobert produced
and directed more than 50
38 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 017
award-winning films on a
variety of subjects for the U.S.
Department of Agriculture
and for the Federal Aviation
Administration. In 1976, he
started his own film production
company, Stefan Dobert
Productions, Inc. He became
renowned in the industry for
his well-researched and scripted
nature films, educating and
informing the public about
numerous environmental issues.
Over the years, he traveled
the Americas with his second
wife and production partner
Claire, meeting, interviewing,
and filming such subjects as
the Annual Spring Waterfowl
Population Survey, the National
Wildlife Refuge Systems, the
Federal Duck Stamp Program,
all for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service. In addition, he produced
numerous stories for the U.S.
Information Agency, the U.S.
November 24, 2016
August 27, 2016
DAN MEYERS
A strong believer in helping his fellow man, Leroy
“Roy” Edward Hoffberger (1925-2016), former
member of the Board of Visitors and Governors
of St. John’s College, may be best known for his
philanthropic activities. The Baltimore lawyer and
businessman served as president and chairman
of the Hoffberger Brothers Fund (renamed the
Hoffberger Foundation in 1963 and known today
as the Hoffberger Family Philanthropies). The
foundation—one of Maryland’s largest philanthropic
funds and one of Baltimore’s greatest benefactors—
supports hospitals, health care services, Jewish
scholarships, artists and various cultural
institutions, and medical research, especially in the
areas of Alzheimer’s and aging. Hoffberger was also
one of the earliest leaders in the effort to create the
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
A great supporter of the arts, Hoffberger was an
avid art collector and a co-founder of the American
Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore. He also
endowed the LeRoy E. Hoffberger Graduate School
of Painting at the Maryland Institute College of
Art. On the cover of his 2014 memoir Measure of a
Life, Hoffberger wrote, “What we leave behind is
far more important than how far we get ahead.” He
is survived by his wife, Paula; his two sons, Jack
and Douglas; his two stepdaughters, Athena Alban
Hoffberger and Belina Rafy; his brother, Stanley;
and three grandchildren.
Annapolis campus for 18 years.
“I first met her when I came
as a newly appointed tutor to
St. John’s College, in 1979,”
writes Tom May. “… Jan was
the soul of graciousness and
discretion, dealing routinely
with all manner of student and
faculty concerns. Her ability
to listen, her wonderful smile
and genuine laugh, and her
readiness to be helpful are all
lasting impressions I fondly
remember and cherish.” She is
survived by her husband of 64
years, Julian Easterday, Jr., her
son, Julian “Ralph” Easterday
III, and her beloved grandson,
Tyler.
Janice Easterday
August 3, 2016
Board member
After a one-year battle with
cancer, Curran G. Engel (19632016) died on Thanksgiving
Day. Soon after graduating
from St. John’s in 1986, Engel
began his career in the motion
picture industry. He worked
on hundreds of productions,
including independent and
studio films, commercials,
documentary, corporate image
films, and music videos. His
Janice “Jan” Easterday (19342016) passed away after a short
battle with lung cancer at the
Hospice of the Chesapeake
with her loving husband,
Julian, by her side. Many
from the St. John’s community
will remember Easterday
through her work as secretary
to the assistant dean on the
Curran Engel (SF86)
screen credits include The
Sculptress, Heartwood, The Net,
and James and the Giant Peach,
among others. Engel frequently
served as a guest lecturer on
film industry topics and was a
member of the faculty at The
Academy of Art University in
San Francisco, where he taught
courses in producing, production
management, and creating
demo reels. In his final months,
despite his physical pain,
he returned to St. John’s for
Homecoming in Santa Fe, where
he celebrated a 30-year reunion
with friends. He is survived by
his wife, Annalisa Chamberlain
Engel; his sons; and brother
Brandon Engel (SF91).
Thomas Rea
Class of 1951
February 7, 2016
Thomas Herald Rea’s (19292016) groundbreaking
discoveries in the field of
dermatology led to treatments
that allowed patients with
Hansen’s disease, better known
as leprosy, to live without
stigma. Rea and his University
of Southern California colleague
Robert Modlin identified the
exact role played by the immune
system in Hansen’s disease
symptoms; their research paved
the way for new treatments
that rendered the disease
non-contagious and allowed
patients to live normal lives.
Rea served as head of the USC’s
dermatology division between
1981 and 1996, and kept
working at the Hansen’s disease
clinic at Los Angeles CountyUSC Medical Center in Boyle
Heights until a few months
before he died. The clinic was
renamed for Rea in 2015.
After St. John’s, Rea attended
Oberlin College and medical
school at the University of
Michigan in Ann Arbor. He
completed his dermatology
residency at University Hospital
in Ann Arbor. Rea worked in
the Medical Corps of the U.S.
Army in Korea and in the
dermatology department at New
York University, where he first
began treating Hansen’s disease
patients. He had an appreciation
for books, film, classical music,
and Japanese art. Rea is
survived by his wife of 51 years,
Mary; his sons, Andrew and
Steven; and four grandchildren.
Also Deceased:
Paul C. Cochran, Class of 1963
October 14, 2016
Virginia A. McConnell, AGI84
August 21, 2016
Jesse Faulkner Sherman, A06
January 27, 2015
Robert Alexander, Class of 1942
August 23, 2016
Christian “CJ” Dallett, SF88
February 23, 2017
Veronica Nicholas, Class of 1963
November 29, 2016
David F. Simpson, A97
August 28, 2016
Burton Armstrong, Class of 1943
January 4, 2017
John S. DesJardins,
Class of 1947
November 7, 2016
Jacob C. Perring, SF06
October 29, 2016
George F. Smith, Class of 1947
October 19, 2016
Devin J. Ayers, EC05
January 26, 2017
Donald A. Phillips, Class of 1955
Carol J. Dockham, SF76 August 24, 2016
Margaret J. Bair, AGI13 September 8, 2016
Paul A. Sachs, Class of 1941
September 25, 2016
Margaret Jean Mattson, AGI90
November 18, 2016
June 21, 2016
John W. Burke, A79
Michael A. Smith, A87
August 28, 2016
Mary Storm, Class of 1962
November 29, 2016
February 5, 2017
THE COLL E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | SPR I NG 2 017 39
�JOHNNIE VOICES
HOMER IN CHINA
By Martha Franks (SF78)
C
hinese high school is a warrior culture. The students in my
classes in Beijing were engaged
in constant battle, which became
clear when I took them slowly
through Homer’s Iliad. The Greek society
sung by Homer is based on competition for
excellence in battle, which was rewarded by
glory, honor, and prizes. My Chinese students, fighting their way through the literal
and figurative tests of a competitive high
school, understood that down to their bones.
Everyone attending Bei Da Fu Zhong, the
high school where I taught for two years from
2012-2014, were high achievers, having fought
to excel all their lives. They spent enormous
time and money on test preparation. I disliked
their preoccupation with tests, so I never gave
them any, which mystified them. As far as they
knew, doing well on tests was the only point of
school. How could they win glory if they did not
take tests?
My argument—that a person might genuinely
be interested in learning—seemed to them a
quaint, if charming, frivolity. They could not
afford to indulge in it.
I pushed the argument anyway; it was part
of my job. Dalton Academy was geared toward
students who intended to go to the United
States for college. It was also an experimental program that tried to get away from a
deadening focus on tests, in order to encourage
creativity in students.
We plunged into both tasks on the first day
of class. Beginnings are always challenging,
and starting a discussion class was especially
difficult for these kids. After years in the classroom, their voices had only been raised when
they were sure of the answer.
“Was Agamemnon, the leader of the Greek
armies, a good king?” I asked. Silence. I wrote
the question on the whiteboard. “What do you
think? Was Agamemnon a good king?” More
silence. People looked down and fiddled with
pens. The silence became so uncomfortable
that one student, Janie, restively broke it.
“No,” she said with an angry air, as if it
made her mad that she had been driven to
speak. “He should not have take away prizes
from best warrior Achilles and humiliate him.
That is stupid. Good king isn’t stupid.”
We had started. It took time and lots of
encouragement, but discussion has an almost
physical momentum, especially among competitive people. Each expressed opinion calls forth
an equal and opposite opinion. I asked Janie a
few questions: “Why do you think Agamemnon
did such a stupid thing? What might worry him
about Achilles?”
Sam reacted with the opposite opinion to
hers: “Good king should control powerful warrior or his authority is attack. Agamemnon is
smart. Think Achilles problem.”
Anne agreed. “Achilles acting like child
weakens. Good king must be strong.”
(My students understood English very well, but
when it came to speaking it, they often ignored
the parts they found strange, unnecessary, or
confusing, such as articles, plurals, and tenses.)
Seeing Sam’s and Anne’s disagreement
as a challenge to her, Janie turned on them
combatively, saying with scorn that Agamemnon could have found a less stupid and greedy
way to control Achilles if he was afraid of him.
Sam swelled a little. Other voices came quickly
forward to soothe the waters. Chinese students
dislike disharmony in the classroom, and will
try to heal it.
In the classes that followed, we spent some
time with Achilles sitting in his tent, trying to
decide which is the best life, short but glorious or long but obscure. I asked my students,
“What do you think is the best life?”
A pause, and then someone, nearly whispering, ventured: “The best life has lots of money.”
There were suppressed giggles.
“Okay, good,” I said. “Suppose you have lots
of money. What do you do with money?”
“Buy things,” someone else said boldly, and
got a laugh.
“All right. Obviously, you don’t want money
itself, you want the things money can buy.
What things?” I wanted to know.
Lots of ideas poured out at that: “Clothes,
jewels, travel, a big house….”
“Why do you want these things?” I asked.
They thought that was a ridiculous question.
There was no why about wanting things. You
just wanted them.
Tom joked: “I want because my friends don’t
have!”
“So,” I replied, “you want your friends to envy
you, or to be impressed by you?” They looked
at me with an “of course!” expression, which
was tinged with a little surprised embarrassment—I gathered that people rarely said that
aloud. “Why do you want that?” I pressed.
“I feel proud,” Tom answered, after a moment.
“You want glory and honor, like a Greek warrior?” He agreed, relieved that we were talking
about the book again. Yes, he was like a Greek
warrior that way.
Allen jumped into the silence and announced: “I want to be rock star.”
“Why do you want that?” I asked.
He grinned, sure he had figured out the
answer: “Glory and honor!”
“We spent some time with
Achilles sitting in his tent,
trying to decide which is the
best life, short but glorious
or long but obscure.”
“Really?” I teased him back. “You don’t actually like music? It’s just a way to get money,
glory, and honor?” Allen’s music was a byword
around the campus. He played in a band every
extra moment he had. He admitted that he
loved music for its own sake.
I asked: “If you had to choose between
money and music, which would you choose?”
This question seemed to hit a sore place.
Faces turned downwards. Perhaps it named
something that many of them hid within. They
might like music, or art, or anything, but they
had obligations to their families. All of them
were only children, their family’s best hope for
wealth.
“I won’t choose,” said Allen, bravely. “I want
both.” The circle lightened, and I thought they
would applaud.
Class ended and students stood up, chattering
excitedly in Chinese. I took this as a good sign.
As the book and the semester progressed,
there were a variety of reactions to how we
were reading and talking. A few wrote the
whole thing off as an easy credit because there
were no tests and no one was forced to join the
conversation. I believe they had spent so much
of their lives looking at school as a source of
glory, honor, and prizes—separate from the
private personal places where their real interests lay—that they did not know how to treat it
otherwise.
Lots of students, though, loved what went
on in our class, even though they still thought
it a charming luxury that they could not afford
to indulge in very much. If an SAT loomed,
work for my class was likely to be the first
thing shorted. And yet the figure of Achilles
became vivid in their minds. Living in their
own warrior educational culture, they felt how
angry he was when the glory, honor, and prizes
he had worked for were taken from him. They
understood, too, why his reaction to that was
to wonder whether these things had ever been
worth his life.
Homer’s answer to that question is not obvious, but perhaps it has to do with the scene at
the end, one of the greatest moments in Western literature. King Priam of Troy comes into
the Greek camp by night, alone, to beg Achilles
to give him his son Hector’s corpse for burial.
Achilles and Priam, Greek and Trojan, victor
and vanquished, magnificent and broken, have
both lost people they loved. And they know they
will die soon. Achilles shares this mortal sorrow with the king of the enemy city. As one of
my students put it, in a lovely English sentence:
“Achilles and Priam weep together, in the dark,
in the quiet of Achilles’ tent, with the army
sleeping around them.”
My Chinese students and I concluded that
Achilles’ lasting glory was not won on the
battlefield. His greatest glory is that he grew
great enough to feel for all human loss and
sorrow, even those of his enemy. Possibly Confucius meant something like this when he put
the quality of “ren (仁),” or “humaneness,” at
the center of his answer to the question of what
is the best life. If so—and it will be the job of
people like my students, with learning in both
traditions, to decide—then the insight is neither
Eastern nor Western, but belongs to us all.
Martha Franks (second row, fourth from the left) with students from her high school in China.
40 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 017
THE COLL E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | SPR I NG 2 017 41
�FIRST PERSON
ALUMNI PROFILE
VIEW FROM THE TOP
GUIDED BY INTUITION AND REASON
By Andrew Wice
By Yosef Trachtenberg (A15)
“Every rule has an exception, Mr.
Trachtenberg,” Mr. May whispered to
me as I mounted the stage to receive
my diploma. As my Freshman Language
tutor, he argued with patience and humor
against my insistence for unequivocal rules
of translation. This was my main approach
to life—everything had to be logical,
definite, and precise.
In many ways, that class set the tone
for my time at St. John’s. What began
concerning translation spread to my
ethical beliefs. I wanted there to be
definite, logical, and universal ethical
rules so I wouldn’t need to rely on my
intuitions. I didn’t understand them, so
I didn’t trust them. Many philosophers
we read attempted to provide a rigorous
ethical system, but none were convincing. I
concluded I must (for now) base my ethics
on the particulars of each situation, guided
by my intuition and reason.
Even as I was becoming disenchanted
with logical rules for life, St. John’s
was sharpening my logic. If my ideas
weren’t logically sound, they would likely
be challenged (they were often challenged
even when they were logically sound, but on
other grounds). I became skilled at spotting
flaws in arguments, and my standards for
accepting something as true increased
significantly. If anything, I took this too far.
I would find a flaw and use it to dismiss the
entire argument. But a flaw doesn’t mean
the conclusion is false or the argument
contains nothing useful, so I learned to find
value in arguments despite their flaws.
Beyond logical skills, conversations at St.
John’s (both in and out of class) improved
my ability to communicate. I learned when
to interrupt and when to listen, how to deal
with lecturing, and how to disagree without
alienating. Of course, knowing what I should
“I learned to find
value in arguments
despite their flaws.”
do doesn’t mean I always succeed at doing it.
This next change seems trivial, but may
turn out to be the longest lasting effect of
my education. Before St. John’s, I hadn’t
sung (outside the shower) for 15 years.
Freshman Chorus required me to sing, while
giving me a comforting crowd to lose myself
in. I came to love singing; I still sing our
chorus songs. In addition to the pleasure
their beauty brings me, singing these songs
recall the community I found at St John’s.
I hadn’t expected to experience a
sense of community. During high school, I
withdrew from people and learned how to
be happy alone. I expected to live the rest
of my life with only superficial connections.
At St. John’s, I met people who shared
my interests, who I could have engaging
conversations with, and who could inform
42 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 017
and challenge my thinking. Moreover, I
came to respect their intellectual and moral
character. For the first time, I saw potential
for friendships based not just on utility or
pleasure, but on a shared desire to figure
out how the world works, what a good life is,
and how to live it.
Not everything at St. John’s was new.
Sometimes, I found words for ideas I already
lived by. In Epictetus’s Discourses, the
statements “At first, distance yourself from
what is stronger than you” and “It is not the
things themselves that disturb people but
their judgments about those things” perfectly
described my choices during my withdrawal.
I found a name for what I had become.
Reading and discussing Stoic philosophy
also showed me the potential for moving
beyond Stoicism. While it helped me
approach the world with equanimity, I found
Stoicism’s limits. As a Stoic, maintaining my
equanimity requires keeping a part of me
isolated from people. I still want to act in a
level-headed way, but I now think it possible
to experience the strong emotions that
arise from wholehearted connection with
other people without letting them cloud my
judgment. I believe such a life is nobler than
a Stoic one, and while I’m just beginning to
explore its possibilities, I would never have
considered it before my time at St. John’s.
St. John’s enriched my life beyond
measure by helping me break through many
barriers I created for myself. It softened my
rigid worldview, led me to like people again,
and left me with a deep love of singing.
Infrared technology provides valuable data for wine growers.
Robert Morris (SF04)
Soars above the Competition
In the world of
agribusiness, the
use of commercial
drones has become
increasingly popular
among farmers
seeking aerial
imagery of their land.
Robert Morris (SF04),
CEO of San Francisco Bay-area company
TerrAvion, which produces the highest
volume of aerial imagery for agriculture in
the nation, is bucking that trend.
The company has reached the pinnacle of
the industry by using airplanes instead of
drones. By applying first principles to the
economics of the aerial imagery industry,
Morris realized that properly employed
airplanes would be far more efficient than
drones. Flying at a higher altitude, staying
in the air longer, and stringing together
multiple flight paths are accumulative
advantages which drone-based services
cannot match. “Dynamics that favor high
volume and customer density in imagery
production mean that we can keep offering
a better product for less cost per unit—just
like computer chips or network links have
been doing for decades,” Morris says. “Soon,
this will allow us to give tools to farmers for
a few bucks that were not even available to
the highest generals for billions (of dollars) a
decade ago.”
TerrAvion uses the latest innovations in
information technologies to electronically
deliver detailed maps of farmland with
overnight data analysis. That analysis can
be rapidly used to optimize irrigation, see
disease before it spreads, or maximize
the return on investment of fertilizers and
herbicides. The company allows agribusiness
to “farm more land more efficiently, more
sustainably, more profitably, and more
comfortably,” Morris says, which agricultural
companies have been quick to adopt.
After graduating from St. John’s, Morris
served as an officer in the U.S. Army, leading
a drone platoon in Afghanistan. He was
properly skeptical of the so-called “disruptive”
drone technology, and remained stoic when
drone-based aerial imagery companies took
an early lead. TerrAvion’s use of planes
was first able to gain traction among wine
growers on the California coast. “TerrAvion
started operating in vineyards because their
early adopters were especially receptive to our
service,” Morris says. “Vineyards intentionally
stress the vines to create flavor and sugar
in the grapes—this gives off a really clear
signal in the infrared to monitor from the air
and also means grape growers are farming a
valuable crop at the edge of control—making
the stress data especially valuable.”
Today, the company’s success has crested
the tipping point. The economy of scale means
that TerrAvion has been able to expand at an
exponential rate into the nation’s agricultural
heartland. “The majority of our acreage
is now east of the Rockies, mostly in corn
and soy,” Morris says. “Growers of traded
commodities are really focused on efficiency
of production and scale, so they are also
growing at the absolute limit of what plant
science allows. We actually expect Nebraska
to be our best market next year because the
irrigation practices and crop mix make it
super-receptive to what we’re doing.”
In Silicon Valley’s hyperbolic scramble for
the next paradigm shift—a concept now often
called the next “disruptive technology”—
Morris believes that innovators with a
foundation in the classics possess a deeper
insight and a broader overview. “Is the
automobile, or telephone, or internet-based
retailer more disruptive than geometry,
optics, or Christianity?” says Amariah Fuller
(SF11), one of several Johnnies working
at TerrAvion. “The type of collaborative
inquiry we undertake at St. John’s is the
best preparation for vague vagaries of the
business world. … Getting to the root of what
someone is talking about in a collaborative
way is where Johnnies shine,” Fuller says.
“The most intimidating business concepts
fall to pieces when you ask a few simple
questions.” In the coming years, Morris
expects to “continue to hire more Johnnies as
we grow, since they are so adaptable and can
work so effectively across disciplines. …We
want the ones that love action.”
THE COLL E GE | ST. J OH N’ S C OL L E G E | SPR I NG 2 017 43
�EIDOS
ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE GREENFIELD LIBRARY / COURTESY OF HENRY HIGUERA
S T. J O H N ’ S F O R E V E R
FORWARD
EDGE OF
HISTORY
The year was 1959. Dwight D. Eisenhower
was our country’s president. And St. John’s
College was expanding. On May 22, Eisenhower paid a special visit to St. John’s to
dedicate three new buildings on campus: Mellon Hall, McKeldin Planetarium, and Francis
Scott Key Auditorium. Before a crowd that
included 25 descendants of Francis Scott Key,
Eisenhower delivered remarks tinged with his
trademark humor and wit—and admiration for
the Program.
“The colleges of civilization remind us that the
affairs of the human community are continuous and indivisible,” Eisenhower said in his
speech. “Your own Great Books program,
organized around the masters of thought for
thirty centuries, convincingly demonstrates
the interdependence of human activities.
President Eisenhower, left, and St. John’s
President Richard Weigle stroll past the
McKeldin Planetarium.
Today is merely the forward edge of history.
From Homer to Einstein, through politics to
philosophy and physics, the past instructs the
present, ever revealing the continuity of the
human adventure.”
After touching on the U.S.’s position in world
affairs, Eisenhower concluded with comments
on the importance of “the educated citizen”
that a St. John’s education produces. “It cannot be too often repeated that there is urgent
need for the citizen to grasp the relationship
between his own actions and attitudes and
those of the nation of which he is a participating member.”
One of Anyi Guo’s (A15) greatest gifts
as a photographer is her ability to make
an instant connection with her subjects.
Whether focusing her lens on St. John’s
students and tutors engaged in conversation,
hot air balloons drifting across a Turkish sky,
or art lovers taking in the British Museum,
Guo captures the spirit of her subject with
an artist’s eye and a click of her camera.
While a student at St. John’s, Guo’s photography skills were in high demand. Using an
actual film camera (the Olympus mju II and
Kodak Portra 400 film is her favorite combo),
she provided photos for student publications
as well as The College magazine, covering everything from Croquet to basketball
games to Freshman Chorus to lunchtime
reading groups. Guo now works for a finance
firm in London, where she has embraced
European culture and new experiences—and
continues to follow her bliss. “I’ve learned
a lot about the world since my move,” says
Guo. “I’ve learned to have a dry sense of
humor from Brits, to speak with gestures
from the three Italians that I live with, to
greet continental Europeans with cheek
kisses, and to make authentic Indian food.”
View more of Guo’s photography at anyiguo.com.
44 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 017
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Shook, Gregory (editor)
Venkatesh, Krishnan
Haratani, Joan
Wolf, Robert
Lund, Nelson
Stickey, Sarah
Brann, Eva
Kalkavage, Peter
Salem, Eric
Russell, George
Franks, Martha
The College
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College
The
SPRING 2016
•
S T. J O H N ’ S C O L L E G E
•
ANNAPOLIS
•
S A N TA F E
Martin
Luther
King, Jr.
On Serving Others
�A day of service: alumni, students,
faculty, and staff plant daffodil
bulbs outside Mellon Hall.
ii THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 016
�OPENING NOTE
What can you do with a St. John’s
degree? I love this question because
the answer is so surprisingly simple:
anything. And it’s not hyperbole.
With commencement just around
the corner, a new crop of Johnnies
will bid adieu to the place they called
home for the past four years, to the
friends and faculty who tirelessly
helped them grapple with such great
minds as Euclid, Hegel, Aristotle,
and Kant, among others, and mold
big ideas into imaginative and
valuable contributions—often in the
spirit of service to others.
In his final sermon, “The Drum Major Instinct,” delivered at Ebenezer
Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia
exactly two months before his assassination, Martin Luther King,
Jr. (1929-1968) called on people to
consider the notion of service, saying
that it is within everyone’s capacity;
the only true requirement needed
to serve, he says, is “a heart full of
grace, a soul generated by love.” This
issue of The College shines a light
on just a few among so many alumni
who apply their “great books degree”
to improve the lives of individuals
and communities, both far and near,
from advocating human rights to
addressing women’s global health issues to transforming young students
into powerful storytellers. Suffice to
say, not only does such work require
passion and dedication, it also takes
a special kind of courage.
Gregory Shook, editor
THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | SPRING 2016 1
�SPRING 2016
VOLUME 41, ISSUE 1
“� ntelligence plus character—
I
that is the goal of true education.”
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
FEATUR E S
P A G E 1 6��
P A G E 2 0��
PA G E 2 6
A REFLECTION
ON SERVICE
ROOSEVELT
THE REFORMER
A PLACE WHERE
EVERYONE MATTERS
A thoughtful examination
of the meaning and value of
service deepens our understanding of what inspires and
motivates people to serve.
Santa Fe’s new president
is ready to show the world
what matters most in
education—and it’s not the
glittery, superficial things.
On Maine’s waterfront, an
after-school program helps
refugees and migrant youth
become powerful storytellers
and academic achievers.
ON THE COVER:
Martin Luther King, Jr. illustration
by Francesco Francavilla
PREVIOUS PAGE: JENNIFER BEHRENS
2 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 016
�D E PAR T ME N T S
��FROM THE BELL TOWERS
BIBLIOFILE
FOR & ABOUT ALUMNI
4 �
Serving Women Worldwide:
Rachel Seay (A02)
30 �
John Sifton (A96) investigates
war’s devastating effects in
Violence All Around.
32 �lmuni News:
A
SJCAA 2016 Election Notice
6 An Alumni Leader
7 �
Project for Peace
8 �
Global Pathways:
Jiujun Tang (SF16)
10 History on the Hill
11 First Folio!
12 �he Science Behind
T
14 �
Together in Song
34 �lumni Notes
A
31 �Tutor David Lawrence Levine
(Class of 1967) examines tyranny
in Profound Ignorance: Plato’s
Charmides and the Saving of Wisdom.
� Silvermintz (AGI01) explores
Daniel
the ancient Greek sophist in
Protagoras: Ancients in Action.
� Keyser (SF91) shares a
Amber
story about healing in The Way
Back from Broken.
.
37 � rofile: Erinn Woodside (AGI)
P
leads a life of service.
42 �In Memoriam
45 �hilanthropy: Donald Esselborn (A80)
P
and Edmond Freeman
46 �
Johnnie Voices: Russell Max Simon
(SFGI06) discusses his
most valuable investment.
JOHNNIE TRADITIONS
48 �t. John’s Forever
S
EIDOS
49 Liz Hyatt (SF85)
ABOVE: Rachel Seay (A02) in Sierra Leone
with Doctors Without Borders
THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | SPRING 2016 3
�From the
BELL TOWERS
A JOHNNIE MAKES A DIFFERENCE
Serving Women Worldwide
Rachel Seay (A02) Works with Women in Africa
through Doctors Without Borders
A woman dies from pregnancy-related complications every other minute, says
Rachel Seay (A02), an OB/GYN and researcher at Johns Hopkins University.
“Most of those can be prevented,” she adds ruefully—common causes are postpartum hemorrhage, infection, and unsafe abortion. And it’s women in developing
nations who suffer most, as Seay observed firsthand while working under the
auspices of Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in Sierra
Leone and South Sudan. Last October in Annapolis, as a featured speaker for
the Career Services Office, she gave a presentation on global women’s health
challenges in support of MSF’s Because Tomorrow Needs Her project.
A 2001 Hodson Trust internship allowed Seay
to shadow several doctors and helped cement
her interest in medicine. She earned her M.D.
from the University of Colorado Denver in
2009, and completed her OB/GYN residency at
George Washington University in Washington,
D.C. In 2015, she received the American College of Gynecology’s history fellowship, which
allowed her to research the management of
postpartum hemorrhage in the United States.
Her first mission for MSF was in fall 2013,
at a maternal and pediatric hospital in Bo,
Sierra Leone; in South Sudan, she worked with
local midwives at a government-run hospital.
At both facilities, she provided emergency
obstetric care to women in need. Not all could
be saved: she recalls two girls in Bo, both 17
and pregnant for the first time, who had both
labored fruitlessly for days at home before coming to the MSF clinic. “By the time one of the
girls had arrived,” she said in a 2015 interview,
“her baby had died, while the baby of the other
was still alive. Both girls delivered by C-section
and ended up having really bad pelvic and
abdominal infections.” The woman whose child
died eventually died as well, while the other
recovered along with her baby. “The complications and suffering of both of these girls were
happening at the same time—they even shared
the same room! To me, this story paints such a
stark picture of two different outcomes from a
problem that is completely preventable.”
Seay emphasizes that the issues facing
women’s health are multifactorial; “often the
actual medicine or health care piece is a small
piece of a much bigger problem that requires
political action” or infrastructure improvements. Poorly maintained roads, for example,
keep patients from reaching the care they need,
and it can also be difficult to find specialized
service providers. Lack of access to contraception is a huge concern as well. The largest
obstacle, however, is the lack of priority many
world governments and health administrations
place on women’s health. Because of this, Seay
believes it’s not enough to raise awareness
among her fellow medical professionals; talks
such as the one she gave at St. John’s are part
of her outreach to the general public.
But Seay also feels that St. John’s students
are uniquely placed to make an impact in the
medical field. “One of the strengths of the
Program is that we learn to consider other
perspectives than our own, and I think that
very directly relates to cultural competency,
and being able to relate to patients who are
coming from a very different context than you.”
Seay points out that a doctor who doesn’t make
4 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 016
Rachel Seay (A02) working with women
and children at hospitals in Sierra Leone
and South Sudan.
the effort to connect with patients will likely
find those patients less willing to comply with
recommended medications or therapies.
For Johnnies interested in medical school,
Seay urges them to take advantage of the
Career Services Office. “[They’ve] been really
important to me, both to help guide my own
career path and [now] to pay that back, to
continue to be involved and offer my own mentoring to current students.”
— Anna Perleberg Andersen (SF02)
�“� ne of the strengths of the Program is that
O
we learn to consider other perspectives
than our own, and I think that very directly
relates to cultural competency, and being
able to relate to patients who are coming
from a very different context than you.”
—Rachel Seay (A02)
ALUMNI MAKE A DIFFERENCE
THANK YOU to all the alumni volunteers who supported the Career Services Office this
past year! Your efforts are appreciated and valued, and we couldn’t accomplish our goals
without you. The alumni listed here have generously given their time, energy, talents, and
resources to help current St. John’s students and their fellow alumni through information
sessions, webinars, panels, networking events, e-mail connections, and much more:
Martha Acosta (A92)
Matthew Albanese (A02)
Robert Ard (A94)
Jim Bailey (A83)
Shirley Banks (SF88)
Jamaal Barnes (A10)
Cynthia Barry (AGI05)
David Bohannon (A99)
Meredith Bohannon (A03)
Donald Booth (A68)
Matt Calise (A01)
Ellen Chavez de Leitner (SF73)
Thea Chimento (A09)
Jonathan Coppadge (A06)
John Cottrell (A02)
Jennifer Dalton (A13)
Samuel Davidoff (A99)
Joshua DeSilva (A12)
Mimi Desjardins (A84)
Lyn Des Marais (A83)
David Dillard (A89)
Cole Donovan (AGI13)
Kieran Dowdy (A09)
Rachel Dudik (A02)
Virginia Early (A13)
Jeff Edwards (AGI94)
Peter Faulhaber (SF78)
Megan Field (A10)
Gary Gallun (A69)
Samuel Garcia (A99)
January Hamill Gataza (A75)
Lexi Goetz (A12)
Cara Gormally (A02)
Diane Hanson (A89)
Chelsia Hetrick (SF03)
Michael Houston (A82)
Nathan Humphrey (A94)
Maria Ironside (SF80)
Bren Jacobson (SF83)
Leslie Kay (SF83)
Brittany Keehan (A12)
Caroline Killian (SF05)
Melanie Kirby (SF97)
Katie Kolodzie (A12)
Amy Kosari (A93)
Louis Kovacs (A02)
Marielle Kronberg (A70)
Nathan Kross (A09)
Tambra Leonard (SF85)
Alex Leone (A12)
Julia Leone (A12)
Aaron Lewis (A96)
Ronald Long (A91)
Chris MacPherson (A14)
Samuel Matlack (AGI11)
Constance McClellan (SF73)
Elisabeth McClure (A08)
Brian McGuire (A96)
Aaron McLean (A03)
Jeremy Melvin (A98)
Reynaldo Miranda (A99)
Matthew Mokey (A03)
Alistair Morrison (SF84)
Amie Neff (SF93)
William Nooter (A76)
Nate Oesch (A09)
Roweena Oesch (A10)
Sam Ose (SF05)
Tia Pausic (A86)
Anna Perry (A11)
Micah Pharris (A95)
Justin Phelps (A07)
Allison Pittman (A08)
Temple Porter (Class of 1962)
Ephrem Reese (A10)
Barbara Rogan (A73)
Ryan Rylee (A04)
Richard Schmechel (A97)
Daniel Schoos (A86)
Ellen Schwindt (A88)
Salvatore Scibona (SF97)
Jessie Seiler (A08)
Erin Shadowens (A12)
Jon Kara Shields (A08)
Suzannah Simmons (SF01)
Marin Skokandic (A12)
Michael Allen Smith (A87)
Nancy Solzman (SF88)
Elizabeth Spagnoletti (A12)
Leonard Sponaugle (A85)
Eric Springsted (SF73)
Courtney Stange-Treagar (A00)
Christopher Stuart (A06)
Janet Sunderland (SFGI95)
Jennifer Sweeney (A06)
Janice Thompson (A95)
Elliott Tulloch (SF91)
Heather Upshaw (SF04)
Austin Volz (SF09)
Melissa Warren (A83)
Cornelia Weierbach (A77)
Scott Williamson (A03)
Iva Ziza (A01)
Alumni who are interested
to volunteer with the college’s
Career Services Offices,
please contact us at:
Jaime Dunn (in Annapolis)
jaime.dunn@sjc.edu
410-626-2500
Margaret Odell (in Santa Fe)
modell@sjc.edu
505-984-6067
THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | SPRING 2016 5
�F R OM T H E B E L L T OW E R S
JOHNNIES BREAK
ALL-MALE TRADITION
Carolyn Leeuwenburgh is a member of an
elite group—the first class of women to graduate from St. John’s College. Fifty years later,
Leeuwenburgh and four other alumnae from
the Class of 1955 celebrated this important
milestone in the college’s history at Homecoming last fall in Annapolis. She shares the
following with The College:
In 1950, St. John’s College decided to admit
women, for the year of 1951. This was motivated partly for financial reasons as a result of
the post-WWII economy, and secondly because
women did not have full access to education
in America. St. John’s was the first all-male
college in Maryland to admit women.
Alumni Leader
Finds His “Rushmore”
Chris Coucheron-Aamot (SF04) has the distinction of being a double dropout. Bright but
bored in high school in his hometown of Albuquerque, New Mexico, Aamot placed third in
the state’s academic decathlon and yet carried
a 1.8 GPA. As a freshman at the University of
New Mexico, he earned straight As but got
lost in the crowd and ditched higher education
for a job as a religious radio news producer for
Moody Broadcasting in Chicago. He might still
be in the broadcast booth had he not produced
a series of pieces about Christian colleges
adopting great books programs. Researching
the great books naturally led him to St. John’s
College where he found a challenge, a calling, a
home—and, finally, a diploma.
Aamot graduated on a Saturday in 2004,
took Sunday off, and started work at the college on Monday. He has never left the place
he calls his “Rushmore,” referring to the cult
classic Wes Anderson film. Aamot’s official
title at the Santa Fe campus is associate
director of Alumni Relations, but it is no
stretch to call him the college’s most ardent
and grateful Johnnie. “St. John’s shaped who
I am as a person,” says Aamot. “It is rare now
in this world to have a place of such grace
and curiosity and whimsy. What we do and
Chris Coucheron-Aamot (SF04) at “home”
who we are is not common. And so to be able
to be part of it for such an extended period is
a tremendous privilege. It’s a great gift.”
While many people leave their jobs behind
at the end of the day, that’s not Aamot’s
relationship with St. John’s. “In addition to
the [alumni relations] work that I do I have a
“� t. John’s shaped who I am
S
as a person. It is rare now
in this world to have a place
of such grace and curiosity
and whimsy.”
deep love for this place, so that leads me to
involvement in all kinds of informal ways,” he
says. Aamot often takes a seat at lectures and
in study groups. He goes to campus parties,
sits in on senior orals, chaperones the ski
team, and for five years he lived on campus
as a senior resident, walking the high desert
campus several times a night with his Tibetan
terrier, Lucy. “I do what I do because I love
the place, and I consider myself a member
of this community,” says Aamot. “And that
means something special.”
—Leslie Linthicum
6 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 016
MARION WARREN, SJC ARCHIVES
I N S A N TA F E
The 50th anniversary of our graduation was
a good reason to acknowledge this event, but
there is yet another reason. There were 19
single women and six married ones that were
willing to undertake this experiment. They
combatted prejudices from the administration,
the staff, the tutors, and the students. The
tradition of 255 years had been broken.
Unfortunately at that time, the school was not
prepared to offer a support system for the
problems that arose. Many women left before
completing the full four years. Those women
who survived the four years did so because
the St. John’s Program enhanced their desire
to learn and become enlightened. Learning at
St. John’s superseded the personal integration
problems because it offered a lifetime direction of learning.
�PROJECT FOR PEACE
Inspiring Young
Journalists in Nepal
Growing up in Kathmandu, Nepal, Jon Shrestha
(A17) remembers being in only one earthquake.
It measured 6.8 on the Richter scale and lasted
less than a minute. Afterward, he couldn’t sleep
for days.
Last April an earthquake again struck the
city—this time an even more massive 7.8 magnitude shock—a month before Shrestha and his
classmate Sagar Aryal (A18), also from Nepal,
returned home to lead a three-day conference
that summer for aspiring young journalists.
Shrestha and Aryal organized the conference,
an initiative supported by the Projects for Peace
with the Davis United World College Scholars
Program, to promote microjournalism in Nepal
by bringing together like-minded, socially conscious writers, ages 15 to 24. Plans got delayed
for several weeks while the two students joined
the post-quake recovery effort, but they were
determined that the conference go on, inspired
in part by the outpouring of support from the
international community to aid Nepal.
Shrestha and Aryal invited 75 young journalists from all over the country to join the conference; with much of the city’s infrastructure
damaged, including the venue that was originally reserved for the conference, they needed
to secure a new location fast. Shrestha and
Aryal never lost hope—or their dedication to the
cause. “In Nepal, there are many rural areas,
and the people and events taking place in these
areas are often neglected by the media,” says
Shrestha, who is not alone in his desire to promote microjournalism. Ultimately, 64 intrepid
souls attended the conference, some taking an
arduous 12-hour bus ride to get there.
Months prior to the conference, Shrestha
and Aryal worked closely with media professionals and sustainable development researchers in Nepal to discuss ideas and create a
robust program schedule. “One of the goals
of the conference was to meet youths from
various districts throughout the country and
to help them bring to light new and untold
stories,” says Shrestha. They also invited journalism professors, an editor of a national daily,
United Nations representatives, a media law
expert, and a mediation counselor for plenary
presentations and training sessions.
Sagar Aryal (A18) and Jon Shrestha (A17)
earned funding for the Projects for Peace.
“� n Nepal, there are many
I
rural areas, and the people
and events taking place
in these areas are often
neglected by the media.”
During the conference, participants
held discussions on a range of topics, from
journalism ethics and culture to networking
and mediation techniques. The conference
concluded with the World Café Discussion,
which provided young journalists the opportunity to ask questions, exchange ideas, share
experiences, and explore more deeply some of
the issues discussed during the conference. “I
am hopeful about the future,” says Shrestha.
“I am hopeful that Nepal will not be down for
long, hopeful that young Nepalese are still
excited to serve their communities.”
The College
is published by St. John’s
College, Annapolis, MD,
and Santa Fe, NM
thecollegemagazine@
sjc.edu
Known office of
publication:
Communications Office
St. John’s College
60 College Avenue
Annapolis, MD 21401
Periodicals postage
paid at Annapolis, MD
Postmaster: Send
address changes to
The College Magazine,
Communications Office,
St. John’s College,
60 College Avenue,
Annapolis, MD 21401.
Editor
Gregory Shook
gregory.shook@sjc.edu
Contributing Editor
Sally Baker
Contributors
Anna Perleberg Andersen
(SF02)
Nutchapol Boonparlit (A15)
Eva Brann (H89)
Barbara Goyette (A73)
Charles Green (AGI02)
Liza Hyatt (SF85)
Bob Keyes
Brady Lee (AGI14)
Carolyn Leeuwenburgh
(Class of 1955)
Leslie Linthicum
Lisa Neal
Jan Schlain
Jon Shrestha (A17)
Russell Max Simon
(SFGI06)
Robin Weiss
Design
Skelton Design
Contributing Designer
Jennifer Behrens
THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | SPRING 2016 7
�F R OM T H E B E L L T OW E R S
G L O B A L P A T H W AY S
Jiujun Tang (SF16)
Ventures Where the
Wild Things Are
International student Jiujun Tang’s (SF16) first
experience in the United States was when she
arrived on the college’s Santa Fe campus in
August 2011. Since it was late in the evening,
her memory of that moment is less about what
she could see and more about what she could
smell: the brisk, invigorating scent of pine. For
Tang, studying the classics in the mountains
of Santa Fe felt like an ideal setting. “Where
you learn contributes to the way you learn,” she
says. Now the recipient of a Global Pathways
Fellowship from St. John’s, Tang will have the
opportunity to put her theory into practice in
Tanzania, Africa this summer.
Global Pathways is the study abroad component of the Pathways Fellowship program
that helps Johnnies transition into graduatelevel study or careers that call for prerequisite
courses. Funding is available for credit courses
in many fields as well as certificate programs
and professional conferences. Recipients are
chosen by a small committee of tutors and
staff. Tang is unique in that she has been
awarded both fellowships.
With a passion for wildlife medicine, she
plans to pursue wildlife research, conservation,
and rehabilitation. Currently, she volunteers
weekly at the Santa Fe Animal Shelter to
gain practical experience. As a Pathways
recipient last summer, Tang got started on
the academic requirements she will need
to apply to vet school. She received the
funding to take organic chemistry and
statistics courses at the University of
New Mexico in Albuquerque. “I had the
luxury of being completely focused on my
schoolwork without having to think about
finances,” she says. “It also made me feel
clearer, not only about what I want to do, but
also the path I’ll need to take to get there.”
Following graduation in May, her Global
Pathways Fellowship will take her to the
Tarangire-Manyara ecosystem of northern Tanzania, home to indigenous communities, such
as the Maasai, and many wildlife sanctuaries in
which elephants, lions, baboons, and other animals roam. “So far I have only been exposed to
caring for domestic animals,” says Tang. “Global
Pathways will allow me to study wild, African
animals in their natural habitat, and also afford
me the opportunity to examine changing landuse and resource availability in the region. The
focus of the program is safeguarding biodiversity conservation while fostering the wellbeing of local communities. It’s an experience I
couldn’t have anywhere else.”
—Lisa Neal
Jiujun Tang (SF16) pursues her passion for wildlife medicine.
8 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 016
A R C H E RY I N S A N TA F E
Aiming for Gold
Move over, croquet, you’ve got company. Johnnies in Santa Fe boast a new game of their
own—and their first intercollegiate sport—
archery.
Started last fall, the college’s archery club
is officially registered with USA Archery, the
civilian face of the USA Olympic Team and the
national governing body of collegiate archery.
“It was the number one activity requested by
students,” says Mary Anne Burke, facilities and
athletics manager at the Santa Fe campus.
“Archery gives students a sport they can compete in, not just amongst themselves, but with
other colleges on a national level. That was
very important to our students.”
Coach Richard Dew has the chops to lead
the popular club. He set a New Mexico record
last year at the sport’s indoor nationals and
was a gold medalist at the state’s Senior
Olympics. He has more than a decade of
archery experience and is classified at level
three within the Olympic training system.
“The techniques and structures I use to teach
St. John’s students are the same ones used to
train the Olympic team,” says Dew. “Our students love to see Olympians perform using the
same equipment and techniques they do.” In
fact, collegiate archery teams are the foundation for Olympic team recruitment, says Dew,
who describes this pathway to the Olympics
as “very doable for someone who wants to
compete at that level.”
�DEVELOPMENT NEWS
Meet the Veeps
“� he crucial elements of
T
the St. John’s scholastic
system carry over into
archery. The discipline,
honesty, rigor, and focus
that students discover
through seminar are just
as important in archery.”
—Archery Coach Richard Dew
The club already has 18 student members,
a mix of active competitors, beginners, and
intermediate-level archers. Devon Ketch (SF18),
Zachary Thomas (SF16), and Chris Cullinane
(SF16) participated in tournament competition
for the first time in early 2016. Students shoot
under regulation conditions and are judged
and scored by their coach in order to compete
digitally. The club goal is to see some students
nationally ranked by the end of the year.
“Archery is a purely individual sport that
both requires and teaches physical and mental
discipline,” says Dew, adding that it is a perfect
fit for the college. “The crucial elements of the
St. John’s scholastic system carry over into
archery. The discipline, honesty, rigor, and focus
that students discover through seminar are just
as important in archery.”
—Lisa Neal
St. John’s welcomes Phelosha Collaros
(SF00) and Laurie Reinhardt as the new vice
presidents for Development and Alumni Relations in Santa Fe and Annapolis, respectively.
Alumni know Collaros from her previous
leadership roles at the college. Reinhardt is
a new member of the community.
Reinhardt was most recently associate vice
chancellor for development and campaign
director at North Carolina State University. In
that capacity she led university-wide development and campaign efforts in the context of
a $1.5-billion comprehensive campaign. Prior
to her appointment at North Carolina State,
she was associate vice president for development at Rutgers University, managing the
fundraising programs for the School of Arts
and Sciences, the Graduate School in New
Brunswick, New Jersey, and the School of
Communication and Information.
“Laurie brings a wealth of experience,
a warmth of spirit, a firm commitment to
our purposes, and a desire to advance the
cause of liberal education,” says Annapolis
President Christopher Nelson (SF70). “She
promises to be a terrific addition to our
leadership team.”
With more than 20 years of experience
in development and development management, Reinhardt also has led development
programs at the University of Miami School
of Nursing and Health Studies, as well as
for nonprofit arts and humanities organizations in Miami and New York. She completed
her Ph.D. in musicology at the University of
North Carolina at Chapel Hill, her M.A. in
musicology at the Eastman School of Music
at the University of Rochester, and her B.A.
in music (cello performance) at Houghton
College. Reinhardt also holds an M.B.A. in
management from the University of Miami.
Phelosha Collaros (SF00) comes to her new
role at St. John’s from the American Society
of Radiologic Technologists (ASRT) Foundation, where she served as foundation director/director of development and launched the
foundation’s first multi-million-dollar campaign. She led the organization’s strategic
planning efforts, daily operations, major and
planned gift initiatives, and individual donor
Phelosha Collaros (SF00) and Laurie Reinhardt
and fundraising engagement. She served in
a variety of capacities at ASRT prior to her
appointment as foundation director in 2010.
Collaros also has served in various leadership positions in the St. John’s College
Alumni Association. She was a member of the
association’s Executive Committee, association president-elect (VP) from 2011-2013,
president from 2013-2015, and, currently,
past president. She has been instrumental
in implementing structural changes through
the introduction of a new mission, a strategic
and operations plan, and new board member
recruitment and onboarding practices. Especially significant during her tenure, a strong
focus on collaboration and trust between the
college and the alumni body has resulted in
a more effective and supportive volunteer
framework for the college.
Collaros earned dual master’s degrees
in business administration and public
administration, with nonprofit management
concentration, from Walden University in
Minneapolis and was a Robert Wood Johnson
Ladder-to-Leadership Fellow.
“We are so pleased to welcome these two
new vice presidents,” said Senior Vice President for Development and Alumni Relations
Victoria Mora. “Each is highly experienced,
talented, and brings exceptional skills to our
development and alumni relations efforts.”
THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | SPRING 2016 9
�F R OM T H E B E L L T OW E R S
S A N TA F E C A M P U S
History on the Hill
The National Register of Historic Places and
the New Mexico Register of Cultural Properties
have recognized the St. John’s Santa Fe campus for it historical and cultural importance.
The state group honored the campus for
its significance in education, architecture,
landscape architecture, and art. The national
register recognizes as historically significant
the Peterson Student Center, Evans Science
Laboratory, Santa Fe Hall, and upper dormitories, all built in 1964; the lower dormitories,
built in 1967; Weigle Hall, built in 1971; and the
Fine Arts Building, built in 1973. Also included
are the central landscape plan by modernist
landscape architect Garrett Eckbo (1910-2000)
and the iconic mural inside Peterson Student
Center by artist Alexander Girard (1907-1993).
In addition, the Historic Santa Fe Foundation
voted to add the campus to its Register of
Resources Worthy of Preservation.
The buildings at 1160 Camino de Cruz Blanca
have the modified adobe look of the Territorial Revival style developed by famed architect
John Gaw Meem in the early 1930s: earth-tone
walls and flat roofs, but with sharper corners,
brick coping along roof lines, and white-painted
windows, doors, and portals. Because of the
campus’ concentration of historical significance,
Clockwise from the top: A scenic
view of campus; cover of the New
Mexican, 1963; Eckbo’s landscape
plans; painting the Girard Mural.
10 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 016
�the plan and ensemble of buildings were
deemed more significant as a group than
any one building. As such, the campus is the
only college in New Mexico to be listed as a
historic district.
Meem Library Director Jennifer Sprague
began work on the college’s application for
these designations in fall 2014 as part of the
campus’s 50th anniversary celebration. In
the process, she and library staff members
Laura Cooley, Heather McClure, and Chris
Quinn consulted letters by John Gaw Meem
and Richard Weigle, architects Edward O.
Holien and William R. Buckley, and other
early visionaries, detailing plans to construct
the campus. “The process helped us see
how important the college is to our Santa
Fe community and the effort Santa Feans
like John Gaw Meem and Robert McKinney
made to bring St. John’s College here,” says
Sprague. “Our ties to the local community
are very strong.”
—Lisa Neal
FIRST FOLIO!
Shakespeare
Takes Center Stage
in Annapolis
St. John’s and the Annapolis
Shakespeare Company Celebrate
400 Years of the “Bard of Avon”
Shakespeare will make a
special appearance at St.
John’s, in the form of a
national traveling exhibition titled First Folio! The
Book that Gave Us Shakespeare. St. John’s College,
Annapolis, was named
Maryland’s only site to host an original 1623
First Folio. The Folger Shakespeare Library
(www.folger.edu), in partnership with the Cincinnati Museum Center (www.cincymuseum.org)
and the American Library Association (www.ala.
org), is touring a First Folio throughout 2016
to all 50 states, Washington, DC, and Puerto
Rico. This first-ever national tour of one of
the world’s most influential books celebrates
400 years of Shakespeare and his legacy. The
exhibition will be on view from November 1
through December 4, 2016 at the Mitchell
Gallery on the Annapolis campus.
To celebrate the First Folio, St. John’s
and programming partner, the Annapolis
Shakespeare Company, will present a host of
exhibit-related programs, including teacher and
student workshops, plays, a family fair, lectures,
dramatic readings, and more. There will be an
online component to the exhibition, too, that
will include a calendar of events listing related
Shakespeare programming that is going on
throughout Maryland during this time.
The First Folio includes 36 Shakespeare
plays, 18 of which had never been printed
before. Without the First Folio, all of those
plays—including Macbeth, Julius Caesar,
Twelfth Night, The Tempest, As You Like It,
and more—might have been lost forever. Compiled by two of his friends and fellow theater
colleagues, the First Folio was published seven
years after Shakespeare’s death in 1616. “From
Shakespeare experts to students studying the
Title page with Droeshout engraving of
Shakespeare. Shakespeare First Folio, 1623.
Folger Shakespeare Library.
Bard’s plays for the first time, this exhibit is
a rare opportunity for the St. John’s College
community and others to experience one of the
most influential books in history,” says Cathy
Dixon, library director in Annapolis.
First Folio! The Book that Gave Us Shakespeare
is made possible in part by a major grant from the
National Endowment for the Humanities and by
the support of Google.org, Vinton and Sigrid Cerf,
the British Council, and other generous donors.
To learn more about the First Folio! exhibition
at St. John’s, visit www.sjc.edu/shakespeare.
THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | SPRING 2016 11
�ILLUSTRA
TION: PO
LLY BECK
ER
F R OM T H E B E L L T OW E R S
of interns in my lab,” says her project mentor Michael Power, an animal scientist at the
Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute,
National Zoological Park. “She asked intelligent
questions, learned quickly…and was able to
understand and appreciate the science behind
the research.”
During her internship, Hill, who plans to
pursue veterinary school after graduation,
took advantage of opportunities outside the
lab as well. She went on rounds with zoo staff,
saw some of the pathology cases, and spent a
week in the commissary preparing diets for the
animals in the birdhouse. “I got to hand-feed
an anteater live mealworms and watch the two
Andean bear cubs nurse from their mother,”
she says. “I also got to take a private tour of
the Great Ape House, where Lucy, a forty-twoyear-old orangutan, continually made raspberry
noises at me.”
—Brady Lee (AGI14)
AT T H E S E M I N A R TA B L E
HODSON INTERN
SUMMER CLASSICS
IN SANTA FE
Going Ape at the
Smithsonian
What will you do this summer? Consider
Summer Classics in Santa Fe—a chance to
return to the seminar table to explore the
perplexing, the rousing, and the compelling.
For one, or two, or three weeks in July, join
fellow alumni and other curious minds from
across the country to read and discuss
timeless works, meet new people, and
encounter bold ideas. Seminars are led by
St. John’s tutors; this summer’s offerings
include “The Magic of Macondo: An
Exploration of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One
Hundred Years of Solitude,” “Herodotus’s
Persian War,” Proust’s The Prisoner and The
Fugitive,” “Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon,”
and many others.
To register and learn more about the
2016 Summer Classics program, visit
www.sjc.edu/summer-classics.
A lover of great books as well as great apes,
Andrea Hill (A16) spent last summer as a Hodson intern at the Smithsonian National Zoological Park’s nutrition lab, where she studied the
eating habits of the chimpanzee populations at
Tanzania’s Gombe Stream National Park. Working with evolutionary biologists, field researchers, and clinical nutritionists, Hill studied the
same chimpanzee populations that renowned
primatologist Jane Goodall began studying in
1960. “There was no data about the nutritional
content of the foods that these chimps eat,” says
Hill, who helped develop a foundational data set
for ongoing research. “It was up to me and four
other interns to gather that data.”
Having a natural curiosity and a desire to dig
deep into her work, Hill stood out among her fellow interns. “As a biomedical field, there is more
to vet medicine than just the medicine—there’s
the science behind the field, which is something
that I had yet to experience [and] why I chose to
work in a research lab rather than a clinic,” says
Hill. She quickly moved up the ranks, training
others on procedures and offering guidance
on running assays and data interpretation.
“Andrea performed at the highest level I expect
12 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 016
Andrea Hill (A16) at work in the lab
“� here was no data about
T
the nutritional content
of the foods that these
chimps eat. It was up to
me and four other interns
to gather that data.”
—Andrea Hill (A16)
�ON SOCIAL MEDIA
ONLY AT ST. JOHN’S...
Follow St. John’s College on Instagram:
#johnniefaces
Instagram.com/sjcannapolis
Instagram.com/sjcsantafe
THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | SPRING 2016 13
�F R OM T H E B E L L T OW E R S
COLLEGIUM
Together in Song
In ancient Rome, “collegium” was a term used
to describe a political or business group that
came together for executive purposes. At St.
John’s, Collegium has nothing to do with executive power, or politics for that matter. Instead,
Collegium is a widely anticipated “talent show”
at the college, held once a semester. Students
typically gather with friends to give a performance, which may range anywhere from piano
solos, choruses, and small bands to a classical
sonata, folk song, or parody. Tutors and staff
may join the onstage festivities, too. “It’s a
Collegium is open to virtually any type of
performance, so adventurous students take the
opportunity to show off skills they have never
before shared with their friends. Students may
perform challenging or unorthodox songs, too,
comforted by the encouraging atmosphere. “It’s
a time for people to come together and sing
and play for each other,” says Stoltzfus. “There
is a feeling of amateurism in the spirit of love,
the love of music making.” Performances at the
most recent Collegium held in the Great Hall
in December included Heart of Courage, an
original piece by current Annapolis Graduate
Institute student Luke Dougherty; Clair de
Lune by Debussy, performed on piano by Bennett Wildauer (A18); The 12 Days of Christmas,
“� t’s a real celebration.
I
Students unwind and let off
steam—and the audience is
incredibly supportive. We
are a very musical college,
and people value making
music with each other.”
Top: Maxwell Dakin (A16), Evan Frolov (A16),
Marina Weber (A16), and Anna Perry (A12) sing
a festive tune. Bottom: The Hamann Hawkins
Tortorelli Trio swing. Right: The Singing
Sensations Youth Choir captivate the audience.
real celebration,” says Eric Stoltzfus, tutor
and music librarian in Annapolis. “Students
unwind and let off steam—and the audience is
incredibly supportive. We are a very musical
college, and people value making music with
each other.”
performed by the acapella group, the Equant;
and Don’t Explain, by Billie Holiday, performed
by MisterSix, a group of mostly Annapolis
tutors.
Every year there are a few staple performances that are highlights of the event. Per
tradition, tutor Judy Seeger leads the audience
in a round of song, and the St. John’s Chorus,
led by tutor Peter Kalkavage, closes the event
with a piece of classical music, typically Mozart
or Bach. Since Collegium takes place before the
winter break and again before graduation, students savor the occasion, with the college community together in song. “The divide between
audience and performer seems to disappear,”
says Stoltzfus. “And people are just simply
happy to see their friends on stage.”
—Nutchapol Boonparlit (A15)
14 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 016
TONY J PHOTOGRAPHY
PHOTOS: XINYUAN ZHANG (A17)
—Eric Stoltzfus, Annapolis tutor & music librarian
�LIFT EVERY VOICE
Gospel music filled the Francis Scott Key Auditorium at the ninth
annual “Lift Every Voice” concert, celebrating the life and legacy
of Martin Luther King, Jr. Each year in January, the concert draws
several hundred people to the Annapolis campus, many for the first
time, to share in the uplifting sounds from some of the region’s
finest vocalists, choirs, and musical groups. The King Celebration
Chorus, led by tutor Judy Seeger, welcomed the audience with a
rendition of “Lift Every Voice and Sing”—one of the most cherished
songs of the African American Civil Rights Movement and often
referred to as the Black National Anthem—and encouraged
everyone in the auditorium to lift their voice and sing together.
“I lift every voice and sing
Till earth and heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise,
High as the listening skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us,
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,
Let us march on till victory is won”
THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | SPRING 2016 15
��TUTOR VIEW
A REFLECTION ON
by Eva Brann (H89)
There are two ways to go about almost all things that I know of:
You can just go at it or you can think about what you’re doing.
Which first? Well, “thinking about” can come at either end.
“Before” is surely a good time. Students often tell me that they
want to “change the world,” “make a difference”— and seem a
little nonplussed when I ask “for the better?” Yet nothing is more
in need of prudence (= pro-vidence = foresight = imaginative
thinking-things-out) than inducing change.
But so is “after,” a good time, that self-debriefing when you
ask yourself: What did I think I was doing? What unintended
consequence have I called down on the beneficiary-victim of my
deeds —particularly of the kind of action called service?
PHOTO: TOM HOLLYMAN, GETTY IMAGES
THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | SPRING 2016 17
�TUTOR VIEW
“
ervice” is a strange word. It’s derived from the Latin
servitium, “slavery.” And that makes sense. Our chief
service is in “The Service,” the Armed Forces. The
primary law of the military is to obey unconditionally1 and immediately. Here’s another word with a
hidden meaning: “to obey” is from Latin ob-audire,
“to listen to.” (The German word Höriger, literally
“one who listens,” means someone subservient to
another’s bidding—a slave.)
It gets stranger. We have no draft; people
enlist—voluntarily. The Service is voluntary.
“Voluntary” means “of one’s own free will
(voluntas).” Service-men and women freely lay
their life on the line—for wages hardly commensurate with the possible sacrifice.
I think something similar holds for all serious service. Our peaceful civil life depends largely on service, that is, on a sort of self-enslavement. Being
voluntary, it is willingly free, that is, unpaid, and
being serviceable it is obedient to, listens to, makes
That drum major instinct is the desire to
march out front in the parade, to be seen
in the lead of doing good, to shine with
virtue. King, however, tells his flock to be
great by Jesus’s new norm: He “who is
greatest among you shall be your servant.”
itself subservient to, the needs of others. The actual
labor performed may be practically simple, as simple
as ladling out soup, but the two notions involved
are conceptually complex in their very entanglement.
This little essay is supposed to be written under
the aegis of the Reverend Martin Luther King’s sermon “The Drum Major Instinct.” This sermon adds a
third notion to service, besides those of freely giving
up one’s freedom to serve others: That drum major
instinct is the desire to march out front in the parade,
to be seen in the lead of doing good, to shine with
virtue. King, however, tells his flock to be great by
Jesus’s new norm: He “who is greatest among you
shall be your servant.” The Greek text of the New Testament, I might inject here, always says doulos “slave”
and douleuein “to serve as a slave,” to be least.
18 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 016
Yet King also assures his flock that they need
not give up their desire to feel important. He tells
them that they don’t have to know Plato, Aristotle
or Einstein to be good servants. In the interests
of carrying them along, he even suppresses Jesus’s
reputation as a learned young rabbi. His point is:
Jesus “just went around serving and doing good.” I’m
not so sure it works so simply for us; the drum major
instinct, the third notion, has its dangers, which
vibrate through King’s homily.
Before I conclude, here’s a quotation that makes
all my points, linguistic and conceptual at once:
For brothers, you have been called to freedom; only
do not use freedom as a jumping-off place for the
flesh, but by caring-love serve (dia tes agapes douleuete) one another (Galatians 5:13).
So now I’ll introduce a fourth notion, the one to
which I can wholeheartedly subscribe. I found its
formulation in a speech quoted by the contemporary
American novelist I most admire, Marilynne Robinson: 2
…Love knows no servitude. It is that which gilds
with liberty whatever it touches…
Service is to people in need from those who have
the means. It is, ipso facto, top down, from haves to
have-nots, from benefactors to beneficiaries who are
not required to say thank you or to return the favor.
The service, if individual, is—except when delivered
with bumptiously oblivious energy—fraught for the
giver with some residual embarrassment about the
“Lady Bountiful Syndrome” and with some resentful
submission on the part of the beneficiary. And if it
issues from a faceless organization, there’s always
the regulatory hand in the welfare glove and its complementary effect of entitled dependency—unless…?
Unless it’s done as the Reverend Henry Ward
Beecher says: with love, which nullifies the servitude
in service and transmutes the labor of service into
the work of love. This love is not sappily sentimental. It’s anything but unconditional. It has judgment
behind it and withdrawal as a possibility. It’s cheerfully impure: ready to rejoice in its own virtue and to
revel in its achieved effects—as King says it may. But
all that’s on the side.
At the center is interest in and liking for the
people or the place served. “Interest” is my favorite word: from Latin inter-esse, “to be among, to be
there with” the world. “Liking” to me means “Love
toned down for permanence, reliable affection.” It
�can have its moments of sheer being-in-love, but is
more stable than romance.
Since I’m a tutor, there’s got to be a little—
obliquely administered—lesson. It’s this: One, service
is to be done with simplicity and to be reflected on
with subtlety. Two, serve only what you can and do
love.3 Then listen for and freely obey its demands.
Such service may well turn out to be the delight of
your life, even if it’s not unimpeachably esthetic. I’ve
baby-sat two generations of boys (my oldest friend’s
sons and grandsons). Of course, that service included
diaper change. While at it, I often reflected on the
indubitable fact that something so smelly could be so
sweet. It was, of course, the effect of a labor of love.
A last point: it is a fair question where there is
room for leadership in this view of service as selfsubjection—the leadership not of King’s preening
drum major, but of a modest initiator. Well, guessing
what is truly wanted, judging what is in fact needed,
is surely a part of self-dedicated service, and that is
leadership. Students have occasionally asked me how
in their first, probably small-scale, environments as
alumni they can lead, how they can effectively apply
their education to serve their, as-yet-small, world. (My
own faith is mostly in small worlds, the best venues
for humanly efficacious service.)
Here’s a paradigm. Post a notice: “Would anyone
like to read some poetry together?” Give time, place,
possible poem, and promise cookies (essential). Presto,
you’re a founder, the founder of the kind of minuscule
community that does actual good. So you’ve led and
served by daring to be out front. Now do the same
by resolving to be within (interesse), to be within as
a mole, so to speak—a mole being both a burrowing
animal that digs out underground corridors and an
internal spy who prepares clandestine reforms.
One, service is to be done with simplicity
and to be reflected on with subtlety. Two,
serve only what you can and do love. Then
listen for and freely obey its demands.
There is one exception: If the command breaches a
higher law of morality.
HIP / ART RESOURCE, NY
1�
In her book of essays, The Givenness of Things, p. 170
(2015). The speech is by Henry Ward Beecher, an abolitionist and brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle
Tom’s Cabin.
2�
My colleague, Peter Kalkavage, recalled an episode from
The Twilight Zone that features the dangers of a hasty rush
to serve, as well as of ambiguous language. Aliens land
on earth, bringing a book of which only the title has been
translated: To Serve Man. Some eager-beaver do-gooders
are preparing to board the spaceship for service in outer
space. Other earthlings, who’ve been examining the volume
more closely, come running: “Don’t go! It’s a cookbook!”
3�
THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | SPRING 2016 19
�20 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 016
�I N S A N TA F E
ROOSEVELT
THE
REFORMER
SANTA FE’S NEW PRESIDENT
HITS THE GROUND RUNNING
BY LESLIE LINTHICUM
MARK ROOSEVELT HAS ALWAYS BEEN A MAN IN A HURRY.
Elected to the Massachusetts legislature in 1986, three
years after graduating from law school, he pushed
through gay rights legislation that had languished for
decades and overhauled the state’s public school
system. Not yet 40, he became the Massachusetts
Democratic nominee for governor in 1994. After getting
outspent by six to one and beaten by the Republican
incumbent, William Weld, Roosevelt dived back into
public service as an education advocate and with two
challenging rehab projects: taking over the Pittsburgh
public schools and resurrecting shuttered Antioch
College in western Ohio. Roosevelt describes both
projects as “really, really rough,” with institutions in
immediate crisis and communities in deep dissent.
Roosevelt is now 60 and, on the job since January as
the president of the St. John’s Santa Fe campus,
he says he’s exactly where he wants to be.
THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | SPRING 2016 21
�S
itting in his airy Weigle Hall office
surrounded by books and overlooking high desert scenery, the lifelong
fixer of broken systems is ready to
become a salesman for liberal arts
education—and especially the rigorous and particular brand that is
offered at St. John’s. “Who have I been before in
my life? I’ve been a reformer. That’s who I am,” says
Roosevelt. “So now I have to be a little bit more of
an evangelical. A seller of a gospel. Because that’s
really what St. John’s needs. It needs more people
to be aware of what it does and how powerful it is.”
Coming to an institution that isn’t essentially broken is a refreshing change for Roosevelt, an avid
reader and historian who also has a fondness for
Santa Fe since eloping there in 2005 and staying for
five months. “I never hesitated in wanting the job,”
says Roosevelt. “It just felt so completely right for
me at this point in my life.”
Roosevelt taught at Brandeis while in Massachusetts and at Carnegie-Mellon during his tenure as
22 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 016
Pittsburgh school superintendent. “So being part of
a larger community of learners, of aspiring learners,
really appeals to me,” he says.
His wife Dorothy and their nine-year-old daughter,
Juliana, have joined him in Santa Fe. “I know this
sounds trite. It is trite,” he says. “But we do feel like
we’re coming home.”
Roosevelt will begin to preach the gospel of St.
John’s at a time when the liberal arts are being
assailed by economic analyses that measure the
value of an ever-more-expensive college education
against future earnings, by collegiate trends away
from core curricula and toward non-academic amenities and by the question of whether college actually
teaches much. He is dismissive of the idea that to
be more attractive to 18-year-olds, colleges should
throw out general education requirements and allow
free-range grazing among electives. Or that colleges
should lower expectations so students don’t struggle.
Roosevelt jumps up from his desk and retrieves a
volume from one of the new shelves recently added
to the president’s office to house part of his collec-
�ROOSEVELT
ON READING
“� HO HAVE I BEEN
W
BEFORE IN MY LIFE?
I’VE BEEN A REFORMER.
THAT’S WHO I AM.”
tion of some 4,000 books. It is Academically Adrift,
by Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa, which uses data
from the Collegiate Learning Assessment to track
the academic gains of students at four-year colleges
and universities. The authors concluded that nearly
half of students learned nothing in their first two
years of college and about one-third had learned
nothing after four years. “Not a little,” Roosevelt
stresses. “But nothing.”
Although he emphasizes that he has a lot to learn
about the college, Roosevelt believes St. John’s can
find greater success standing in opposition to alarming educational trends. “I think that St. John’s deals
“[Reading] plays a huge part
in my life. Our own worlds,
our own individual lives are
almost by definition very
limited in their scope. We
can only know so many
people. We’re limited by
our personalities. Reading
explodes all of that. I think
reading can also make you
feel much less alone. I think
especially younger people,
some of the emotions and
thoughts and feelings you
have, you wonder, ‘Am I the
only one thinking or feeling
this?’ And reading should
make you feel not alone in
that aspect. I wouldn’t know
what it would be like not
to read. And I actually find
myself, like during this move
when everything’s been very
frenetic, I feel something
missing and suddenly I realize
I’m not reading. I can feel it
like an absence. I also tend
to get too preoccupied with
my own life if I’m not reading.
There’s something about
reading that takes you out of
your own life and gives you
perspective.”
THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | SPRING 2016 23
�ROOSEVELT
ON LINCOLN
“I’m a Lincoln fanatic,” says
Roosevelt, gesturing to
shelves crammed with books
on the 16th president. “He’s
a wonder to me. One, how
much he suffered. And how
much he tried to do the right
thing, I believe, all the time.
I find criticism of Lincoln to
say much more about the
criticizer than about Lincoln.
I find no evidence that he
didn’t try to move on slavery
as aggressively as he could,
given the circumstances.
And then there’s just the
overwhelming decency
of the man. He was so
unpretentious. I know of no
greater writer in America.
Totally self-taught. Lincoln’s
second inaugural, which I still
think are the greatest words
ever spoken by an American,
is this magnificent, complex
theological document.”
“� T. JOHN’S DEALS IN DEEP,
S
DURABLE THINGS IN AN
ERA THAT IS ATTRACTED
TO MORE GLITTERY,
SUPERFICIAL THINGS.”
in deep, durable things in an era that is attracted to
more glittery, superficial things,” he says. “The fear—a
fear I don’t happen to share—is that it’s so against the
prevailing winds of the dominant culture that it has
lost its relevance. I have exactly the opposite feeling,
which is that the dominant culture needs things like
St. John’s to remind it of what matters more.”
In addition to raising money and being conscious
of costs, Roosevelt says his most immediate task is
to help attract more applicants and build enrollment
on the Santa Fe campus. The college as a whole, he
says, can do more to spread the word to high school
students, parents, and college counselors so that St.
John’s is on the radar of many more students who
might find it to be a good fit.
“I think there’s a certain frustration here that we
haven’t been as successful as we might in telling
people who and what we are,” says Roosevelt. “So
one of the things that I believe I have been hired to
do is be an aggressive proselytizer for what there is
here. And that is a very comfortable role.”
Maxwell King, the executive director of the Pittsburgh Foundation, who worked with Roosevelt in
Pittsburgh, has no doubt Roosevelt is up to the
challenges of raising money and aggressively promoting the merits of St. John’s. He once went with
Roosevelt to a donor looking for funding to launch
The Pittsburgh Promise, a scholarship fund for the
Pittsburgh Public Schools graduates that was Roosevelt’s creation. They went in thinking they might
get $10 million and came out with $100 million. “He
is really persuasive and collaborative,” says King.
“Another of Mark’s great attributes is persistence.
He does not give up.”
24 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 016
�ROOSEVELT
ON ROOSEVELT
Roosevelt is the greatgrandson of President
Theodore Roosevelt and,
like many descendants of
famous people, he has had
a complicated relationship
with the connection,
especially wanting to avoid
the appearance of selfaggrandizement. “But yet,”
Roosevelt says, “I like the
fact that the three famous
Roosevelts were mostly
people I would want to be
associated with and mostly
did things of which I am
proud. So I guess I’ve come to
a point as I’ve aged of being
willing to see myself as an
inheritor of a tradition that
I’m happy to be a part of.”
THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | SPRING 2016 25
�26 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 016
�SUCCESS STORIES
A PLACE
WHERE
EVERYONE
MATTERS
by Bob Keyes
A fourth grader
hones his skills
during a writing
and photography
field trip.
Heather Davis (SF01) felt the pull
of public service when she first
felt the pain of a broken world.
A friend suffered a violent assault
while studying abroad, and a veil
of innocence fell away.
avis was studying ancient astronomy at a sheltered
campus, nestled in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo
Mountains, while people around the world, including
someone very dear to her, suffered as victims of violence,
oppression, and prejudice. Shocked and ashamed at
her privileged life, she committed herself to doing
something to alleviate at least a little of the suffering
in the world. Davis learned the ideals of a good, just,
and virtuous society at St. John’s, and put those lessons
into practice with community-building work at nonprofit
organizations in New York City, Austin, Texas, and, now,
Portland, Maine. “I’ve always had a bias toward action,”
says Davis. “I was always interested in what good and
virtue mean in the real world.”
PHOTO: MOLLY HALEY
THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | SPRING 2016 27
�Davis is executive director of The Telling
Room, a nationally recognized writing center
on the Portland waterfront that empowers
students and young adults, many of them
immigrants and refugees, with communication tools to succeed in school, at work,
and in the world. She teaches students to
express themselves in their own words, with
confidence, conviction, and clarity. She turns
shy, quiet kids into storytellers.
Last fall, Davis stood beside First Lady
Michelle Obama at the White House, where
she accepted a National Arts and Humanities Youth Program Award, the nation’s
highest honor for an after-school arts
program. The White House recognized The
Telling Room’s Young Writers and Leaders
program as a national model for its effectiveness in helping refugees and migrant
youth assimilate American life and culture
by engaging in the arts and humanities. It
serves 45 international, multilingual students, who collectively speak 20 languages.
Among its successes is a 100-percent
college-acceptance rate. There’s a long wait
to get in, and Davis hopes to turn the publicity of the White House award into funding
to expand the program.
The work is timely. With the backdrop of
the ugly national discourse about immigration, The Telling Room personalizes the
issue by helping Maine’s newest residents
tell their stories in their own words and
voices, neighbor to neighbor. “We have the
unique opportunity to let people know who
these kids are, who their families are, and
what they’ve been through,” says Davis.
Davis grew up in Easton, Maryland, in a
home largely without books, the daughter
of parents who were not readers. The school
and town library expanded her horizon
and imagination, and turned her into a
bookworm. “My favorite things were always
talking about reading and writing, and talk-
MOLLY HALEY
SUCCESS STORIES
Heather Davis (SF01) works with a young writer during a workshop.
“� was always interested in what good
I
and virtue mean in the real world.”
ing about books.” She applied for admission
to one college: St. John’s, Annapolis, just
45 minutes from her home. She enrolled in
1997, and transferred after her freshman
year to the Santa Fe campus. She thrived
in the relaxed lifestyle of the Southwest,
while studying Plato, Homer, and Aristotle.
Her junior year, she got a job helping other
students improve their writing by reviewing their papers and offering tips, ideas,
and feedback. “I just loved it,” says Davis. “I
couldn’t believe it was a job I got paid for.”
After St. John’s, she earned her master’s
from Goddard College, a progressive liberal
arts college in Vermont, where she specialized in transformative language arts. After
28 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 016
college, she searched for work with meaning
as a tutor and volunteered on a crises hotline. She joined the Peace Corps, but left her
assignment in Haiti early because of illness.
She cast a wide net, and toyed with environmental education as her path, but nothing
stuck until she started teaching writing to
kids. She landed at the Harlem Children’s
Zone in New York, where something clicked.
“It was magic for me, and I knew that teaching, writing, arts education, and nonprofits
were where I could make a difference and
feel happy and alive doing it,” says Davis. “I
was in love with it, and still am.”
From there, she moved to Austin, Texas,
where she co-founded a youth writing center
�SMITH GALTNEY
SMITH GALTNEY
called Austin Bat Cave and served as senior
grant writer for Creative Action, a nonprofit
arts education organization. She and her
husband moved to Maine in 2008, after the
birth of their first child. She volunteered
at The Telling Room, was hired as a senior
staff member in 2008 and became its director in 2011. In practice, Davis sits side by
side and gets to know her students.
When they land on a memory, experience,
or significant place or person in their lives,
she asks them to write a few sentences. “We
do it until there’s a framework for a story
about something that really matters to them.”
This is The Telling Room model: Writers tutoring students one on one, coaxing
stories, and building confidence through
self-expression. It’s hard when working with
kids from different cultures, and harder still
when many students are homeless, living
in poverty, or suffering from mental health
issues. “Though in the moment, when sitting
with a kid to talk about their lives and work
on the writing process together, it’s pretty
much just you and that kid connecting as
human beings, which is an incredible experience,” says Davis.
It was front-page news in Maine when
The Telling Room received its award from
the White House. The coverage generated
dialogue in the community and commentary
on newspaper websites, much of it racist
and derogatory. Davis urged her staff to
resist answering the commentators directly.
Instead, she told them to keep doing their
jobs. The best answer is teaching kids to
write and publishing their stories. She told
them what she learned years ago at St.
John’s: “You are participating in the discussion. You are taking a stance, and you are
acting on your beliefs, which are that the
world should be a just, peaceful place where
everyone matters, and everyone has access
to what they need.”
Clockwise from top left: First Lady Michelle
Obama presents a National Arts and Humanities Youth Program Award to student Ibrahim
Shkara and Executive Director Heather Davis
(SF01) for The Telling Room’s Young Writers and
Leaders program; Telling Room staff members
Heather Davis (SF01) and Andrew Griswold
stand with student Ibrahim Shkara and his
brother at the Capitol building; Ibrahim Shkara’s
mother and younger brother on their way to the
National Arts and Humanities Youth Program
Award ceremony in Washington, D.C.
“� e have the unique opportunity
W
to let people know who these kids are,
who their families are, and what
they’ve been through.”
THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | SPRING 2016 29
�BIBLIOFILE
JOHN SIFTON (A96)
Uncovering
Abuses of Power
The world Sifton
works in is permeated by a new kind
of violence—its two
sides are terrorism
and the so-called
war on terror.
W
hy do humans engage in violence?
Why do people find it difficult to kill
other people? What is terrorism? Why
are we so fascinated by war? These
are some of the questions that John
Sifton (A96) strives to answer in Violence All Around
(Harvard University Press, 2015). Working with Human
Rights Watch, he has spent time in troubled spots
throughout the world: Afghanistan during the American
invasion, Egypt shortly before the Arab Spring, and
around Africa and Europe searching for the CIA’s secret
detention centers. He combines his personal observations and experiences with philosophical reflections and
historical analysis in this exploration of violence.
Sifton’s book is filled with heart-piercing descriptions of war’s devastating effects on families, cultures,
parents and children, cities and villages—those we
know as victims of violence as well as those who
perpetrate violence. His accounts of visiting sites in
war-ravaged Afghanistan, before September 11 and
the subsequent attacks on Afghanistan by the U.S.,
open the book and set the very personal tone.
Violence is pervasive, from our creation myths (Cain
and Abel, Osiris and Set) to symbols like the Christian cross, and even our white-picket fences (which
come from the French word piquet, “to prick”). The
world Sifton works in is permeated by a new kind of
violence—its two sides are terrorism and the so-called
war on terror. While this battle follows traditional
patterns of military advance and retreat, of political
persuasion and strategic uses of power, of religious
fervor and the justification of certainty, it also
embraces new kinds of alliances, intelligence activity
of previously unknown ferocity, new technology, and
weapons that take war to a new level of impersonality.
As Sifton observes, opportunities for abuses of power
are abundant.
A fascinating focus of this book is Sifton’s long
investigation into the treatment of prisoners on all sides
of the terrorism conflicts. It’s important, he notes, for
humanitarian aid work to be understood as neutral
politically; the aim is to uncover abuses and recommend actions to rectify them. In 2004 and 2005, Sifton
tried to find out what was happening with missing
CIA detainees; in addition to Guantanamo, there were
a number of locations where terrorism suspects and
other persons of interest were held and, presumably,
questioned. He concludes that there were probably CIA
detention centers in Poland and Bulgaria, at least, but is
30 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 016
unable to prove it conclusively. He picks up the threads
several years later while working as a consultant for
an international law group. His research rivals that of
the journalists he often meets with from the New York
Times and other major media outlets, and his account
is cinematic in its detail—meetings in smoky cafes in
Kabul and in tiny, cold police offices in Warsaw.
In any discussion of violence, one must confront
the idea of nonviolence. Sifton traces back the history
of nonviolence, from Gandhi to Jesus, Vardhamana
(founder of the Jainist religion), and the Buddha;
he observes that while these leaders all promoted
nonviolence (indeed, devout Jainists today wear masks
to avoid inhaling germs or insects), these teachings
seem to find little staying power in the real world. For
instance, while many early Christians were pacifists
and mystics who tended to withdrawal from the
greater world, those of the later Roman Empire, when
Christianity became the official religion, were deeply
engaged in politics. The Catholic Church was an
incredibly powerful political entity, which required using force to achieve its ends. When religion enters the
political realm, it seems the ideals get re-directed and
pragmatism takes hold. Sifton is astute in his analysis
of the paradox, calling on philosophers from Plato to
Descartes to Wittgenstein (and Reinhold Niebuhr, his
own grandfather).
In a world permeated with violence, what role do
human rights organizations play? The book summarizes the discussion within Human Rights Watch about
the possible effect of the group’s support of or opposition to the invasion of Iraq; human rights groups hold
to the tenet that they must remain neutral, judging
only whether a war is fought justly, not whether the
conflict itself is just. Sifton’s ideas on this point and
on his mission are nuanced. While it’s possible to see
the work as invoking “sentimentality,” he also suggests
that in documenting and publicizing abuses, these
groups can “wake the giant” and probe the consciences
of nations into rectifying them. He recognizes, though,
the limits and ironies of such work.
—Charles Green (AGI02)
�Profound Ignorance: Plato’s Charmides
and the Saving of Wisdom
By David Lawrence Levine (Class of 1967)
Lexington Books, 2016
In his new book, Profound Ignorance: Plato’s
Charmides and the Saving of Wisdom, Santa Fe
tutor and former dean David Levine (Class of 1967)
examines Plato’s dialogue and its exploration of
tyranny and Socratic ignorance. Charmides begins
paradoxically; it seeks to have a conversation about
sophrosyne (moderation) with two of Athens’ most
notorious men, Charmides and Critias, who in the
dialogic future are associated with the Thirty Tyrants.
Protagoras: Ancients in Action
By Daniel Silvermintz (AGI01)
Bloomsbury, 2016
The ancient Greek sophist Protagoras (c. 490-420
BC) remains one of the most elusive figures in the
history of philosophy. In the lengthiest surviving
fragment known as the “Great Speech,” Protagoras
argues that virtue is a teachable trait that is common
to all mankind. Despite his upright appearance, his
contemporaries condemned him for having corrupted
his students rather than educating them in virtue.
In his new book, Protagoras: Ancients in Action,
Daniel Silvermintz (AGI01), associate professor and
The Way Back from Broken
By Amber Keyser (SF91)
Carolrhoda Lab, 2015
Amber Keyser’s (SF91) debut young adult novel, The
Way Back from Broken, is the story of 15-year-old
Rakmen and 10-year-old Jacey, who are brought
together by separate traumatic events in their lives.
While spending a summer in the Canadian wilderness,
the two are forced to confront the difficult topic of
death and dying. The book is a slow burn that builds
in intensity as Rakmen and Jacey each struggle to
come to terms with being a survivor and the complex
The dialogue was written after the two became
notorious. The young Charmides, praised as already
possessing all the Athenian virtues, and his guardian
Critias, widely thought “wise,” show their reputations
to be ill-deserved. In addition, Critias thinks himself
a student of Socrates, but, closely examined, his
“Socratic opinions” only show how Socrates’s “beautiful
speeches” can be perverted. Indeed Socrates’s
association with Critias and Charmides was held
against him at his trial. The dialogue can thus be
seen as a defense of Socrates against the corruption
charge, further explicated in the Republic, that Levine
calls “the best commentary on the dialogue.”
director of humanities at the University of HoustonClear Lake, accounts for the conflicted views that
surround Protagoras by showing how a subversive
secret teaching is conveyed between the lines of his
moralistic public teaching. Silvermintz also advances
a provocative argument concerning Protagoras’s
influence on Pericles—the architect of Athenian
democracy—that helps to explain the aristocratic
statesman’s abrupt shift in political allegiance in
support of the poor masses.
emotions—guilt, fear, anger, sadness—that brings. Can
they find healing in the great outdoors? Keyser’s own
personal loss is at the core of the story, as is her deep
connection to the backcountry of northern Ontario.
“Writing this book was part of my own ‘way back from
broken,’” says Keyser. “And although I’ve been told it’s
a tear-jerker, the book’s pages also contain more than
a small portion of hope.”
THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | SPRING 2016 31
�For & About
ALUMNI
Homecoming 2016
Homecoming is a time to
reunite, reconnect, and
reminisce with friends,
classmates, and the college
community. It is also a time
to make new memories,
meet new friends, and share
SJC with the special people
in your life. We invite you
and your friends and family to celebrate Homecoming 2016
in Santa Fe or Annapolis (or both!) this September! Both
campuses offer child-friendly activities and childcare options.
Don’t forget to make your hotel reservations early.
Santa Fe accommodations:
SJC rates offered at Sage Inn,
La Posada, Hotel Santa Fe, and
Drury Inn on the Plaza.
www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/
santa-fe/santa-fe-business-friends
Annapolis accommodations:
SJC rates offered at Historic
Inns of Annapolis and Sheraton
Annapolis Hotel.
www.sjc.edu/friends/businessfriends/#accommodations
CAST YOUR
VOTE
in the 2016 SJC
Alumni Association
Election:
May 16–June 3
This June, alumni will elect
the treasurer, secretary, and six
at-large members of the Alumni
Association Board of Directors,
as well as one alumni-elected
member of the college’s Board of
Visitors and Governors.
Save the Date
Homecoming 2016
September 16-18 in Santa Fe
September 23-25 in Annapolis
St. John’s College Alumni Office
Annapolis
410-626-2531
annapolis.alumni@sjc.edu
Santa Fe
505-984-6114
santafe.alumni@sjc.edu
Alumni are encouraged to cast
your vote using the online or
paper ballots between May 16
and June 3. Or cast your vote
at the All Alumni Meeting
during the Alumni Leadership
Forum on June 5 in Annapolis
(see next page for ALF details).
HOW TO VOTE
In Person:
Alumni Leadership Forum 2016
The Association’s Annual
Meeting will be held during
ALF weekend on Sunday,
June 5, from 9 to 10:30 a.m. on
the Annapolis campus.
32 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 016
Online:
community.stjohnscollege.edu
For an online ballot, login and
click the link under Notice of
Elections and Annual Meeting.
By Mail or Fax:
Request a Paper Ballot
Contact Leo Pickens, Annapolis
director of Alumni Relations,
at 410-295-6926
or leo.pickens@sjc.edu.
Online and paper ballots must
be received by June 3, 2016.
Alumni Association Mission
To strive for the continued
excellence of our college and
fellow alumni by celebrating our
distinctive educational experience,
connecting our community in
efforts toward shared support and
benefit, and fostering a culture
of intellect, generosity, and service.
�7TH ANNUAL
ALUMNI LEADERSHIP
FORUM “To Kindle a Light”
June 3-5, 2016 | Annapolis
The Alumni Leadership Forum
(ALF) is an annual, three-day
event that rotates each year
between the Annapolis and
Santa Fe campuses. Since its
founding in 2010, ALF’s seminars and sessions have brought
together St. John’s alumni to
learn about the current state
of the college and how alumni
can engage with and support
the St. John’s College community, whether through alumni
chapters, as a Class Chair, or
as part of one of the Alumni
Association’s working groups.
Through seminars and workshops, participants of the
2016 ALF will have the opportunity to:
• � evelop tools to support and
D
improve career services
• � iscuss and develop admisD
sions strategies with admissions professionals
• � eceive training in and help
R
formulate social media strategies to build community and
support for the college
And much more
ALF attendees also enjoy a
multitude of social gatherings, seminars, and other
opportunities to catch up with
one another and meet alumni
from other classes. The most
notable of these is the Awards
Banquet held the evening of
the second day of ALF, where
the Association presents
the Volunteer Service Awards
(or “ALFies”) to alumni in
recognition of their leadership
and volunteerism in the
Alumni Community.
To register and for more information, visit sjc.edu/alumni.
Below: Alumni participate in a
workshop at the annual Alumni
Leadership Forum.
PIRAEUS 2016
Thirsting for good conversation?
At Piraeus, St. John’s College
welcomes Johnnies back to the
seminar table. Held on both
campuses and led by tutors,
Piraeus seminars provide
an opportunity to relive the
rigorous classroom experience
over the course of a leisurely
weekend. Named for the port
city that served Athens, Piraeus
brings alumni from all career
paths and geographical areas
back to their educational roots.
Said Thucydides of ancient
Piraeus, “From all the lands,
everything enters.” In that
spirit, we invite you to bring
your voice back to the seminar
table and share in the reflection,
discussion, and community
that Piraeus offers. Upcoming
Piraeus offerings include:
In Annapolis on June 9-12,
tutors Eva Brann (H89) and
Lise van Boxel will lead
seminars on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s
novel Tender Is the Night and
the John Keats poem “Ode to a
Nightingale.” Tutors Tom May
and David Townsend will lead
seminars on Leo Tolstoy’s novel
Anna Karenina.
In Santa Fe on August 5-7,
tutor Grant Franks (A77) will
lead a seminar on James Joyce’s
Dubliners, a collection of 15
short stories that form a sparse
and detailed, yet deeply moving,
tableau of middle-class life in
early 20th-century Ireland.
Recent alumni (2006-2016)
receive a special tuition rate.
On-campus housing is available.
To register online and read more
information, visit sjc.edu/piraeus.
THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | SPRING 2016 33
�ALUMNI NOTES
1964
Julie Wiggenhorn Winslett (A)
writes, “I’m still teaching English
at the University of North Georgia
and enjoying life in the foothills of
the Blue Ridge Mountains. I feel
lucky to be part of several lively
groups of writers and poets who
have inspired me in my writing.
I’ve finally finished my mystery
novel set in Taos and am now
trying to navigate the intricacies of social media marketing.
If anyone knows of an agent or
publisher in New Mexico who
specializes in mysteries set in the
Southwest, e-mail me at juliewinslett@windstream.net.”
1969
Mark Bernstein (A) published an
article in the Drexel Law Review,
Thomas R. Kline School of Law,
Volume 7, Number 2, titled “Jury
Evaluation of Expert Testimony
under the Federal Rules.” In
the article he explains how the
Federal Rules of Evidence have
detrimentally affected the ability
of the jury to find the facts and
created a highly paid cadre of
professional witnesses.
1972
Washington, D.C. The trio caught
up on family, friends, and the infamous McDowell Hall Bell Clapper
Napper Mystery dating from 1970,
among other things. This spring,
Williams will retire from his
college teaching job to temporarily
relocate to D.C. to be closer to his
new grandson and family.
1966
Constance (Bell) Lindgreen (A)
sends a note from France to
say that one of her short stories
was published last year by the
International Club of Bordeaux
and a second will appear in May,
published by the Gascony Writers
Association.
1967
Rebecca Tendler (A) lives in
Philadelphia, where she loves her
work as a psychologist in a private
practice.
1968
Thomas Keens (SF) received the
Robert M. McAllister Faculty
Mentoring Award from the
Department of Pediatrics at
Children’s Hospital Los Angeles
and the Keck School of Medicine
of the University of Southern
California. This prestigious award
is given most years to a faculty
member who “demonstrates the
most effective mentoring through
guiding and nurturing the collegial and professional development
of junior faculty.”
Bob Shimizu (SF) released his
second jazz album, titled “Let’s
Get Together.” The album garnered four stars in Downbeat
Magazine and held a place on the
JazzWeek charts for 10 weeks.
More information can be found at
www.bobshimizu.com.
After 42 years, Irv Williams (A)
reconnected with fellow Johnnies
Christel Stevens (A) and Steve
Hanft (A70) for an afternoon in
Irv Williams (A72), Christel
Stevens (A72), and Steve Hanft
(A70) enjoy a long overdue
reunion in the nation’s capital.
34 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 016
1973
Galen Breningstall (SF) is working
as a pediatric neurologist at Gillette Children’s Specialty Healthcare in St. Paul, Minn. Insights
into his current state of mind can
be obtained at http://childnervoussystem.blogspot.com.
The art and design work of
Howard Meister (A) were part of a
retrospective group exhibit held in
December by the Magen Gallery in
NYC. The exhibit featured works
by the influential Art Et Industrie
gallery between 1979 and 1999.
Meister and the other prominent
Art Et Industrie gallery artists
were interviewed for a forthcoming documentary film on the art
movement.
Frazier O’Leary (SFGI) is still
teaching in D.C. Public Schools
after 45 years and is a member
of the board of the Toni Morrison
Society. He is also a member of
the board and past president of
the PEN/Faulkner Foundation
and is active with the foundation’s
Writers in Schools program.
Nick Patrone (A), above, made the
front page of the Rocky Mount
Telegram for his 4,300-mile
bicycle trek across the United
States to raise funds for multiple
sclerosis research and treatment. This June 1 to August 1 he
is planning a 62-day ride from
Yorktown, Va. to San Francisco,
covering 3,685 miles as part of the
Trans Am ride for Bike the US for
MS. Learn more and donate at
www.biketheusforms.org/cyclists/
detail.asp?cid=823.
1974
Proud Johnnie parent Jena Morris
(SF) writes to say that her son
Jeremy Breningstall (AGI01)
became a student again in September, having been accepted into
a prestigious cross-disciplinary
program at the University of
California at Berkeley. He is part
of a family of Johnnies that also
includes his father, Galen Breningstall (SF73); his aunt, Aimee Morris
(SF79); and uncles Joe Morris
(SF80) and Jack Morris (SF87).
Janet O’Flynn (A) writes, “It’s a
long way from the Piraeus to Portau-Prince, but a group of Johnnies
is trying to make the connection.”
She and Donnel O’Flynn (A73),
Janis Popowicz Handte (A77),
Malcolm Handte (A75), and Aidan
O’Flynn (A05) are working together
to start a new program in rehabilitation science at the Episcopal
University of Haiti. “Several
�other Johnnies have also, of their
generosity, contributed financially.
Estimates of at least one million
persons who are disabled in Haiti
but not receiving therapy show the
problem they are trying to address.
The school is one of the first in
Haiti to offer academic education
in physical therapy, and the only
one to offer academic education
in occupational therapy, both at
the bachelor’s level. Starting an
educational program like this in
a country with few resources is a
daunting challenge. However, this
group of people was willing to read
Hegel, Homer, and Herodotus,
so courage is not lacking.” Read
more about the O’Flynns’ daily
life in Haiti at haitiotptdegrees.
wordpress.com and more on their
project at www.haitirehab.org.
1977
ONE HIKE AT A TIME
1976
Last summer Robert Godfrey (A)
took a bicycle trip from his home
in Oakland, Calif. to Annapolis,
where he concluded his journey
with a dip in College Creek.
Godfrey happily reports that the
water was cool, clear, and full of
little fish—and did not have a
jellyfish in sight.
After being nominated by President Barack Obama, William W.
Nooter (A) was confirmed by the
U.S. Senate in November and
sworn in on December 22 to serve
as an associate judge on the
Superior Court of the District of
Columbia. Nooter served on the
D.C. Superior Court as a magistrate judge since 2000.
Dave Pex (SF) reports that he has successfully completed hiking the entire 2,650-mile Pacific
Crest Trail (PCT). He completed this endeavor over a five-year period, on nine separate trips, hiking
the trail in sections. Pex completed his first section in 2010, a trip on the John Muir Trail of just
under 250 miles in 16 days. The following year he completed a PCT section from northern Oregon
to central Washington. Since then, he had hiked about two sections a year, the longest being from
Cajon Pass, in southern California, to Mount Whitney (14,505 feet, the highest point in the contiguous U.S.). On September 5 he hiked north from Mount Rainier and headed to Canada. Two days
later he reached Monument 78 at the Canadian border. His wife Jill hiked eight miles south from
the Canadian trailhead and met him with celebratory piña coladas.
1977
Jonathan Wells’s (A) second collection of poems, The Man With Many
Pens, was published by Four Way
Books in October 2015. It includes
poems that had been published
previously in The New Yorker,
AGNI, the Academy of American
Poets Poem-a-Day project, and in
other journals.
Acting D.C. Superior Court Chief
Judge Frederick H. Weisberg swears
in William W. Nooter (A76), with
his wife Elissa Free beside him.
1978
The Princeton Friends of Opera, led
by Anne McMahan (SFGI), helped
bring a semi-staged performance of
Ludwig van Beethoven’s sole opera
Fidelio to audiences there. The
performing ensemble was Grand
Harmonie, a Boston-based periodinstrument group focused on classical and romantic repertoire. The
January 23 performance was the
first one with original instruments
in the United States.
1979
Lisa Simeone (A) made a splash at
the Homewood Museum’s Harvest
Ball, which raised money for the
Baltimore museum’s programs
and collections. Her affection
for vintage fashion was noted in
the Baltimore Sun. She was also
featured in Current’s “The Pub”
podcast that addressed the question, Are public media journalists
really all liberals? Listen to the
podcast (#48) at www.current.org.
THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | SPRING 2016 35
�ALUMNI NOTES
After retiring from teaching high
school mathematics, Paul Anthony
Stevens (A) now spends his
time helping family and friends,
reading, playing music, going
to church, riding his bike, and
walking three miles every day.
While recently studying to write
on Plato’s Meno, Stevens learned
that he was born next to the
temple of Zeus in Athens.
1978
Great Books on the Go
1986
1980
Lisa Rosenblum (A) made a huge
career and life change by moving
to Brooklyn, where she is the
new director/chief librarian for
the Brooklyn Public Library. She
is responsible for overseeing the
activities and services offered
at all the system’s 59 branches
as well as the Central Library.
“BPL is doing some amazing
work in meeting the needs of
the community,” she writes. “My
experience working not only as a
library director but also directing
social services in a number of
cities in California was one of the
reasons Brooklyn recruited me.”
James C. White (A) joined the
law firm Parry Tyndall White in
Chapel Hill, N.C. His practice
is evenly divided between
bankruptcy and complex
litigation, and he handled large
lawsuits against banks during the
financial crisis. However, he says
that some of his most satisfying
work involves helping people stay
in their homes, particularly after
wrongful foreclosures.
1984
John L. Bush (SF) won re-election
on November 3 to his third term
on the Blacksburg (Virginia) Town
Council.
In Don Dennis’s (SF) note that
appeared on p. 34 in the fall 2015
issue of The College, the text
should have read “Bohmian” not
Bohemian.
St. John’s makes free (wo)men
from children by means of books
and a balance, but we grow up
through experience. There’s not
an app for that.”
Rita Collins (A) hit the road last summer with her new
traveling bookstore, making appearances throughout
Montana at festivals, fairs, farmers markets, private parties,
and even a galler y opening. She is planning the bookstore’s
itinerar y for 2016, to take it to other states and perhaps
across the countr y. She hopes to run into Johnnies along
the way. “It really is a great way to have a bookstore that
meets people’s needs wherever they happen to be,” she
writes. “Although compact, it can carr y about 600 volumes,
which I keep stocked with a variety from classics to
children’s books to, of course, travel.”
1985
Rob Crutchfield (A82) writes,
“After several years of hard work,
Ruth Johnston (A) has published
her fourth book, Re-Modeling
the Mind: Personality in Balance
(Pannebaker Press, 2015). In it
Ruth outlines a new model of
human personality, based on brain
science, the theories of Carl Jung,
and the Jungian typology of the
Meyers-Briggs personality test.
She uses the model to account for
individual differences in innate
tendencies of thinking, feeling,
and behavior and to explore
the difference those differences
make in life. Jung’s types have
been known and used for many
36 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 016
years, but this book stands out
in articulating the underlying
system which gives rise to them.
One of the book’s most original
and interesting sections deals with
which different types of personality tend to get along best in marriage. Ruth’s debilitating illness is
still unidentified and untreated.
Donations are welcome and can be
made at www.gofundme.com/helpruth-johnston.”
Maggie Hohle (A) writes,
“I moved to Japan after
graduation, wrote nonfiction
for fifteen years there and
fifteen here. My daughter just
returned from Europe, now
with friends from everywhere.
Kristen Baumgardner Caven (SF)
kept busy in 2015. In January,
she wrote lyrics to Franz Liszt’s
Invocation, with pianist Daniel
Finnamore. In March, she blogged
about her trip to Italy with Jennifer
Flynn Israel (A). In September her
novel The Souls of Her Feet came
out in paperback, and she began
hosting “shoe salons.” In September she spoke at Mills College
about chronicling the historic 1990
student revolt and began co-producing “The Heart of the Muse,” a
salon for creatives. In November,
she launched a city-wide reading
group of her book The Bullying
Antidote for 3,000 Oakland, Calif.
readers. (Throughout the year, she
gave talks to parents on “Zorgos,”
the superpower described in this
book.) During the summer, she
was fortunate to spend a weekend
in Santa Fe and visit the campus
for the first time in over a decade,
visiting with Will Fischer (SF) and
Janette Hradecky Fischer (SF85).
Highlights were soaking in mud
with Mike Ryan (SF), the molé
sauce at Pasquales, and (deep
breath!) a 20-minute writing
retreat at Abuquiu Lake. Visit
www.kristencaven.com for all
the details.
1987
Michael R. (Vitakis) Brown (A)
is currently living in Austin,
Texas and hungering to return to
northern California. In late 2014
he was featured in a film on the
American feminist proto-Surrealist Mary MacLane (1881-1929),
about whom he has written and
published several books. Future
book projects include a first-ever
biography and detailed study of
MacLane and a philosophicalspiritual synthesis provisionally
entitled Beyond Fragmentation.
�PROFILE
CLARITY OF
MISSION
By Robin Weiss
Erinn Woodside (AGI)
Leads a Life of Service
JENNIFER BEHRENS
A
fter deployments in Iraq, Afghanistan, and a U.N. peacekeeping mission during the peak
of the Ebola crisis in Liberia,
30-year-old Captain Erinn Woodside (AGI) finds that civilian life, “sitting at
a desk,” makes her antsy. Raised in a Navy
family, Woodside and her two siblings were
homeschooled by their mother. At age 10,
inspired by her grandmother’s work on the
Atlas Rocket Program, Woodside savored
what she calls “astronaut dreams.”
The science curriculum and discipline of a
service academy initially drew Woodside to the United States Air Force
Academy, where she graduated in 2008. “It was the best and worst
time of my adult life,” says Woodside, who found the “very mechanical,
lecture-based” teaching methods disappointing. As one of the 15 percent
of women among four thousand cadets, she endured teasing and insults.
But “living daily with nasty jokes makes you tough,” she says, and the
whole program, “designed to keep you stressed, as a constant state,” was
excellent preparation for deployments.
When cyber warfare was relatively new, her first assignment, as a
communications officer in San Antonio, trained her in cyber development.
Two years later, Woodside volunteered to serve in Iraq and arrived at
Camp Victory Base, a city of fifty thousand within Bagdad, between two
campaigns: Iraqi Freedom and Operation New Dawn. As platoon leader,
working 12 to 18 hours a day with her soldiers in a signals battalion, she
recalls her experience as both wonderful and awful.
Woodside made time to engage with 65 Iraqi girls, ages 4 to 15,
from on and off base, in a popular scouts-like program. However, two
weeks before leaving Iraq, she sustained a percussive brain injury from a
rocket bomb. “We call it ‘getting blown up’,” she says. Though tests found
no brain bleeding, cognitive problems affecting memory and attention
plagued her for years. Firefighter friends took her in and cared for her,
until she was flown back to Texas for months of medical hold.
During her next assignment in Fort Meade, Maryland, Woodside,
dismissing her injury, volunteered for Afghanistan, just nine months after
returning from Iraq. She loved what she calls “the clarity of mission.”
But despite the rewards of working off base 18 hours a day, seven days a
week, she could no longer ignore her symptoms from the blast.
Back at Fort Meade in fall 2012, Woodside received intensive medical
attention at Walter Reed Hospital. Neurological exams revealed lesions
consistent with blast damage; she was diagnosed with a mild traumatic
brain injury. Woodside learned that overwhelming guilt and denial are
common symptoms following trauma. Without a missing limb or bullet
wound, “I felt I was taking resources away from others,” she says. Woodside received a Purple Heart, the military decoration awarded to soldiers
wounded or killed while serving.
In summer 2014, after hearing an ad on NPR, she applied and jumped
into the St. John’s Graduate Institute while still an active duty officer.
Three GI segments later, she volunteered to serve in Liberia. “It’s one
of the poorest countries in the world, just this side of a failed state,” she
says, noting that it has only five paved roads and little to no hydro and
electrical infrastructure. Woodside felt welcomed as the only woman in
her “truly global” team, representing at least 10 countries and five religions. With “no touching, no physical contact,” they tracked the spread of
Ebola, while living alongside, interviewing, and educating locals.
In her fourth GI segment, Woodside values “the soft skills” gained
from the St. John’s curriculum. “The heart of the program, to suspend
pre-conceived notions and look at something from a different perspective, to withhold judgment” creates, for her, “a similar mindset to
deployment. The openness of mind that the program fosters produced
the very skills I needed in Liberia and elsewhere.” She tolerates no
excuses for fear-based ignorance, and loves to shatter stereotypes. “If
there is one thing I’ve learned, both in the world and at St. John’s, it’s
that there is so much gray.”
THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | SPRING 2016 37
�ALUMNI NOTES
around the country, and it has won
several awards, including First
Prize for the Providence Film Festival Award at the Rhode Island
International Film Festival.” More
information is available at www.
happygramthemovie.com.
Joyce Turner (A) moved back to
South Carolina last year, though
she regularly returns to Iowa,
where she still works for the
Writers’ Workshop. Last fall she
taught composition as an adjunct
lecturer in South Carolina and is
currently working on a novel and
some nonfiction projects. “I miss
the St. John’s Coffee Shop, waltz
parties, and long walks through
the bricked streets of Annapolis,”
she writes. “Please feel free to
drop me a note if you’re planning
to be in the Charlotte, N.C. area.”
Max Ochs (AGI) released a collection of 65 poems titled Just Caws.
Daniel Reilly (SF) is beginning his
10th year with the National Democratic Institute, a D.C.- based
NGO that provides democracy and
governance support in challenging
environments around the world.
He enjoys his work on operational
security for National Democratic
Institute missions and offices.
Now based in Maryland, Reilly
and his wife Seheno are celebrating 13 years of marriage and have
two daughters, Diamondra (8) and
Holisoa (5), and three guinea pigs.
1988
Elaine Pinkerton Coleman (SFGI)
has two books scheduled for
upcoming release: Santa Fe on
Foot (Ocean Tree Books) and All
the Wrong Places (Pocol Press), a
suspense novel set in the Southwest. Look for her musings on
adoption and life on her blog www.
elainepinkerton.wordpress.com.
Erin Milnes (A) reports that she is
now creative director for Catchword Branding, a national naming
firm based in Oakland, Calif.
“Being a generalist with language
skills is key for this work, so
naming could be a great fit for
Johnnies, particularly if they are
into language, symbols, messaging, semantics. I love it!”
1990
Kilian James Garvey (SF) gave
a TEDx talk last October on
“Geography of Morality.” The
talk, a non-data discussion of
the empirical research he does
analyzing the pathogen prevalent
theory of human values, is
available on YouTube.
Fritz Hinrichs (A) finished two
videos on Homer’s Iliad and
Odyssey, which are both available
on YouTube.
1993
Erika Suski (A) welcomes Johnnies
to drop her a line at P.O. Box 1133,
Dumfries, VA 22026.
1996
1991
Kemmer Anderson (AGI91) made
his fourth trip to the Holy Land.
1992
research into what had caused her
mammogram to miss her cancer
until it had metastasized.” They
discovered that mammograms are
ineffective for the 40 percent of
women with dense breast tissue
who account for 70 percent of
invasive cancers, missing 50 to
75 percent of cancers in these
women. “This is the main reason
that breast cancer screening
has failed to reduce the rate of
metastatic breast cancer in the
U.S., and it is the source of neverending controversy surrounding
mammography. Happygram is a
documentary about this issue that
I started before Hallie died. It has
been screened at film festivals
Kemmer Anderson (AGI) and his
wife traveled to Israel and Palestine in October. In Bethlehem
he read the poem “Bethlehem
2002” from his new book Songs of
Bethlehem: Nativity Poems. His
poem “Mary of Nazareth: 2015”
was published in Sojourners in
January 2016, and he is currently
working on a new set of poems.
Julie Marron (SF) writes, “Hallie
Leighton (SF) was one of my
closest friends. In 2010, she was
diagnosed with metastatic breast
cancer after several years of mammograms. She died in 2013 at the
age of 42. After she was initially
diagnosed, the two of us conducted
38 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 016
Loreen Keller (AGI) completed her
doctoral studies at Northeastern
University and was awarded her
Ed.D. in September 2015. Her
dissertation “Adjunct Faculty
Engagement: Connections in
Pursuit of Student Success” was
published in October.
Jake McPherson (SFGI) started a
new job as the consumer affairs
chief for Hawaii’s Department
of Health’s Adult Mental Health
Division.
1997
Heidi (Jacot) Hewett’s (A) first
story The Curious Case of the
Clockwork Doll (18thWall Productions) was published in January
as part of a new anthology of
Sherlock Holmes mysteries. Read
more on her blog http://hjhreader.
blogspot.com.
�2000
Leo Vladimirsky (A) had two
more short stories published:
“Dandelion” on Boing Boing and
“Squidtown” in the January/February 2016 issue of the Magazine
of Fantasy & Science Fiction.
INSPIRING CHANGE
2002
MAXIMILIAN FRANZ, THE DAILY RECORD
James Marshall Crotty’s (SFGI)
feature-length documentary
Crotty’s Kids has secured global
distribution through Passion River
Films. Learn more at www.passionriver.com/crottys-kids.
2003
Melanie Santiago-Mosier (A) (center) was named one of 2015’s
Leading Women by The Daily Record, Maryland’s premier legal and
business newspaper. Leading Women recognizes women age 40
or younger for the tremendous accomplishments they have made
so far in their career. They are judged on professional experience,
community involvement, and a commitment to inspiring change.
An award ceremony was held December 7 in Annapolis; her profile
appeared in the December 8, 2015 issue of The Daily Record in
its special Leading Women publication, available online at http://
thedailyrecord.com/leading-women/melanie-santiago-mosier.
Jane McManus (A), who is still
covering the NFL for ESPN and
a columnist for espnW, has taken
on two new roles. In December
she began co-hosting a national
radio show on Saturdays for ESPN
Radio and is co-teaching the
sports journalism class this spring
at the Columbia Graduate School
of Journalism. In other news, she
finally hung up her skates after
seven years of playing roller derby
and is on the lookout for another
challenge.
1998
Richard Field (SF) published From
the Sands of the Arena: Ancient
World Trivia for the 21st Century.
The book contains trivia from
three eras: ancient and classical
Greece, Hellenism, and Republican and Imperial Rome.
2001
Jonathan Culp (A) is now an
associate professor of politics at
the University of Dallas. He and
his wife Natalie and their five
children live in Irving, Texas.
Kagan Coughlin (A) is a trustee
at Base Camp Coding Academy,
which provides Mississippi’s underadvantaged youth with vocational
training in computer programming
to support the technology needs of
local and regional employers. The
charitable, nonprofit organization
was recently awarded a grant to
help train the state’s next generation of software developers.
Wilson Dunlavey (A) had a momentous year. He graduated from the
University of California, Berkeley
School of Law last spring and
defended his Ph.D. thesis at the
Humboldt-Universitaet in Berlin
in September, earning him the
dubious distinction of receiving
two doctoral degrees in the same
calendar year. His dissertation
examines the history of German
public diplomacy, cultural diplomacy, and nation-branding in the
United States in the late 19th and
early 20th centuries. He is now a
civil rights and class action attorney at the firm Lieff, Cabraser,
Heimann, and Bernstein in downtown San Francisco.
Alexandria Poole (A) joined Elizabethtown College as assistant
professor in the Department of
Politics, Philosophy and Legal
Studies. She teaches introductory
courses in ethics and philosophy,
as well a course in comparative environmental philosophy:
perspectives from the Americas.
She also is associate managing
editor of Environmental Ethics,
a founding journal of the field.
Her primary research interests
are comparative environmental
philosophy, environmental ethics,
and sustainability.
Lewis Slawsky (A) and Alexander Wall (A) have established a
publishing imprint, digest, and
online magazine called Political
Animal, dedicated to elevating the
quality of political discourse in
North America. It also addresses
the subject of politics in a manner
that will be familiar to many
Johnnies, with a special concern
for philosophy and an eye to the
unity of knowledge. Political
Animal welcomes article submissions and book manuscripts from
SJC alumni. Visit them at www.
politicalanimalmagazine.com.
Michael Waldock (SFGI) completed a new novel How I Saved
the British Empire: Reminiscences
of a Bicycling Tour of Great
Britain in the Year 1901 (Ailemo
Books, 2015). He notes that
most of the ancillary characters
and events were real, and he
immersed himself in the year
1901 using the annual versions
of such publications as The
Illustrated London News, Tatler,
The Sphere, among others, to get
timing and content right.
THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | SPRING 2016 39
�ALUMNI NOTES
2004
Suzie (née Vlcek) Lee (SF, EC05)
recently earned a second master’s
degree in nutrition and functional
medicine and is a clinical nutritionist and chiropractic physician in
private practice in Alameda, Calif.
Angus MacCaull (SF) managed to
combine his two passions, food
and writing. His new picture book
for kids, Lawnteel at the Store, is
the story about a young lentil that
faces a tough financial question:
What to buy with your only leaf?
David Penn (SF) and Britt Hofer
(SF) announce the release of their
first wines, under the label Krater.
Inspired by former Santa Fe tutor
John Cornell and many notable
alumni winemakers, they are
thrilled to have wines of their own
to offer to the fray—and be part of
St. John’s’ rich and long connection with wine. Learn more at
kratercellars.com.
After working in the industry for
five years, Eric Schaefer (SF) seized
an opportunity to open up his
own sightseeing company in San
Francisco. SF Adventure Tours is
a one-man operation that offers
unique city tours, Marin County
and Muir Woods tours, and beer
tasting trips. He invites alumni in
the area to come by to say hello.
2006
Norman Allen’s (AGI) play The
House Halfway was named a finalist for the Eugene O’Neill Theatre
Center’s prestigious National
Playwrights Conference, and his
children’s play A Lump of Coal
for Christmas opened at Adventure Theatre in Maryland to rave
reviews. In addition, his essay
“Finding a House that Fits,” which
features his time at St. John’s,
was published in Yes! Magazine.
Constantino Diaz-Duran (A) writes,
“I’m getting married in May to
David Khalaf, an author based
in Portland, Oregon, where I also
live these days. We met two years
ago through the Gay Christian
Network, and I’m grateful to be
able to do life with someone who
shares my faith. We’ve launched
a blog (http://daveandtino.com)
discussing the sometimes complicated issues surrounding Christianity, sexuality, and marriage.”
2007
Charles Kitchen (A) is the Nevada
deputy operations director for
the Bernie Sanders Presidential
Campaign.
James Wrigley (A) lives in North
Conway, N.H. and works for the
Appalachian Mountain Club. On
New Year’s Eve, he and his wife
Courtney celebrated the birth of
their baby, Evelyn Jean Wrigley.
2008
After graduation, Jack Brown
(A) lived and taught in Lebanon
for six months, and then joined
the Peace Corps. While serving
in Senegal, West Africa, he met
Emily, the love of his life. They
moved to Seattle in 2013 and
were married on August 29, 2015
in a delightful affair, with many
Johnnies in attendance. Brown
is a software engineer and looks
forward to buying a house, acquiring pets, and eventually starting
a family.
Kayla Gamin (A) got married in
2014. Later this year, she will
graduate from the University of
Chicago Law School and begin
work at a D.C. government agency.
2009
Marcello Kilani (SF) is the current
Macricostas Professor of Hellenic
Studies at Western Connecticut
State University. This one-year
visiting professorship, endowed by
the Macricostas family, supports
courses in ancient Greek philosophy and culture. Kilani delivered a
public lecture “Ethics and Identity
in a World of Chance” on March 16
at the university.
Left: David Penn (SF04)
crushes the Cabernet
Franc at Krater winery
in Sonoma County.
BRITT HOFER (SF04)
Do you have news to share
with The College? Send your
note, along with your name,
class year, and photo(s), to
thecollegemagazine@sjc.edu.
40 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 016
�2008
Renaissance Woman
Terrill Legueri (SFGI) and Kane
Turner (SFGI) were married on
September 12 in Santa Fe at
Church of the Holy Faith, with
many Johnnies in attendance.
KATHI BAHR
From the left: Ross Hunt (A05,
SFGI10); Clara Terrell (SFGI10);
Ian Dag (SFGI); Terrill Legueri
(SFGI); Stacia Denhart (SFGI);
Kanishka Marasinghe (SFGI10);
tutor Matthew Davis; Lisa Marasinghe (Johnnie by association);
Kane Turner (SFGI); Allison Roper
(SFGI10); John Hobson (SFGI);
and tutor Natalie Elliot.
Laura (Waleryszak) Zak (SF) co-wrote, co-produced, and stars
in the new six-episode series Her Story. Featuring predominantly
LGBTQ women, the first season, which premiered online on
January 19, follows two transgender women in Los Angeles who
had given up on love until chance encounters suddenly give them
hope. Zak plays a reporter with a passion for social change and
an endless curiosity for experiences that differ from her own.
Watch the series and learn more at http://herstoryshow.com.
Kea Wilson’s (SF) first novel is
scheduled for release on August 23
from Simon and Schuster/Scribner. We Eat Our Own is about the
production of an Italian horror
film in the Amazon rain forest in
1979, based loosely on true events.
He says Euripedes, Aristotle,
Dante, and Rousseau were key
touchstones for him as he wrote
the book.
2010
Marianna Brotherton (A) and Jake
Crabbs (A09) were married in Killington, Vt. on June 20. The couple
currently resides in Chicago.
JR Johnstone (SF) recently
accepted a position as a research
coordinator at the Johns Hopkins
Berman Institute of Bioethics.
2011
Brittany (Olson) Johnstone (SF)
will graduate in June from the
University of Denver with an education specialist degree in child,
family and school psychology.
2013
Michael Fogleman (A) writes, “I
am currently a resident at the
Center for Mindful Learning,
where I work, live, and meditate
full time. I began practicing
meditation while at St. John’s,
something that was born out of
my relationship to the books I
was reading. After graduating,
it seemed fruitful to spend even
more time dedicating myself
to that practice. Moreover, the
Center is a very interesting organization. Not only are we what we
call a ‘modern monastery,’ but we
are also a nonprofit, and one that
is run like a start-up organization. I am heavily involved in the
process of seeking a new business
model and putting the skills I
learned at St. John’s to good use.”
THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | SPRING 2016 41
�ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE, GREENFIELD LIBRARY
IN MEMORIAM
Nancy Lewis (H01)
December 7, 2015
Registrar, Annapolis
Nancy Rawlings Lewis (1933-2015), who served for 20 years as
the registrar at St. John’s, Annapolis, died peacefully at her home,
surrounded by family. Born in Washington, D.C. to Nellie Morton
Rawlings and Herbert Lee Rawlings, she spent her childhood in
Forest Glen Park, Maryland and attended the University of Maryland. There she met and married artist Eric Winter and traveled
with him to Juneau, Alaska, where the first of their four children
was born. Two years later they moved to St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin
Islands, where they raised their children in a home they built out
of ruins of the Christensen farm in Estate Tutu. In St. Thomas,
Lewis managed the A. H. Riise art gallery and the Sheltered
Workshop for disabled adults. After the marriage ended, Lewis
moved with the children to Barcelona, Spain, where they settled
for five years in the seaside town of Sitges. There she became part
of a creative international expatriate community.
In 1976, she relocated to Annapolis and joined the staff at
St. John’s, where she worked until her retirement in 1998. She
was on the board of the Friends of St. John’s and a member of
the Caritas Society. In 1984 she married an old college friend
42 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 016
Nancy Lewis (H01) in 1992, working with student Devin Rushing-Schurr (A93)
“Nancy conducted all duties of [the
Registrar’s Office] with astute attention to detail and calm organization.
Her natural grace and her care for
others, especially students, permeated
every part of her responsibilities.”
—Annapolis Dean Pamela Kraus
Fred Lewis; the couple remained together for 31 years. At a
celebration of life service held in McDowell Hall, Lewis was
remembered for her warmth, kindness, humor, and grace. She
is survived by her husband, Fred; two daughters Page Winter
and Leslie Winter Mills; two sons Eric Winter and Cy Winter;
stepson, Freddie Lewis; brother, Herbert Rawlings; eight grandchildren; and four step-grandchildren.
�IN MEMORIAM
Matthew Frame (A73)
July 24, 2015
Known for his sharp wit and
gentle nature, Matthew Albritton Frame (1951-2015) passed
away peacefully at home in
Raleigh, North Carolina. After
a rewarding 30-year career as a
software engineer and systems
architect with IBM, Frame
retired in 2008, and began his
second career as a full-time
bridge professional. His natural
ability to understand and process complex information, and
his extremely logical mind, fueled his success in both careers;
his generosity was evident in his
volunteer work and mentorship
to aspiring bridge players. Two
maxims that Frame lived by
throughout his last year were:
“It’s never too late to do the
right thing” and “Relish every
moment left on this earth.”
In this spirit, he devoted his
abbreviated time to the people
and passions he cherished most,
including his four children
Laura Knox, Mark, Rebecca,
and Susannah; his granddaughter, Allie Knox; six surviving
siblings David, James, Jr., Margaret Lipton, Martha, Ruth, and
Shannah Frame Whitney; and
numerous other relatives.
Jeremy Tarcher
Class of 1953
September 20, 2015
Jeremy Phillip Tarcher (19322015), who founded the publishing house that bears his name,
died at his home in Los Angeles.
Considered a maverick in the
industry, in the early 1960s
Tarcher packaged book deals
for celebrities, including Phyllis
Diller’s Housekeeping Hints and
Johnny Carson’s Happiness Is a
Dry Martini. Later inspired by
New Age thinking about human
potential, he brought California’s counterculture to the
mainstream with such works
as Drawing on the Right Side of
the Brain by Betty Edwards and
The Aquarian Conspiracy by
Marilyn Ferguson. “I published
books I cared about rather than
books people thought would
sell,” he told Publishers Weekly
in 2013. “But it turned out that
there were thousands of readers out there like me.” In the
early 1970s, Tarcher founded
the house, known first as J.P.
Tarcher, specializing in nonfiction books on health, psychology, and New Age spirituality.
Today it is part of the Tarcher
Perigee imprint of Penguin
Random House, the company
where Tarcher remained until
1996. He published numerous
bestsellers, including Women
Who Love Too Much by Robin
Norwood, The Faith of George
W. Bush by Stephen Mansfield,
Bikram’s Beginning Yoga Class
by Bikram Choudhury, and The
United States of Wal-Mart by
John Dicker, among others. He
married the television puppeteer and children’s author Shari
Lewis in 1958 and went on to
produce her Saturday morning TV show for several years
and publish some of her books,
including The Kids-Only Club
Book. The couple also collaborated on a script for an episode
of Star Trek. Tarcher grew up in
a prosperous family of readers, with him as the exception.
After he was rejected by nearly
every other college he applied
to, Tarcher found a home at
St. John’s. In a 1982 interview
with the Los Angeles Times he
recalled, “I would not be what I
am now, where I am now, had it
not been for St. John’s.”
Ernest Heinmuller
Class of 1942
December 5, 2015
Ernest Jean Heinmuller (19212015) was a member of the first
class to graduate from the New
Program at St. John’s College.
Born in Baltimore to Ernest
Richard and Angeline Magne
Heinmuller, he grew up in
Easton, Maryland. In 1943, he
married Donna Hoyt, his high
school sweetheart, and later
joined the U.S. Coast Guard.
He served in three theaters of
WWII as a submarine hunter
off the U.S. coast, troop rescue
in the English Channel during
the invasion of Normandy, and
other assignments in the South
Pacific. His ship was awarded
the Coast Guard Outstanding
Service medal with star and
the Defense medal with star.
At the end of WWII, he and
his wife returned to Easton,
where he opened an office for
Monroe Systems for Business
A portrait of Ernest Heinmuller,
Class of 1942, as a senior
and served as manager and
head of sales for the next 28
years. Heinmuller is survived
by his son H. Hoyt of Alamo,
Texas; his daughter Jodie
Peirce of Chapel Hill, North
Carolina; four granddaughters
Dee, Lynn Heinmuller Fisher,
Shayn Peirce Cottler, and Leyf
Peirce Starling; eight greatgrandchildren; and two greatgreat-grandchildren. Heinmuller
was preceded in death by his
wife, and his daughter Frances.
Amy Kass
August 19, 2015
Tutor, Annapolis
Amy Apfel Kass (1940-2015),
who taught at St John’s in the
early 1970s, died in Washington,
D.C. She grew up in New York
City and earned degrees at the
University of Chicago, Brandeis,
and Johns Hopkins, where she
wrote a history of the great
books movement and founding of
the New Program at St. John’s
College. In 1976 she returned to
the University of Chicago, where
she taught humanities and great
books classes for 34 years. Classes on works by Homer, Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Melville, and
G. Eliot were among the most
popular. She co-founded the “Human Being and Citizen” course,
and taught in the “Fundamentals: Issues and Texts” program.
During her teaching career,
she organized the “Toqueville
Seminars on Civic Leadership,”
and “Dialogues on Civic Philanthropy,” and edited anthologies
of readings on American autobiography, philanthropy, courtship
and marriage, American identity,
and American national holidays,
all widely used in high school
and college classes, workshops
THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | SPRING 2016 43
�and seminars, and by independent readers. She served on the
Council on Humanities for the
National Endowment for the Humanities, and was a fellow at the
Hudson Institute in Washington.
Kass lectured at St. John’s and
was a familiar visitor at Friday
Night Lectures and the question
periods that follow. Whenever
she met students she thought
would thrive at St. John’s she
urged them to consider attending. Many St. John’s alumni
met her in graduate school at
Chicago; some of them and
others have returned as tutors
in Annapolis or Santa Fe. Kass
was the living proof of how very
important like-minded friends
are to St. John’s College as an
institution, to its students, and
to the faculty that make this
their primary home. She is
survived by her husband, Leon
R. Kass, of Washington; two
daughters; four granddaughters;
and hundreds of students whose
lives she helped to shape.
Larry Dutton (SF74)
Terry McGuire (H12)
July 14, 2015
March 6, 2016
Maria Kwong (SF73) shares the
following remembrance about
her friend Larry Roscoe Dutton
(1950-2015): Larry’s life spanned
many realms, from his beginnings in the heart of the Midwest to his years at St. John’s
College, where I and many
others forged a lifelong bond with
him; to his more than 10 years in
Los Angeles, where he lived with
my family, began his practice in
Tibetan Buddhism, and met his
life partner and wife, Sharon
McMillan. Returning to Santa
Fe, they continued to practice
Tibetan Buddhism and furthered the teachings of Chögyam
Trungpa Rinpoche. Those who
loved him remember a man of
many passions, particularly
music, and whose sense of the
absurd informed his wit. A
spiritual, intelligent, kind, caring, and fiercely loyal friend, he
will be deeply missed by those
who knew him.
Theresia “Terry” J. McGuire
(1947-2016), assistant to eight
deans on the Annapolis campus,
passed away from cancer. Terry
joined St. John’s in 1969 as
secretary to the assistant dean.
Her extraordinary talent was
noticed quickly, and she was
singled out to be the dean’s
assistant, beginning with the
deanship of Curtis Wilson, in
1976. She retired in May 2015
after 46 years at the college.
Her powers of organization,
prodigious memory, and gracious professionalism informed
Also Deceased:
John R. Garland, Class of 1950
October 23, 2015
Anne M. Ahern, A69
June 26, 2015
Christopher Gillen, A90
August 24, 2015
Gerald (Jerry) Milhollan,
Class of 1958
September 26, 2015
William Randall Salisbury,
Class of 1962
November 14, 2015
Joseph L. Berkman,
Class of 1951
April 8, 2014
George Gilbert Graham, SF73
December 18, 2015
Edward W. Mullinix,
Class of 1945
December 9, 2015
Jon Sanford, SFGI79
October 20, 2015
Frederick James Blachly,
Class of 1966
November 21, 2015
Jeffrey Frost Burnham, A01
August 2, 2015
William F. Church III,
Class of 1967
September 1, 2015
Paul Ringgold Comegys, Sr.,
Class of 1941
January 13, 2016
Caryl Actis-Grande, SFGI09
November 28, 2015
Ernest C. Hammond, Jr.,
Class of 1962
September 13, 2015
Amy (Carle) Jobes, Class of 1959
August 23, 2015
Michael C. Jordan, A74
January 24, 2016
Susanne Elizabeth Martin, A68
August 14, 2015
Elisabeth Funnell, Class of 1966
October 24, 2015
44 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 016
and fortified the deans in their
duties, from their initiation in
the office to completion of their
terms. Her natural good cheer,
forgiving nature, courtesy,
and uncomplaining fortitude
enriched the spirits of all in
countless ways. She was a force
of benevolent togetherness, for
us as members not only of the
St. John’s community but that
of all living things.
Terry McGuire (H12) with various deans
with whom she had worked. From left:
George Doskow, Eva Brann (H89),
Terry McGuire, Michael Dink (A75),
Pamela Kraus, Sam Kutler (Class of
1954), and Harvey Flaumenhaft.
Jonathon Josiah Orbeton, SF00
November 12, 2015
William Westerman Simmons,
Class of 1948
January 18, 2016
Maryrose Vigna Patrone,
SFGI80
November 2, 2015
Helen Roelker (Sparrow) Sisk,
SF85
October 1, 2015
Royal Parker Pollokoff,
Class of 1947
January 8, 2016
Rina Swentzell, SFGI70
October 30, 2015
Robert (Bo) H. Reynolds,
Classof 1940
November 27, 2015
Eric Daniel Rosenberg, A01
October 14, 2015
Susan Tixier, SFGI03
October 8, 2015
Suzy Ellin Van Massenhove,
Class of 1962
September 7, 2015
Nathan James Walker, A86
January 3, 2014
�PHILANTHROPY
A Lasting Tribute
Donald Esselborn (A80) (1951-1991)
died too young. Twenty-five years after
his death on October 30, his classmates,
led by Charlotte Murphy (A80) and with
help from Steve Edwards (A80), Rebecca
Krafft (A80), Kate McCullough (A80),
Annapolis Director of Alumni Relations
Leo Pickens (A78), and members of the
college’s grounds crew, planted a tree in
Esselborn’s memory on the front campus in Annapolis. The linden basswood,
native to North America, with beautiful,
heart-shaped leaves, stands along the
brick walkway that stretches from Prince
George Street to McDowell Hall. Years
previous at a Homecoming celebration
in Annapolis, Murphy joined with Dante
Beretta (A80) and Josh Kates (A80), and
held a wine tasting in honor of Esselborn.
There they heard stories, often filled with
humor, from fellow classmates and alumni
Great Gift
Edmond Freeman first set eyes on Santa
Fe in the early 1980s, when he and his
wife June stopped there on the way to a
Southern Newspaper Publishers Association meeting in Colorado Springs.
A graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy
in Annapolis, Freeman knew that St.
John’s had a campus in Santa Fe and
made a point to visit. He and June fell in
from other class years. “He had made a
lot of friends through singing and acting
on campus and hanging out at the Coffee
Shop,” says Murphy. “Many students
found comfort in talking with him and
listening to his take on being a Johnnie—
he loved it.”
During the planting ceremony, the
group buried a sugar bowl in the tree
roots, filled with ashes of classmates’
written notes about Esselborn, photos,
his favorite play titles, and sheet music
of beloved songs. Following a rendition of
“People Get Ready” by Curtis Mayfield,
the intimate ceremony concluded with
a moment of silence. “I loved Donald,
and the tragedy of his death has not left
me,” says Murphy. “I had to plant this
tree, and I feel lucky that circumstances
conspired so I could. Trees capture the
abiding strength of love like few other
tributes can.”
love with the city—the Spanish-Native
influences in the architecture, the jogging
and hiking trails, the majestic mountain
backdrop. It was the start of a relationship that culminated in 2015, when June
gave $25,000 to establish the Edmond
Wroe Freeman III Scholarship Fund to
honor her husband’s lifelong love of learning and teaching.
Graduating from high school in Pine
Bluff, Arkansas during WWII, Freeman
always straddled two worlds; while serving as an Ensign on an aircraft carrier,
he was reading Plato and Hume for a
correspondence course in philosophy
from the University of Chicago. He left
the Navy in 1949 to study philosophy
and English at Chicago. After he and
June got married the following year,
Freeman joined his family’s newspaper,
the Pine Bluff Commercial. “At that time
I wasn’t sure whether I was going to
make that my life’s work,” says Freeman. “But as it turned out, that was.”
He served as editor and eventually
succeeded his father as publisher, where
he was known for his curiosity, thirst
for knowledge, and great eye for talent.
One of the paper’s editorial page editors,
Paul Greenberg, won the Pulitzer Prize
in 1969 under Freeman’s editorial direction. “He made people better writers,”
says Freeman’s daughter, Gretchen.
Edmond recently made a second gift
of $25,000 to the fund, and both of their
children have also given to the fund. The
family says that the scholarship criteria
will be set by St. John’s, but Edmond has
a clear vision of the kind of student it
will encourage: “Curious. Open-minded.
Interested in reading. Having a thirst for
knowledge.”
—Jan Schlain
THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | SPRING 2016 45
�JOHNNIE VOICES
MY MOST VALUABLE INVESTMENT:
A MASTER’S DEGREE IN GREAT BOOKS
By Russell Max Simon (SFGI06)
I
n April 2015, I made the final payment on my student loan. I borrowed nearly $21,000—about half
the amount it costs to get a master’s
degree from St. John’s College.
Unless you obtain a professional degree
in a field such as law or medicine, I
believe graduate school to be generally a
waste of time and money. Time should be
spent learning what is needed to get the
job you want by apprenticing or working to gain real-world experience—not to
mention money.
Yet as I make my final payment eight
years into a twenty-year loan for what
many consider to be a glorified philosophy
degree, I can say without hesitation that
my graduate education is the most valuable thing I’ve ever bought.
The most obvious value comes from my
first, most crucial jobs: rungs on the career
ladder given to me by St. John’s alumni or
employers who sought St. John’s graduate
students. An editor who was sick of hiring
journalism school students gave me my
first job as a journalist. A St. John’s alumnus gave me my first job as a marketing
professional, and continues to recruit from
St. John’s. Both employers wanted a St.
John’s grad. Perhaps only one out of ten
employers appreciates my degree, but
they only want someone like me. It made
getting those jobs extremely easy.
Jobs are just the beginning. Here’s
the long answer as to why my St. John’s
education is so valuable.
Americans collectively hold $1.2 trillion
in student loan debt. Most took on that
debt because of a misconception about what
has value. People think education is mainly
about skills transference, yet our education system transfers skills that will soon
be out of date, if they aren’t already. Our
competitive economy moves too fast for an
education based on skills transference.
Yet many people take massive time out
from building their careers and pay tens of
thousands of dollars—or go into debt— to
learn skills that will soon be out of date, or
were never useful in the first place.
Like them, with my undergraduate history degree in hand, I thought that I had
the skills that would help me succeed in
life. If someone had asked me what those
skills were, I couldn’t have identified them.
Soon after finishing undergraduate,
I read Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the
American Mind, a scathing critique of
what liberal education has become in
the past forty years: not a tool to develop
great thinkers, but a means of instilling
openness, which Bloom calls the great
American virtue.
At liberal arts institutions across
America, Bloom observes, every culture is
valid and every idea deserves respect. In
classes such as “comparative politics” or
“comparative religion,” we compare and
contrast republicanism to communism or
Islam to Christianity in a non-judgmental
manner. That is a mistake. In life, everything requires judgment. Some ideas are
less valid than others. Such judgment is
what helps people and companies succeed.
The most difficult question for most
of us in our daily work is what do I do
next? That’s judgment. For menial jobs,
including those occupied by over-educated
graduate interns in the think tanks and
nonprofits of Washington, D.C., where I
live, judgment is not necessary. But as
soon as you achieve a modicum of success
in any industry, judgment becomes essential, including the ability to judge which
ideas are valid, which are idiotic, and
which ones require an honest discussion.
46 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 016
Nearly every creative pursuit, including starting or managing a business,
requires incisive judgment. The typical
liberal arts education, which emphasizes
non-judgmental cultural understanding
and openness to every idea, works against
your chances of succeeding.
Judgment is the first thing that gets
blown up at St. John’s, so that it can be
rebuilt from the ground up. Not all ideas
are considered equally valid; some are just
plain wrong. Not everyone is entitled to
their own unique snowflake of an opinion.
Each great thinker in history became
so in part by calling out some ideas as
wrong, arguing for what they considered
the correct idea. It started with Aristotle
faulting Plato, and continued from there.
A great, three-thousand-yearlong conversation about fundamental questions
regarding the nature of humans, reality,
knowledge, and more, has been ongoing
since the time of the Greeks.
The higher one rises in any profession, the more one must make judgment
calls with which people will disagree. At
the highest levels, most people disagree
with your judgments. Which brings me
to the next skill that St. John’s teaches:
an assurance in your ability to learn new
things, one of the most valuable skills for
succeeding in the economy of the future.
No curriculum keeps up with the pace
of change in today’s world. The skills you
learned in school will be obsolete by the
time you leave. All that matters is your
capacity to adapt.
St. John’s students think they can learn
anything, because of the difficulty of the
readings and their source. Go ahead—
try to read Heidegger. Then try to learn
calculus from Newton’s Principia Mathematica, widely understood as the most
�difficult textbook ever.
St. John’s students learn through the
eyes of the first mover, the first discoverer,
the first thinker. Renaissance artists’
experiments in color inform a painting
class. The replication of experiments by
Niels Bohr are among the foundations for
learning the principles of physics. Geometry is taught by working through Euclid’s
Elements; every St. John’s student can recite the definition of a point from memory:
“That which has no part.” It’s no wonder
that St. John’s students are perfectly
comfortable swinging between abstract
philosophy and hardcore math and science.
They understand how one discipline relies
upon and interweaves with the other.
It’s no wonder that we think we can
learn anything. We experience the same
process as those who first learned the
greatest things, from a phenomenology of
the spirit to the theory of relativity. We
receive road maps to the thinking of the
greatest minds in history. We are helped
to find our way through to the end, and
are then asked to make a major judgment
call: is it true?
Those with pre-existing bias are told
to address the argument. Those who rely
on flimsy logic are swiftly taken down by
the Socratic method, through withering
questioning from wicked-smart professors
called “tutors,” none of whom accepts the
fallacy that all opinions are equally valid.
The confidence I gained by communing,
grappling with, and defending (or attacking) the great thinkers led me to launch
into careers in which I had no formal
training—and succeed. I have embarked
on crash-course self-training regimens
in evolving industries that advanced my
career and earnings potential, inventing new ways of doing things and new
processes. In investment-speak, dividends
will continue for decades to come.
If you require conventional measures
of success in order to accept the value
I’m describing, consider that I am director of marketing for a $60-plus million
“�Perhaps only one out of ten employers
appreciates my degree, but they only
want someone like me.”
company; that I do most of my work from
the comfort of my home in Silver Spring,
Maryland, which I own with my partner;
that we have three amazing kids; that I
follow my passions of travel, writing, filmmaking, and adventuring as passionately
as I do my career; and that I consider
myself rich in material wealth, meaningful relationships with family and friends,
and creative fulfillment.
My education led me to think in the
grandest terms possible, and to expect
great things from myself. When you shoot
for the stars, every once in a while you
are able to reach the moon. I would say
you can’t teach that kind of thing. But
evidently, you can.
THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | SPRING 2016 47
�JENNIFER BEHRENS
S T. J O H N ’ S F O R E V E R
THE COLLEGE 1.0
A previous incarnation of The College
appeared in the mailboxes of alumni in
the 1960s and early 1970s. “Our aim is to
indicate . . . why, in our opinion, St. John’s
comes closer than any other college in
the nation to being what a college should
be. If ever well placed beacon lights were
needed by American education it is now.
By publishing articles about the work of
the College, articles reflecting the distinctive life of the mind that is the College,
we hope to add a watt or two to the beacon light that is St. John’s”—so went the
editorial mission. The College contained
news, lectures and talks, and alumni
notes. Many of Jacob Klein’s writings first
appeared in its pages.
48 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 016
In 1974 The College was discontinued and
The Reporter, a tabloid format newsprint
quarterly, launched. It contained St.
John’s news and alumni notes, while a few
years later the St. John’s Review was conceived to publish lectures, reviews, and
thought pieces reflective of the St. John’s
Program. The last issue of The Reporter
appeared in fall 1999. The St. John’s
Review continues to publish twice a year,
and it can be found on the college website
at www.sjc.edu/blog/st-johns-review.
The College 2.0 was born in 2000. Reader,
it’s in your hands.
—-Barbara Goyette (A73)
�EIDOS
I have been an art therapist for twenty-five
years, beginning at a women’s clinic for survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault,
and childhood abuse, later developing an
arts-in-healthcare program for a cancer hospital, and most recently providing therapy
at an eating disorder treatment center and
teaching within two art therapy graduate
programs. My career requires I tend two
identities: psychotherapist/clinician and
artist. Because clinical work pays the bills,
it is challenging to keep in focus my asessential artist self. With patients, I use a
variety of art modalities including visual art,
creative writing, movement, storytelling, and
music. My primary personal art practices are
poetry, Celtic harp playing, and kinesthetic,
process-focused drawing/painting/printmaking. I have published three books of poetry
and one nonfiction book on environmental
stewardship through the arts.
that reconciles mind, body, and spirit, and
unites the person to the world. I experience
poeisis within each art therapy session as
an improvised collaboration between three
partners: myself; another person who is suffering emotionally, spiritually, and physically;
and the universal field of imagination/soul.
—-Liza Hyatt (SF85)
Learn more about Liza Hyatt (SF85)
at lizahyatt.com.
Liza Hyatt,
Grief Angel,
1995,
monotype.
One word that best sums up the work of
art therapy is the ancient Greek poiesis,
meaning “to make.” Poiesis is a creating
THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | SPRING 2016 iii
�Non-Profit Org.
U.S. Postage
PAID
Annapolis, MD
Permit N0. 120
Communications Office
60 College Avenue
Annapolis, MD 21401
JENNIFER BEHRENS
Address Service Requested
�
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The
College
St. John’s College • Annapolis • Santa Fe
Virginia Woolf
And the Novel at St. John’s
S p r i n g
2 0 1 0
�O n Vi rg i n i a Wo o l f
T
he first time I came across her, I really disliked Virginia Woolf. I was a reluctant member of a seminar on Woolf in my senior year at a large university. (A
class on Shakespeare’s tragedies was full. Everything else was full.) The
graduate student who led the course was dismayed by those of us who
couldn’t summon compassion for Mrs. Dalloway, thought Mrs. Ramsay was a
loser, and were hopelessly baffled by The Waves.
Ten years later, I was ready to read Woolf, starting with “A Society,” a biting satire of
men and women and books. In the story, as a group of women are having tea one day, Poll
begins reading to them from a collection of books from the London Library. Declaring
each book to be awful, the women decide they left far too much to men while they were
busy raising children:
So we made ourselves into a society for asking questions. One of us was to visit a
man-of-war; another was to hide herself in a scholar’s study; another was to
attend a meeting of business men; while all were to read books, look at pictures,
go to concerts, keep our eyes open in the streets, and ask questions perpetually.
We were very young. You can judge of our simplicity when I tell you that before
parting that night we agreed that the objects of life were to produce good people
and good books. Our questions were to be directed to finding out how far these
objects were now attained by men. We vowed solemnly that we would not bear a
single child until we were satisfied.
By the time they conclude their investigations, at least one of the women regrets being
taught to read at all.
It’s an interesting story from a woman who educated herself by reading books. The boys
in her family were sent to school, but Virginia and her sister, Vanessa, were educated at
home. She roamed her father’s library, reading and translating Homer and Sophocles.
Surrounded by books, she determined at a young age to be a writer. “She scarcely needed
formal education,” wrote Nigel Nicolson in Virginia Woolf. “She was her own guide
through history and literature. She was learning all through her life.”
This issue of The College explores the place of the novel at St. John’s. It’s hard to
imagine not reading Dostoevsky or Jane Austen in seminar, but it’s interesting to imagine
what novels could occupy that special place on the seminar list in the future. (Cormac
McCarthy? Toni Morrison?) Moby-Dick lives in preceptorials, where authors such as
Borges, E.M. Forster, and García Márquez turn up. We polled alumni to ask what books
they enjoyed reading the most and what they’d like to see added to the reading list. And we
talked to a few tutors and alumni in academe about what they think makes a novel truly
great. Susan Stickney made me think of Woolf when she talked about seeing novels in a
whole new light when we read them again after many years, discovering something new in
them (or in ourselves).
Woolf turns up in language tutorial, where students in some classes read A Room of
One’s Own. Mrs. Dalloway is sometimes read in precept and tutorial as well. Santa Fe
seniors complete their St. John’s career with two seminars on To the Lighthouse. I’d love to
know what they think of the book if they re-read it 10 years from now.
Also in this issue, we look at an entirely modern phenomenon, Facebook, and how Johnnies feel about social media. We look back over the last five decades of St. John’s with two
long-serving tutors who are still very much a part of life at the college and we profile four
alumni who are bringing the ideals of St. John’s into special projects in their professional
and volunteer work.
—RH
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
postmaster: Send address
changes to The College
Magazine, Communications
Office, St. John’s College,
Box 2800, Annapolis, MD
21404-2800.
Rosemary Harty (AGI09), editor
410-972-4511
rosemary.harty@sjca.edu
Patricia Dempsey
Managing 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
Anna Perleberg (SF02)
Keileigh Rhodes (A13)
Deborah Spiegelman
Babak Zarin (A11)
Magazine design by
Claude Skelton Design
�Spring 2010
Vo l u m e 3 5 , I s s u e 2
The
College
The Magazine for Alumni of St. John’s College
Annapolis
•
Santa Fe
{Contents}
12
What Makes
a Novel Great?
d e p a r t m e n t s
page
2
•
28
18
Friendship and Facebook
bibliofile
•
•
Tolstoy and Austen, Dostoevsky and
Twain–with few exceptions, the seminar
reading list hasn’t changed much when it
comes to novels. Should it? Alumni and
tutors consider the possibilities.
page
•
•
•
•
•
•
page 12
What would Aristotle say about social
media? Alumni find both perils and
pleasures in the world of Web 2.0.
•
22
Sam and Curtis
page
Two long-serving tutors look back over
six decades of St. John’s College, from
Barr and Buchanan and Jasha Klein to
the state of the college today.
30
A new book by Jon Hunner (SF74)
explores J. Robert Oppenheimer’s impact
on the West; Jehanne Dubrow (A97) pays
tribute to the Odyssey in a new book of
poetry that explores life as a military wife.
alumni
P RO F I L E S
page 22
30 From pre-K to MIT, four alumni bring
classical education to schools and
communities.
35 Pediatrician Mat Strickland (SF96) finds
purpose in the heart of the Navajo
Nation.
38 Philosophy Professor Steve Werlin (A85)
takes on microfinance in Haiti as the
country rebuilds.
40 Reformed hoarder Leah Fisch (SF98)
gives order to chaos.
26
Croquet
page
It all began in Freshman chorus: the
story behind a new St. John’s anthem.
44
Special Report: Alumni
Relations
from the bell towers
New admissions initiatives
How did you hear about St. John’s?
President as paper adviser
A global view in Santa Fe
A new dean in Annapolis
Reflections on being dean
ARIEL and Hodson interns
Kindles on campus
News and announcements
Letters
•
page
41
obituaries
48
st. john’s forever
page 26
There’s a bold new effort underway to
strengthen the ties between St. John’s
and its alumni.
on the cover
Virginia Woolf
Illustration by David Johnson
�2
{From the Bell Towers}
The Light-Bulb Factor in the YouTube Era
St. John’s adopts new approaches to recruit students
jennifer behrens
focus most of their commuOn a cool morning in early
nication and travel activities
April, Gabe Luzier (A10)
on top-tier prospects.
led two sets of mothers and
Admissions staff on the
their teenagers on a tour of
two campuses work closely
the Annapolis campus. He
together in this effort. Each
answered questions about
counselor in Annapolis has
mathematics, what the
a partner in Santa Fe. Each
dorm rooms were like, and
shares information about
of course, what St. John’s
students they’ve contacted
graduates do. Luzier, a
who may be interested in the
seasoned tour guide for
other’s campus. Together,
Admissions, took all the
staff plan receptions, travel,
questions in stride, but he
and conduct on-the-road
really lit up when one of the
interviews. Making
parents asked what brought
everything easer is a new
him to St. John’s.
collegewide database that
“All of the material I was
grants easy access to
getting from colleges
information about indilooked the same to me,”
vidual prospectives and
said Luzier, who is from
ensures that staff aren’t
Brandywine, Md. “When I
duplicating efforts.
read the booklet from
Finally, the college will
St. John’s, I knew it was
Tour guide Gabe Luzier (A10, center) knew St. John’s was right for him as
start reaching out to high
exactly what I was looking
soon as he learned of the college. A new admissions initiative—including
school students in their
for. I applied to Johns
new publications—will cast a wider net for students who are right for
St. John’s.
sophomore year and will
Hopkins as a safety school,
keep up the stream of
but my heart was already at
communications to willing
St. John’s.”
To recruit students, the college has always counted on the “light- students through the fall of their senior year. Prospectives will be
getting viewbooks and other brochures, but they’ll also be getting
bulb” factor: a student learns about St. John’s and is drawn to the
links to videos about academic and student life at the college.
college’s academic program immediately. No other college will do.
For the last 10 years, St. John’s has been using a suite of awardTo make sure St. John’s is reaching the high school students who
winning publications with an understated style that stood out
are awaiting that flash of insight, the college has tapped one of the
dramatically among the glossy color pamphlets that flooded
nation’s top admissions consulting firms, is revising admissions
student mailboxes. The college will continue to integrate its
material, and has begun incorporating new media and video into
favorite tagline, “The Following Teachers Will Return to St. John’s
electronic communication with prospective students.
Next Year,” into its publications and electronic media, but it will
In 2008 the college hired George Dehne and Associates to
introduce new print publications including a new four-color
evaluate recruitment efforts on both campuses and identify ways to
viewbook. There will be a multimedia virtual tour of the college
increase the college’s applicant pool. The firm’s recommendations
on the web and increased use of e-communications.
led to a new college-wide model for student recruitment.
The college isn’t moving away from a serious presentation of the
John Christensen, admissions director in Annapolis, explains
academic program; it’s simply placing it in the context of the whole
that the college shifted to a “prospect management” approach.
college experience, says Larry Clendenin, Santa Fe’s admissions
“Fundamentally, prospect management is an effort to identify and
director. “We have always managed to distinguish the college from
cultivate early in their high school careers those prospective
other institutions through our presentation of the Program, but we
students most likely to apply, be accepted, and ultimately enroll in
have never managed to capture fully what it is like to study and live
St. John’s,” he says. The college employs a point system based on
in the communities of learning on our two campuses,” says
the contact prospective students have with the college, and staff
Clendenin. “We hope that our new publications continue to attract
cultivate those students through personalized communications.
the core following we have always had among college-bound
Under the new model, counselors are assigned geographic
students, but we are extending our reach to prospective students
territories (usually states) selected by a market analysis of the
we may have missed in the past.” x
College Board’s Enrollment Planning Service. St. John’s tracks
applications to the college over the last 10 years and then sends
—Rosemary Harty
counselors to the most fertile ground. The counselors group the
prospective students in their states into three tiers by points and
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 }
�3
{From the Bell Towers}
How did you hear about St. John’s?
We asked readers of
The College to tell us how they
learned about St. John’s—was it
the catalog, a teacher, a happy
accident?
Mortimer Adler
I was reading Mortimer Adler’s
book How to Read a Book, in
which he mentions St. John’s and
the great books. It took me
another year (with encouragement from others) to apply.
Richard Weigle came to San
Francisco on business and invited
me to meet him at the Sheraton
Palace, where he was staying.
I was accepted and offered some
modest scholarships and a job at
the library. St. John’s was a form
of “salvation” for me, as I was
then in my mid-20s.
–Jerry Milhollan (Class of 1958)
Discovery in the Stacks
I “heard” about St. John’s while
a student at the University of
Illinois. At some point I read
Mortimer Adler’s How to Read
a Book, where he says that SJC
is the only place to obtain a
liberal education. Some time
later, while working as a page in
the library, I was shelving
books towards the end of the
day when I realized that the last
book in my hands was the SJC
catalog. Since I had a little time
before the end of my shift, I sat
down on the floor of the stacks
in front of where I was
supposed to shelve the catalog,
and I read it from beginning to
end. When I finished reading,
I noticed a tear-out card to send
for more information. I sent in
the card, I went to St. John’s,
and I graduated.
– Mike Anthony (A69)
alumnus, Ben Moskowitz (class
of 1950), as one of my first
professors. He called us “Mr.”
and “Ms.” He gave us three
options for demonstrating what
we learned in his World History
class: take a test, write a paper,
or have a conversation with
him. He reminisced about a
small liberal arts college in
Annapolis where there were no
desks, no majors, and no
written exams. Everyone
studied the “great books.”
His father had asked him what
he intended to be with a
“liberal arts” degree, and he
answered, “An educated man.”
Decades later, I had the opportunity to visit the Graduate
Institute in Annapolis, and I
was hooked. Now, with my
Master of Arts in Liberal Arts,
I teach at a small college in
Pittsburgh. Thanks, Ben.
–Carol Brinjak (SFGI96)
A Positive Model
Like many others, I received
the famous 1962 Saturday
Review article about St. John’s
College in the mail during my
senior year in high school.
I remember reading the article
during English class and
thinking immediately: this is
where I want to go to school.
Although getting excellent
grades, I had been very angry at
how most of our education was
handled. But once I heard about
St. John’s, I knew that education could be better. That’s not
to say that St. John’s was easy
for me. In fact the adjustment
was very difficult, and I almost
left after the first semester.
But I struggled through and, in
retrospect, wouldn’t trade it for
anything.
–Rick Wicks (SF68)
An Educated Man
I was a nontraditional student,
having begun my undergraduate studies at age 35 in a small
college in Pittsburgh. I was
fortunate to have an SJC
A “Wacko” College
I was registered at Rutger’s
University in my senior year of
high school and had received
my eight-digit student number.
Caroline Sharkey
Something about those eight
digits left a bad taste in my
mouth. At the same time,
I received a phone call from a
good friend—also a senior—who
was laughing hysterically. He
had scored a perfect 1600 on
his SATs, so he received mail
from virtually every college and
university, and that day he had
received an application from
St. John’s. He was calling to tell
me about “this wacko college
where everyone takes the same
courses and they have this
Great Books program, and
there are only a few hundred
students, and you have to
complete this ridiculous
10-page application!” I was too
embarrassed to tell him it
sounded pretty cool to me, so I
called St. John’s as soon as we
hung up. When I worked up
enough courage, I called my
friend to tell him I was accepted
at St. John’s and was planning
to attend. It took a while to
convince him I wasn’t joking.
— Caroline Mandy Sharkey (A78)
Adler, Redux
I had joined the Marine Corps
after a disappointing year at a
liberal arts college in Los
Angeles. One day while
wandering through a post
library at Camp Pendleton,
I came across Mortimer Adler’s
How to Read a Book. Adler
writes, “There is one college
that I know of in this country
which is trying to turn out
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 }
liberal artists in the true sense.
That is St. John’s College in
Annapolis, Maryland.” I wrote
to Adler asking, since the book
was written in 1941, had not
other colleges, maybe closer to
California, seen the light and
reintroduced the classics and
the sciences in place of the
elective system? Adler kindly
wrote back that, no, there was
still only St. John’s. So I wrote
to the college for a catalog and
after discharge from active duty
was admitted.
—Joseph P. Baratta (A69)
A Classical Education
I was in my first year at a prep
school and hating pretty much
everything about it. Every so
often, a representative of some
college would stop by, trolling
for recruits. Such worries were
years ahead of me, so I didn’t
pay much attention to them.
Until a man from a small
college in Maryland spun tales
of a classical education, in an
atmosphere that seemed much
more cordial to me than the one
I was enduring. I even
remember, more than 50 years
later, that the recruiter was
Admissions director Jim Tolbert
(HA86), a wonderful man.
When it came to applying for
college, I remembered St.
John’s and Mr. Tolbert. But I
didn’t have the courage to
apply. So I stumbled around.
They call Tulane “the Harvard
of the South,” but I never hear
Harvard advertised as “the
Tulane of the North.” In any
case, the humidity got to me.
I regrouped at a junior college.
Finally, deciding that I had
nothing to lose, I applied to
St. John’s and was accepted. I
jumped at the chance [to participate] in the founding Santa Fe
class. Though I only lasted two
years—I failed enabling, but the
Army wanted me—I don’t regret
a minute of the time spent.
I learned a lot and grew enough
to know that I’d spend the rest
of my life growing.
—Todd Everett (SF68)
�4
{From the Bell Towers}
Presidential Advice
Being a paper advisor is a treat for a
busy president
guards in citizens who can ask
questions and make choices for
the good of society. Educated
citizens, he posited, were less
likely to “lose touch with the
pate in the life of the mind.”
Nelson’s busy schedule
meant arranging paper conferences weeks in advance, so the
two started meeting early in the
fall. Yet Mr. Stephens doesn’t
consider himself shorted in any
way. “Anyone who has spent
more than five or ten minutes
with Mr. Nelson knows that
he’s someone who is genuinely
jennifer behrens
When Josiah Stephens (A10)
settled on a question for his
senior essay (“What is the
benefit of a liberal education to
a free-market system?”), his
choice for a paper advisor
seemed a natural one.
Annapolis President Christopher Nelson (SF70) has been
writing and speaking about the
liberal arts for more than two
decades.
Stephens first came to know
the president away from the
campus because he docked his
28-foot sloop Doris at Nelson’s
house on the Severn River for
more than a year while he
slowly worked to make the boat
seaworthy. The two would talk
while Stephens worked. While
Doris still isn’t ready for a long
voyage, both Stephens and
Nelson—along with the allimportant essay committee—
thought the paper turned
out well.
Stephens read Adam Smith’s
The Wealth of Nations and
Theory of Moral Sentiments for
his essay. He first became interested in his topic at the start of
the greatest economic downturn in the United States since
the Great Depression. He
closely followed news about
proposed legislation to curb
abuses on Wall Street and
decided to explore how a liberal
education creates natural safe-
Though Nelson has served
on several committees for
senior orals, this was only the
second essay he has advised in
his 19 years as president. (The
first was by Arthur Allen, A06,
who wrote on the film Andrei
Rublev). Advising Stephens
gave him the opportunity to
revisit the two Smith works.
He found in The Wealth of
Advising Josiah Stephens (A10) on his senior essay gave Annapolis President Christopher Nelson a
chance to reconnect with the intellectual life of the college.
foundations upon which
their society was founded.”
Ultimately, less government is
needed in a society with people
equipped to ask questions
about virtue, morality, and
justice, he wrote.
Changes for the St. John’s Review
Annapolis tutor William Pastille is the new editor of the
St. John’s Review, the college’s scholarly journal. Pastille
takes on the role from Pamela Kraus, who has edited the
publication for more than 10 years. Kraus begins her term as
Annapolis dean July 1.
In addition, the publication is increasing its online
presence and expects to make back issues available online.
Find out more by visiting the college website: www.stjohnscollege.edu; click on Publications and St. John’s Review.
Nations, as Stephens did, a
parallel between Smith’s division of labor and a modern
higher education system that
funnels graduates into narrow
specializations.
Though early in his presidency Nelson was able to colead undergraduate seminars,
the demands of the job have
limited him to leading Executive Seminars and occasional
parents’ or community seminars. Being a paper advisor
helped him reconnect with the
Program: “Spending a
sustained amount of time with
a student, thinking through an
interesting problem and
reading Adam Smith—it was a
great opportunity to partici-
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 }
interested in the students and
their experiences here. It was
great to talk about issues that
exist outside the books and to
gain insight from his experiences. It made writing this
essay so much more
enriching.”
Nelson, too, will count the
experience among the highlights of his year. “For one
thing, it reinforces for me how
much the tutors do here to help
guide the students in their
work,” he says. “And secondly,
it was fun.” x
— Rosemary Harty
�{From the Bell Towers}
The World and St. John’s
Santa Fe President Mike Peters offers
students a global picture
Combine a president whose
career took him all over the
globe with a group of students
keenly interested in the most
critical issues affecting the
world today, and you have the
Foreign Policy Study Group on
the Santa Fe campus. One late
winter’s afternoon, the
students came to the seminar
table with their text (a Foreign
Affairs article on how to
finance and manage a more
secure global energy system),
ready for President Michael
Peters’ opening question:
“What is the problem the
authors are talking about?”
For the next hour or so, the
discussion embraces global
politics and historic precedent
while hovering close to the
text: “The New Energy Order,”
by David G. Victor and Linda
Yueh. One student teases out
the economic theory underpinning the article’s argument,
while another focuses on
ethical concerns. A third
student questions the feasibility
of the mechanism the authors
propose to solve the challenge
of global, environmentally
responsible investment in
energy resources. As they flip
through the article, the
students advance their way
through the authors’ arguments and point out perceived
gaps in the reasoning. While
the discussion stays close to the
text, Peters also encourages a
slightly broader exploration of
global political reality.
The issue, Peters offers, is
the shift in global power,
which, as one student suggests,
has historically led to conflict.
Thus, the discussion, which
took off from the point of
energy insecurity, returns the
idea that political instability in
resource-rich parts of the world
remains a serious international
threat.
“The study group was some-
thing I had in mind when I
came to the college, but actually some students came to me
and asked if I’d be willing to do
something like this, and of
course, I said ‘yes,’” Peters
recalls. Before he joined the
college in 2005, Peters served
as executive vice president of
the Council on Foreign Relations, where during his 10-year
tenure he helped develop
CFR’s National Program,
which sponsors seminars across
the country to encourage a
broader debate on international affairs and U.S. foreign
policy. Peters’ prior military
career—he is a graduate of the
United States Military Academy
and retired as a colonel—took
him to Vietnam, Panama, Saudi
Arabia, and Russia. Peters also
taught economics to cadets at
West Point, where he later was
chief of staff.
In addition to the study
group, about 10 to 15 students
join Peters in his office every
couple of weeks to gather
around his speakerphone for
the CFR’s Academic Conference Call series. Students at
colleges across the country
5
have the opportunity to ask
questions of a CFR Fellow or
Foreign Affairs author.
While Peters solicits ideas for
discussion topics and invites
students to suggest specific
readings, he usually selects the
articles, as Johnnies are
typically pressed for time.
Many who attend regularly are
interested in careers in international relations; some simply
want to understand issues that
affect citizens of the world. The
group has several regulars, and
others join in when time allows
or when they find the topic
particularly appealing. Some
students are notably tenacious
about the enterprise, says
Peters: “This year we have
several juniors who joined the
group as freshmen.”
In addition, some students
have drawn a direct line
between their study-group
participation and their postSt. John’s endeavors. One
student who graduated a
couple of years ago is now a
Foreign Service Officer, Peters
says. Several other participants
have gone on to pursue law
degrees with a focus in international relations. All benefit
from the perspectives of the
two dozen or so international
students on the Santa Fe
campus, some of whom take
part in the study group.
“One of the things that is
different this year and reflects
what’s happening in the college
is that we have a growing
number of international
students in the group,” says
Peters. “That adds a completely
different perspective.”
—Deborah Spiegelman
chris quinn
Santa Fe President Michael
Peters shares his international experience with
students through his Foreign
Policy Study Group.
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 }
�6
{From the Bell Towers}
A New Dean in Annapolis
Kraus’ deep dedication to
the college has its roots in her
early career and was partly due
to the influence of her late
husband, Richard Kennington.
While teaching philosophy at
Catholic University in the
1980s (where Kennington was a
professor) she occasionally
attended Friday night lectures
at St. John’s. Her husband’s
support helped her decide to
join the St. John’s faculty in
1985. “Giving up a traditional
academic career is a big decision,” she says. “I could have
continued on a certain path to
research and publish, but I was
attracted to the breadth and
depth at St. John’s. You can
easily get into a narrow world
in traditional academia and talk
with colleagues only in the
field that they are in. Here at
St. John’s we talk
about ideas across
the spectrum. There
is a serious interest in
all kinds of books
and ideas.”
Her own wideranging interests have
been nurtured at
St. John’s. “I have a
deep, long interest in
poetry. Marianne
Moore, Elizabeth
Bishop, and Robert
Lowell are a few of the
poets whose work I
admire. I love literature, including Henry
James and of course,
Shakespeare. And
there is history,
philosophy, theater,
and fine art. I always
come home with a
painting by a student
from the community
art show at
St. John’s.”
When she was
looking at colleges,
Kraus didn’t know
Tutor Pamela Kraus is only the second woman to serve as dean on the
about St. John’s, and
Annapolis campus; Eva Brann (HA89) was the first.
as the daughter of a
patricia dempsey
Tutor Pamela Kraus will face
some tough challenges when
she becomes Annapolis dean
July 1, among them, new
admissions initiatives, tight
budgets, and the pressing need
to make sound choices for the
long-term future of the college.
Since her appointment was
approved earlier this year,
Kraus has been on a crash
course to learn everything
about one of the most complex
and important roles at the
college. As dean she will chair
the Instruction Committee,
which oversees the college’s
academic program. Hiring
tutors, dismissing students,
ensuring new tutors are
supported, inviting lecturers,
and dealing with parents are
just a few of her roles. As dean
she will also oversee Admis-
sions, the Registrar, Career
Services, and Greenfield
Library—all central to the
academic life of the college.
She’ll serve as a member of the
college’s Board of Visitors and
Governors. In the long run, she
has a bigger challenge: making
sure the college and its
academic program continue to
thrive.
“We need to bring the
importance of liberal arts
education to public attention,”
says Kraus. “It’s hard to make
people see the intangibles,
hard to convey the living,
working and learning that takes
place in the classroom. The
active learning here at St.
John’s is distinctive. It’s not the
books themselves so much as
the way we read them. It can be
life changing. ”
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 }
coppersmith, she wonders if
she could have afforded the
tuition. Now, as dean, her job
will be to promote the college
and ensure accessibility
through financial aid. “I want
young people to know the
college exists, that St. John’s is
a seedbed for your thinking,”
she says. “There is a cumulative effect from this education.
This is an education that will
carry you through the rest of
your life and serve you well in
facing many challenges.”
As she prepares for her new
position, Kraus is meeting with
as many members of the
community as she can,
including staff, board
members, and alumni.
Learning to be dean isn’t
unlike the learning that
happens in the classroom at
St. John’s. “My door is always
open and I hope my mind is
too,” she says. “At St. John’s
you learn to try not to love your
own opinions so much that you
are stuck in them. The student
and tutor have to expose themselves to other ways of
learning. Would you normally
say, ‘I want to take a course on
electricity and magnetism?’
No. But here you are exposed to
it—and to so many other
perspectives.”
Tutor Nick Maistrellis, who
served on the dean selection
committee, says colleagues
recognize Kraus’ commitment
to the Program as well as her
administrative know-how (she
was editor of the St. John’s
Review for more than 15 years).
“She has intelligence, good
judgment, graciousness, and
style,” says Maistrellis. These
qualities will make her a good
leader of the college, and an
effective advocate for its
program of study. She will
always have the good of the
community in mind.” x
–Patricia Dempsey
�7
{From the Bell Towers}
On Being Dean
The role of dean at St. John’s is
unlike that at any other higher
education institution: chief
academic officer and guardian
of the Program, but also the
overseer of important functions
such as admissions, athletics,
the registrar, library, and financial aid. The College asked two
questions of several former
deans: What was most the most
difficult part of the job? And
what most surprised them
during their term as dean?
CURTIS WILSON (HA83),
ANNAPOLIS, 1958-1962 AND
1973-1979
“The most difficult thing about
being dean? I think it is the
responsibility that you have
(and are frequently reminded
that you have!) to every
member of the community, for
their welfare, for their having a
worthwhile experience of
learning at the college, and
generally just for getting things
to go well. I would hope the
curtain of charity might fall on
those incidents in which I
didn’t manage very well. The
most surprising thing about
being dean: Certainly the most
gratifying thing that happens at
the college is a student waking
up to the possibility of thinking
freshly and insightfully about
one of the questions arising in
our studies.”
EVA BRANN (HA89),
ANNAPOLIS, 1990-1997
“What was most difficult?
Keeping the balance between
the college as an efficient institution and as a humane place of
learning. What was most
surprising? That when people
asked me whether I was happy
being dean, I found myself
saying: ‘I wouldn’t know, I’m
too deep in.’”
HARVEY FLAUMENHAFT,
ANNAPOLIS, 1997-2005
“The most difficult thing was
having so little time for study.
The most surprising thing was
how very many good things
must be foregone or neglected
in order to be able to minister
to at least some matters of longterm importance—not because
money is lacking but because
urgencies are multitudinous
while resources of time, effort,
and attention are limited.”
DAVID LEVINE (A67),
SANTA FE, 2001-2006
“While there’s a lot of work to
do in the dean’s office—20
different things at the same
time—that is not the difficult
thing. The most difficult thing
is, in and amidst all the various
demands, to keep a clear sense
of who we are as a college. At
the end of my term a colleague,
Phil Le Cuyer, asked me what I
had learned as dean. My
response was even surprising
to me: ‘How much work it takes
to keep us who we are.’
We went through a number
of crises—presidential, student
life, admissions, etc.—and what
was wonderfully surprising was
that the unique structure of the
college proved strong: the
Program provided stability
through change, and with the
support of the faculty, we were
able to make significant
headway in addressing the
pressing issues standing in the
way of the college being a
genuine community of
learning.”
VICTORIA MORA, SANTA FE,
2006-PRESENT
“I’d rather talk in terms of
challenges rather than difficulties, as I’ve experienced the
former more than the latter.
One significant challenge has
to do with the nature of the
dean’s position itself. It is quite
intentionally configured so that
the dean is involved at every
level of the college; the dean
works with the board, the
management committee, the
campus officers, the faculty,
the staff, the students, the
Being dean involves making sure the Program is at the heart of
every decision made at the college, says Santa Fe Dean
Victoria Mora.
parents, and the alumni. This
configuration ensures that the
Program remains at the center
of every decision we make at
the college, which is to the
good. But it does mean that the
dean is challenged to work at
every level, often in the same
day, making recommendations
and decisions that affect the
college as a whole, constituencies within the college, and of
course individuals. The challenge is to be fully present at
each of these levels, bearing in
mind how the decisions at
each level affect the others.
It is, as Husserl would say,
an ‘infinite task.’
I’ve been surprised at how
satisfying it is to be able to
serve the college in this way.
This doesn’t mean that I’m not
looking forward to being back
in the classroom, but it does
mean that I have not experienced my service primarily as a
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 }
burden! Maybe my greatest
surprise is how indebted I have
become to my husband and
children for making my work
possible!”
MICHAEL DINK (A75),
ANNAPOLIS, 2005-2010
“It’s easy to say what the
hardest thing is: making the
decision that it is time for
someone to leave the college:
student, tutor, or staff member,
and communicating that decision. I was surprised by the
amount of supervisory work
involved and by the variety of
crises that are possible. I most
enjoyed the opportunity to get
to know and to work with the
whole range of the college
community, and I was most
disappointed that I didn’t find
ways to spend more time with
students.” x
�8
{From the Bell Towers}
Evolutionary Genetics and Emergency Medicine
Internships give Johnnies a glimpse of potential careers
Esme Gaisford:
Fruitflies and DNA
Last summer, Esme Gaisford
(SF10) worked in the University
of Chicago Evolutionary
Ecology Laboratories’ Krietman
Lab, thanks to Santa Fe’s ARIEL
(Award for Relating Intense
Education to Life) internship
program.
Gaisford had previously won
an ARIEL in 2008 to work at the
City of Hope cancer center in
Los Angeles in laboratories
headed by Dr. Stephen J.
Forman (A70). Her work in
Chicago took her into the realm
of evolutionary genetics. “It was
a huge thing to be in this kind of
research lab as an undergraduate,” said Gaisford.
An inspiring high school
science teacher piqued
Gaisford’s interest in cellular
biology. Gaisford remembers
him telling students, “I want you
to know what you are doing and
to understand why.” Surrounded
by brilliant researchers and
dedicated college interns in the
university laboratory, Gaisford
found her St. John’s background
to be an asset. She soon picked
up the specialized terminology
and was even helping her peers
with the lab work.
The work that occupied
Gaisford and her fellow interns
involved repeated procedures to
unzip and copy DNA, a technique called PCR. “You have to
be clean, you have to be careful,
you have to know what you’re
doing at the right temperature,”
she explains. The ultimate goal
of all the experiments is a
greater understanding of the
evolution of the fruit fly. For
instance, one researcher was
manipulating the size of flies’
eggs to understand how specialization occurs and discovered
interesting results about the
signaling differentiation in
embryo development, Gaisford
explained. “[The researchers]
want to understand evolutionarily how the on-off geneswitching mechanism works,”
she says.
“These guys were very into
what they were doing,” Gaisford
said of the researchers in the
University of Chicago labs.
“I think that when you get that
far into academia, that’s what
you do.” However, she suggests,
at the top labs there are people
like her mentor who can make
connections and take the
research to the next step.
In addition, she
observed that the
researchers were
constantly talking
and helping each
other. “It’s all
about conversation,”
she says.
—Deborah Spiegelman
Scott Weber:
Up Close in the
ER
Esme Gaisford spent her summer with
fruitflies last year.
As a medical scribe
in the Emergency
Department at Anne
Arundel Medical
Center, Scott
Weber (A09) has
been by the side
of physicians,
nurse practitioners and physician assistants as
they set broken
legs, stitched up
wounds, resuscitated some
patients, and lost
others.
Weber’s internship, which he
Scott Weber’s experience as a medical scribe
began with the
deepened his desire to be a doctor.
support of a
Hodson Internlaboratory or imaging studies.
ship in February of his senior
Scribes soon learn what studies
year, involved creating the
are necessary to evaluate a
medical and legal record of a
condition based on a patient’s
patient’s treatment. He
history, symptoms and
observed and documented
complaints. “I find that learning
procedures, test results, inforto take a good history is much
mation provided by patients and
like making a good argument in
their families, and other imporseminar,” says Weber.
tant aspects of patient treatSeeing patients die, Weber
ment.
says, is perhaps the more trying
“It is the best experience I
part of the job: “I can still
can imagine for any student
remember the name of the first
considering a career in clinical
patient I saw die. I was more
medicine,” says Weber, an
than a little shocked to see the
aspiring doctor. “And I’m
strangely ashen color of his skin
grateful to The Hodson Trust for
and the limp way his body moved
making it possible.”
as the nurses prepared him for
Weber completed the internhis family to see. Since then I
ship last year, but he continues
have seen more people die than I
to work as a scribe, one day a
care to remember; it is a sad but
week in the emergency room
ordinary occurrence. As a scribe
and four days a week for an
you will also confront some of
oncologist. Weber’s job is to
the nastier aspects of humanity.
accompany the physician to the
You will also see some patients
patient’s bedside, where he
filled with grateful relief and
records the exact nature of an
moments I can best describe as
illness or injury and documents
quiet dignity.”
the physical exam. He uses a
More than ever, Weber knows
handheld tablet computer that
a medical career is right for him.
allows him to record notes
“There is an infectious exciteefficiently.
ment to working on a good
A scribe also keeps an eye on
case—it’s an intellectual chalall the doctor’s patients and is
lenge with the supreme reward
often the first to alert the physiof being able to help someone
cian to important and sometruly in need.” x
times life-threatening results of
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 }
�{From the Bell Towers}
Kant on a Kindle?
The college considers the impact of
digital readers
Kindles have been sighted at
the home of the great books: in
the coffee shop, in the dorms
and—gasp!—even in the library
in Annapolis. Their owners
love them, but the devices have
their detractors as well, and the
guardians of the college’s
academic program are
wondering what will happen
if students start toting them
to seminar.
For those who haven’t investigated, electronic readers such
as the Kindle are usually about
a quarter-of-an-inch thick and
come in a variety of sizes. The
screen is called “electronic
paper,” and because it uses no
backlight, it isn’t hard on the
eyes in the way a computer
screen is. They can come with
nice leather cases that make
them appear more book-like.
But of course, there are no
pages to turn, no corners to
fold over, no smell of paper,
no margins to write in, no dust
jacket—all those things that
charm book lovers.
Charles Cargal and Sarah
Pearlman (both A12) received
their Kindles as gifts. Since
getting his Kindle last summer,
Cargal says he’s reading more
than ever. Having an entire
stack of books with him everywhere he goes means that he
can read a page or two whenever he has a free minute.
The best thing about their
devices, say Cargal and
Pearlman, is that even though
the readers can cost up to $500,
e-books are much cheaper
(about $10 for a bestseller), and
texts including Shakespeare
plays can be acquired for
free.“The Kindle is not for
people who don’t love books,”
says Pearlman. “It is for people
who love books more than
anyone else.”
Naturally, some book-loving Johnnies are horrified by
the idea of e-books. “A book
can be shared,” notes Galen
certainly less fragile,” he notes.
“A book doesn’t lose all the
words if I drop it.”
For Pearlman, however, the
physical aspect of reading is not
as important as having access to
more books. “A lot of people
object to owning one in
general, or specifically object to
Johnnies owning them because
9
(A75). The committee agreed
that the college can’t
discourage students from using
them. “To my mind, the only
concern is the availability of
texts and the availability of ways
of locating where in a text you
are (page or line numbers).”
Santa Fe Dean Victoria Mora
has yet to spot a Kindle on her
Sarah Pearlman and Charles Kargal (both A12) are delighted with their digital readers, but they
don’t use them in seminar.
Cook-Thomas (A12). “If I have
a book, once I’ve read it, I can
give it to someone else to read.
With an e-book, the other
person has to have one too in
order to read the book.” CookThomas prefers to hold a real
book in his hands, not something that turns on and off.
“Books are prettier and
they worship the form of the
book. I don’t think that’s fair
because the good part of
reading is the way the book
transports you somewhere
else.”
The collegewide Management Committee has considered the issue of e-books, notes
Annapolis Dean Michael Dink
“I think we certainly prefer that
students take books to class.”
Santa Fe Dean Victoria Mora
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 }
campus. “I think we certainly
prefer that students take books
to class, but we have no policy
against [e-books] and probably
shouldn’t,” she says. “I think
we would not allow computers
where faces would be blocked if
a student were reading a text in
that way. The faculty has not,
however, talked this through.”
Pearlman can’t envision
e-books fully replacing paper
books. Cargal disagrees and
points to the example of the
phonograph and the iPod. It
won’t happen soon, says Cargal,
“but give it a hundred years and
books will be gone.”
—Keileigh Rhodes
�{From the Bell Towers}
News and Announcements
Santa Fe Students
Headed to Nepal
Harvard Fellowship
Jamaal Barnes (A10) has
received a Reynolds Fellowship
to study in the Harvard Graduate School of Education. The
Catherine B. Reynolds
patricia dempsey
A group of Santa Fe students
has received $10,000 in funding
from the Davis Foundation to
help combat water-borne
diseases in Nepal. The project is
one of 100 selected from
submissions by college students
across the country. St. John’s
students have submitted
winning proposals four years in
a row.
David McGee and Chris
Pataki (both SF10); Shishav
Parajuli, Prakash Pathak,
and Brain Woodbury (all
SF11); and Manish Thapa
(SF12) will spend this summer
in Nepal working to raise the
public health standard in rural
areas of a country recently
ravaged by civil war and highly
vulnerable to annual monsoons
that damage rudimentary sanitation facilities. Nearly a third of
the population lacks access to
sanitation and potable water.
The students will build a
temporary clinic to provide
basic medical care and also to
provide education about
hygiene and prevention of water
and sanitation-related illnesses.
In addition, the team plans to
construct low-impact, efficient
sanitation and water-treatment
facilities that are both inexpensive and sustainable.
For more information about
the project, “Founding Peace –
Building Peace and Health
Through Sanitation and Education,” visit the students website,
http://foundations4peace.word
press.com.
Johnnie-Mid Seminar
More than 60 midshipmen and four Naval Academy professors
strolled across the street to join about 30 St. John’s students
and five tutors for the annual Johnnie-Mid seminar, held this
year on March 23 in McDowell Hall. Ethan Brooks (A10)
organized the seminar and reception afterward, and chose the
reading, “Gooseberries,” a short story by Anton Chekov.
At the reception held in the Great Hall after the seminar, Johnnies, tutors, professors, and midshipmen mingled, discussing
everything from weekend plans and waltz parties to life at the
two schools, and questions raised in their seminars—until
curfew at the Naval Academy. x
Foundation
Fellowships in
Social Entrepreneurship are
designed to equip
individuals for
national leadership positions that
bring the realworld insights of
management and
entrepreneurship
to bear on social
problems.
Language
Scholarship
jennifer behrens
10
AnnMarie Saunders (A12) has
been selected for a
U.S. Department
of State Critical
Language Scholarjamaal Barnes (A10) is headed to Harvard.
ship to study
Korean in South
Korea this
athletic programs on the
summer. She will spend 10
Annapolis campus.
weeks in an intensive language
In addition to supporting the
institute and take part in
effort, alumni continue to share
immersion activities. The schol- Iglehart memories:
arship program is part of a
Mike Van Beuren (A75):
wider effort to dramatically
“I remember the fitness test
expand the number of Amerithat Bryce Jacobsen used to
cans studying and mastering
administer annually. One
critical-need languages. Saunelement was a quarter-mile run
ders hopes to pursue a career as
that was timed for individual
a professor of Korean Studies or
runners on the suspended
Korean Literature.
wooden track high in the
rafters. There were five laps to a
Tutor Honored
quarter mile. Two things were
In recognition of “outstanding
daunting: the optical illusion
professional accomplishments,”
that the overhead girders would
Annapolis tutor Peter Kalkavage hit you and the banked curves.
has been named an Alumni
Newtonian physics were out in
Fellow of Penn State University.
full force. It felt as though I’d fly
Kalkavage earned his bachoff the curve as I leaned away
elor’s, master’s, and doctoral
from the banked floor. Bryce
degrees from the university.
stood there impassively with the
Among other accomplishments,
stop watch. Time froze.”
the citation noted Kalkavage’s
Matt Carter (A95): “My
most recent book: The Logic of
senior year, we put together a
Desire: An Introduction to
club volleyball team and played
Hegel’s Phenomenology of
a few other Maryland teams,
Spirit.
including Hopkins, Washington
College and UMBC. It was the
Mind-Body Challenge
game against UMBC I
Fans of Iglehart Hall have
remember. They were big and
contributed $64,000 to date
seemed much more talented.
toward a $500,000 endowment
We were the basketball school,
to support the treasured gymna- not the volleyball school. In fact,
sium in Annapolis, as well as
the reason we had this team was
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 }
�{From the Bell Towers}
a lack of interest in volleyball at
the time.
It was a best-of-5 match. We
held a 2-1 lead before taking a
thumping in game 4. They had
the momentum. We seemed
headed for defeat. During game
5, the Temple really came into
play. We were used to the lowhanging beams and could serve
over, under and through them
with relative ease (an advantage
we finally exploited). The
UMBC team was frustrated by
multiple balls hitting those
beams and bouncing back to
them. We prevailed in what I
still consider one of the greatest
upsets in the history of American sports.”
Ray Cave (class of 1948):
“As was obvious to Eva Brann
and anybody else who bothered
to review my academic course
11
The banked track at Iglehart Hall intimidated some runners.
through St. John’s, the classroom that received the bulk of
my attention was Temple Iglehart. I learned how to turn on
the lights late at night and
studied jump shots by the hour.
The bleakest day in my St.
John’s career came when the
nurse had me banned from the
gym for three months out of
concern for the considerable
damage I was doing to my knees.
(It was during this bleak period
of my junior year that I discovered some of the books were
actually interesting.)
In the end I earned eight
blazers and have the octagonedged college seal to prove it.
Alas, you could only be awarded
two actual blazers. I had no
other coats. Two years after
graduation, I was still wearing
the blazer, now covering three
Baltimore police districts for the
Evening Sun. Not a trench coat,
but you go with what you got.” x
{Letters}
Poignant Pose
Thanks for the fine job you and
your staff do with our excellent
magazine. Someone deserves
extra credit for the “word”
photos! (Winter 2010).
I believe I recognize myself in
mid-back row of the aspiring
dancers in the archival photo.
I’m surer that my classmate
Augusta Goldstein (SF68) is
right in front of the teacher,
displaying her beautiful
posture! And the good-looking
guy to her right was . . . it will
come to me—another classmate.
No way could I even approximate such a pose now, so I
found it poignant to be
reminded of a time when I
could take a stab at it! Mind
you, I do a version of railroad
ballet everyday in work boots,
without a pointed toe. But my
knees rebel loudly at getting
down, and then up again, from
any floor.
Dancers on the Santa Fe campus strike a pose.
I’m guessing we were
sophomores, so that would
have been 1965-66.
Elsa Blum (SF68)
Editor’s note: The photos were
the work of Jen Behrens, art
director for The College.
One College,
Two Campuses
I must confess at the outset that
I am not a regular reader of The
College; being a current
student, I have picked it up only
in passing once or twice.
Anyway, I am writing to point
out that the atmosphere of the
Winter 2010 issue indicates an
immense tilt towards the
Annapolis campus of the
college. I realize that Annapolis
is the original campus, that it
has far more alumni, and that
most contributors to the magazine are also based there. Nevertheless, it is discouraging to see
the disproportionate efforts in
this regard.
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 }
Specifically, I was very
pleased to read about the Storytellers group in Annapolis
(p. 6). We happen to have one
here too, and they also meet
Wednesday evenings. Wouldn’t
it have been a wonderful, more
comprehensive article to
include both? It would have
attested to the “one college, two
campuses” slogan of St. John’s,
apart from reaffirming the likemindedness of the students on
both locations.
In general, there seem to be
too many articles about the
Annapolis campus and too little
from Santa Fe. I understand
that there may be budgeting or
space issues involved. And,
again, I am not a terribly
regular reader of the magazine,
so my perceptions might be off.
Whatever the case may be, I
would simply like to draw your
attention to this fact.
Thank you very much. Keep
up the good work,
–Nareg Seferian (SF11)
�12
{The Program}
WHAT MAKES A
G R E AT NOV E L ?
And which ones deserve a place
on the Program?
by Rosemary Harty (AGI09)
F
or Santa Fe tutor Susan Stickney,
there’s a scene in Pride and Prejudice that provides a fitting analogy
for the deeper value of reading
fiction. It’s the morning after Elizabeth Bennet has just rejected
Darcy’s offer of marriage, and she
receives a long letter from him. His
words initially confirm Elizabeth’s
great dislike for Darcy—until she has a chance to read the
letter carefully and think about it for a while.
“The first time she reads it, she’s infuriated,” says
Stickney, a member of the college’s Instruction
Committee. “She’s so insulted that she can’t bear it. Then,
when she reads it again later and gains distance and
perspective, she uses the letter as a chance to reflect on
herself and her family. She’s able to re-envision things and
reorient herself.”
To some, Austen’s novel may not have the weight of a
work by Plato or Aristotle, Kant or Hegel. Yet fiction cannot
be seen as mere entertainment, Stickney says, and the
Program would be far poorer without it. “What I get from
reading literature, particularly novels, is the chance to look
at the whole human being in all its complexity. When I read
a novel, I have a chance to ask: can I see myself in this? And
what does that reflection look like?”
In a college devoted to cultivating skills in language,
novels turn our attention to the power of expression, she
says. “We work so hard to follow Kant’s argument, or Aristotle’s, that we barely have time to look at the words the
argument uses. The hope is that in literature, this aspect
comes more to the foreground and can increase our sensitivity to the expressive possibilities of language.”
Because of the roughly chronological design of the
Program, novels turn up on the reading list in junior year,
and—with some small deviations—a handful of novels have
pretty much been the mainstay for many years: Don
Quixote, Gulliver’s Travels, Pride and Prejudice, Middlemarch, The Brothers Karamazov, Huckleberry Finn, Heart
of Darkness, War and Peace, and various works by
Faulkner and Woolf in senior year.
Talking about fiction in seminar can be uncomfortable
for some students who would rather confront a political
treatise, a mathematical formula, or a scientific concept.
According to Annapolis tutor Judy Seeger, an Instruction
Committee member, that’s not a rare sentiment. “For one
thing, the novel is not laying out an argument for you. And
an author such as Austen may be particularly difficult
because she is so very subtle.”
That’s not to say that novels fail to offer truths for serious
H. Christian Blood (SF02) brought an “intense and fiery
connection” to literature with him to St. John’s.
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 }
�{The Program}
“I have no desire to reform St. John’s.
But if I started a great books college,
it would have a lot more fiction on the reading list.”
H. Christian Blood (SF02)
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 }
13
�14
{The Program}
consideration and discussion, Seeger explains, “but clearly
we can’t read a novel the way we read a philosophical argument.” Instead, we examine human nature in the context of
situations—from the ravages of war in Russia to the drawingroom life of an Austen heroine.
Students are sometimes quiet in seminar because it isn’t
easy to engage the novel on a level deeper than plot. (Elizabeth hates Darcy. Elizabeth loves Darcy. All ends well.) “If it
doesn’t speak to you in a way that’s genuine, it’s difficult to
get beyond a surface level of understanding,” says Seeger.
In those cases, the tutors can be helpful in guiding the
discussion. In her Austen seminar, co-led by tutor Amanda
Printz, the opening question—“what is the difference
between pride and vanity?”—led students into conversations about Jane’s virtue, the importance of social standing,
and the unthinkable concept of a loveless marriage.
Ruth Ann Brown (A11) loves reading novels, but she finds
philosophy and politics much easier to talk about in
seminar. She had already read Pride and Prejudice 11 times
by the night her junior seminar met this year to discuss the
work. To her, the topics in the George Eliot’s Middlemarch
seemed deeper, more universal than the conflicts in the
Austen novel. “Austen’s style of writing is such a pleasure to
read. There’s a way in which you feel like you’re sitting in
the room with her. But Pride and Prejudice just doesn’t have
the depth of Middlemarch.”
Several St. John’s alumni who came to the college loving
literature and who now read novels with their own students
suggest that, just as the laboratory must accommodate
modern science, the college may want to consider adding to
the seminar reading list works by modern American
writers, more contemporary international fiction, works
that reflect ethnic and racial diversity, and a
few more works by women.
H. Christian Blood (SF02), just completing
his doctorate in comparative literature at the
University of California, Santa Cruz, offers
this suggestion: “I have no desire to reform
St. John’s. But if I started a great books
college, it would have a lot more fiction on
the reading list.”
Defining greatness
jenny ellerbe
Since 1937, the criteria for whether a book
makes the seminar list have centered on the
work’s power to raise persisting questions, be
open to rich and varied interpretation, be
timeless, yet timely. For Jana Giles (A88),
when it comes to fiction, there has to be
more. Giles, assistant professor at the University of Louisiana-Monroe, believes a truly
great novel will have a puzzle of some kind:
“There are interpretations that are stable
that you can go through and prove that this is
how you come to a certain conclusion. But at
Jana Giles (A88) would like to see more works on
the Program that reflect ethnic and cultural
diversity.
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 }
�{The Program}
15
“A good novel is a masterpiece of language.”
Tutor Judy Seeger
the center is a fundamental uncertainty. That’s probably
true of a lot of great novels.”
To illustrate her point, Giles points to Heart of Darkness
and a passage that she read many times before seeing its
importance: “It’s the passage where Marlow and his crew
have almost reached Kurtz. They’re on the river with the
so-called cannibal crew, though we don’t know if they are
actually cannibals. And Marlow has this realization: why
have they not eaten me? He sees that they’re hungry. He
realizes that these men are exercising, at least in his mind,
some kind of ethical restraint, but he doesn’t understand
what it is. They have restraint and Kurtz doesn’t, and that’s
the pivotal issue in the whole novel. Marlow is always
talking about how everything in Africa is indescribable; the
truth is he doesn’t need to actually understand the truth in
a discursive way for meaning to come home to him.”
Great novels have the power to move us through the
thoughts and actions of unforgettable characters, but they
also move us in relationship to themes and historical
events, says Giles. “Great novels mark their time,” she
adds. “They are commentaries emblematic of historical
processes.” For example, Giles included a lesser-known
novel by Elizabeth Gaskell, Mary Barton, in one of her
courses because she wanted her students to read about the
lives of mill workers during the Industrial Revolution and
understand the precedents for labor laws. “Everyone
knows that people don’t like being preached at,” she notes,
but a novel can help illuminate buried and unexamined
opinions just as effectively as a work of philosophy.
Carol Colatrella (A79), professor of literature and
cultural studies at Georgia Tech University, finds plot
secondary to character and setting. In a novel, she’s
seeking “a lot of intimate detail about character and
setting” and the opportunity to gain a glimpse of another
time and another place. Reading The Brothers Karamazov
and Emma at St. John’s were life-changing experiences for
her and helped set her on her path to academe.
Similarly, Stickney most values a novel that creates a
world with complicated people. Take the rich universe of a
novel such as The Brothers Karamazov. In books of this
scale, “people do surprising things, or they’re pained, or
they’re angered. It’s a place where I get to watch human
beings respond, and I have to make sense of it.”
For Christian Blood, a great novel is something that you
never leave behind no matter how many times you move,
because no matter how many times you read it, there is
something else to uncover. “You can spend your life
reading, studying, ruminating, turning it over in your soul
and your mind over and over, and then one day you reread a
passage and all of a sudden you catch a small detail that’s
never stood out before, and it’s as if you’ve never seen that
narrative before in your life even though you could recite
lengthy passages of it from memory.”
The Reading List
It’s always the same dilemma at St. John’s: Time marches
on. New works are written. But adding a novel to the
reading list means taking something off. And there’s also
the problem of epic proportions: seminars on long novels
have to be scheduled at the beginning of a semester or after
spring break. Preceptorials allow a tutor to offer any interesting novel students are willing to read. Although it’s not
on the reading list, Moby-Dick is frequently read in preceptorial. Joyce’s Ulysses and Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s A
Hundred Years of Solitude have been recent choices.
Adding contemporary fiction to the seminar reading list
would be trickier, because of the question: what goes?
Santa Fe’s Stickney can’t imagine not reading Dostoevsky
(“he’s so good at the human soul”), though the choice
could be Demons, or The Idiot. As the juniors read Hobbes,
Locke, and Rousseau, they must be reading Jane Austen,
but Emma and Persuasion are good choices, too. “We’re
reading philosophers who are talking about human society
and how to organize a government, and there’s Jane Austen
portraying society in the drawing room.”
A great lover of fiction before he entered St. John’s,
Christian Blood left a little frustrated when it came to the
novel. “I knew I wasn’t getting the whole story,” he says.
“So I went to graduate school in comparative literature to
work on the question of the history of the novel.”
In many ways, Blood was more widely read than his peers
in grad school; no one else had read Ptolemy, for example.
But he was amazed at how much he didn’t know. “What was
immediately amazing to me upon arriving in grad school is
how much prose fiction there is from antiquity, the Middle
Ages and the Renaissance,” Blood says. “At St. John’s,
students sometimes get the impression that Greco-Roman
literature is history, epic and tragedy; that the Middle Ages
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 }
�16
{The Program}
is Chaucer; the early-modern period is
Cervantes; and that novels are something
autochthonous to modernity. I was in for
such a shock when I realized what a small
slice of literary history the canon [at St.
John’s] really is.” Intending to write on
Rabelais for his dissertation, he instead
honed in on Greco-Roman literature.
Blood knows that the Program can’t be all
things to all people, yet he thinks the college
should take a look at Apuleius, Chariton,
Longus, Petronius, and others “whose narratives explicitly engage with Homer, Plato and
Virgil and uncannily anticipate the novel as
we know it.”
In addition to what novels are read, Blood
often thinks about how novels are read. “I
think that in some ways, St. John’s presents
literature as didactic; you read about a character and you learn how to be like him and
not to be like him. Those are the kinds of
questions we asked about Billy Budd at
St. John’s.”
Reading more American novels would give Johnnies a better sense of their own
It was hard for Blood to adapt to classes in culture and history, says Georgia Tech Professor Carol Colatrella (A79).
graduate school with colleagues who brought
Marxist and post-feminist interpretations to
too many “dead white men” on the Program. Having
the works they read, and the very idea of research took
grown up in New Mexico and studied in Santa Fe, Giles
some getting used to. “Any time I looked up something
suggests Native American novelist Leslie Marmon-Silko’s
about a work, I felt like I was cheating,” he says.
Ceremony, if not for seminar, then at least for precepts and
But sometimes he thinks knowing a little bit more about
tutorials. “It’s an emotionally and powerfully engaging
Virginia Woolf might add to an undergraduate’s grasp of a
novel.”
novel like The Waves, whose author stretched well beyond
Unless they read them in preceptorials or on their own,
the boundaries of the conventional narrative. “I underSt. John’s students can miss out on some great American
stood nothing of that book,” says Blood. “Maybe I was a
novels, Colatrella says. “When I’m teaching my own
distracted senior, but maybe I would have grasped more if
classes, I think about what kinds of experiences I want
someone had given me some inkling of what she was up to.”
students to be exposed to: novels where there are different
If Blood would add works from antiquity, Jana Giles
values and where there’s an immersive world with lots of
would like to see modern works that explore gender issues
details where students are learning about a different
and ethnic and cultural diversity. She focused on Heart of
culture, even if it’s America,” says Colatrella.
Darkness, Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea, and Forster’s
Huckleberry Finn addresses this in some respect, but
Passage to India for her dissertation, and considers the
there are also powerful novels about and by American
novels worthy of St. John’s. In fiction, there’s room for the
women. For example, Colatrella’s students read Edith
college to address the oft-heard criticism that that there are
Wharton’s House of Mirth. While they initially saw the
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 }
�{The Program}
protagonist, Lily, as selfish and shallow, they viewed her
differently as they thought more about the narrow choices
for a woman with limited means during the Gilded Age.
Iola Leroy, by African-American writer Frances Ellen
Watkins Harper, explores slavery and racial identity, and
Their Eyes Were Watching God portrays the continuing
struggles of African-Americans in the Deep South.
St. John’s should consider more modern novels for the
Program, but at the same time, Colatrella laments that
Moby-Dick remains off the seminar list. “People who get to
read Moby-Dick with others are so lucky, because it really is
a book that needs to be talked about,” she says.
Although she has some suggestions for the reading list,
Colatrella appreciates the Program for what it is and should
always be. She wouldn’t have traded her laboratory classes,
math, music, philosophy—the full breadth of the Program—
17
for a different beginning to her career. “I came to college
with the feeling I shouldn’t cut off any pathways. I kept all
of my books from St. John’s, and I open them now for
different reasons.”
In future years, novels may come and go from the
Program, says tutor Judy Seeger, but whatever is read will
enrich the lives of students. “A good novel is a masterpiece
of language,” she says. “When we read a novel we really
have to take into account what is said as well as how it is
said. That isn’t always easy to do in seminar. But if you can
really learn that, then you really understand what it is to
read.”
“For the most part,” adds Susan Stickney, “I think the
novels we read at St. John’s teach us how to read novels.
Then, Johnnies can go out and eat up the whole rest of the
world of literature.” x
What was your favorite novel read in Seminar?
25
20
Eliot, Middlemarch
15
10
Thanks to the alumni who responded to our short poll
through Survey Monkey last winter, we have a slice of
Johnnie opinions about the novels read in the undergraduate
program. We received 671 responses. As far as the most
popular novels read, The Brothers Karamazov edged
Tolstoy’s War and Peace by a slim margin, but overall the
Russians emerged far ahead of third-place Don Quixote. One
Johnnie chided us: “Don’t you dare make me choose between
Dostoevsky and Austen.” Other write-in responses include
Mrs. Dalloway, The Tale of Genji, and The Magic Mountain.
What novels should be read in seminar that are not on the
list now? (Several on our list have been read in precepts,
language tutorial, and in the GI. “Most on the list are
dreadful or high school,” one Johnnie commented.)
Melville’s Moby-Dick came out ahead. We included Thackeray’s Vanity Fair because it was among one of the first
novels read on the New Program, but apparently Johnnies
are not keen to see it back. Write-ins for this question
included Wharton’s Age of Innocence, Hardy’s Jude the
Obscure, Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Achebe’s Things Fall
Apart, Ford’s The Good Soldier, and Iris Murdoch’s The
Black Prince. We like to think the alumni who suggested
Skinny Legs and All by Tom Robbins, The Little Engine that
Could, and Kujo were joking. x
5
0
The Russians Win
6.9%
Tolstoy, War and Peace
21.4%
Cervantes, Don Quixote
13.3%
Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
23.1%
Twain, Huckleberry Finn
7.0%
Austen, Pride and Prejudice
8.5%
Conrad, Heart of Darkness
3.3%
Swift, Gulliver’s Travels
3.9%
Woolf, To the Lighthouse
3.1%
Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
1.2%
Other
8.1%
What novel should be added to the reading list?
0
5
10
15
20
Melville, Moby-Dick
27.4%
Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury
12.2%
Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
12.2%
Flaubert, Madame Bovary
Forster, A Passage to India
Dickens, David Copperfield
Thackeray, Vanity Fair
Proust, In Search of Lost Time
Other
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 }
25
8.7%
4.0%
3.0%
1.8%
8.6%
22.1%
30
�18
{ J o h n n i e s a n d Fa c e b o o k }
The Virtual Table
JOHNNIES SIGN
O N T O FAC E B O O K
by Anna Perleberg (SF02)
“[T]hose who are . . . locally separated are
not performing, but are disposed to
perform, the activities of friendship;
distance does not break off the friendship
absolutely, but only the activity of it.”
(Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics)
his morning, Aristotle
signed into Facebook: he
updated his status to “Lazy
day—think my rational soul
is still asleep”; wished
Alexander the Great a
happy
33rd
birthday
(“Many happy returns!”);
tagged himself hoisting an
amphora in Theophrastus’ photo album “WineDark Shindig”; added the Prime Mover application (he can move you, but you can’t move him);
and for the nth time, ignored a friend request
from Thomas Aquinas. Activities of friendship,
indeed.
T
The social networking site Facebook, created in 2004 by a
group of Harvard students, takes its name from the oncecommon (now, one suspects, obsolete) practice by college
administrators of distributing Xeroxed, stapled sheaves of
student ID pictures as a handy means of linking names with
faces. The social utility quickly expanded from Harvard to
other universities; in late 2005 it launched a high school
version, and since September 2006, it’s been available to
anyone over the age of 13 with a valid e-mail address. This is,
of course, a good chunk of the world, and indeed, were Facebook a sovereign nation, its population of 350 million unique
users would make it the third largest in the world. Seventy
percent of these users live outside the United States.
And while media continues to regard social networking in
general, and Facebook in particular, with a wry, “these kids
today” attitude, as of October 2009 one-fifth of folks on
FB were over 45.
So what is Facebook? Is it a means or an end? Is it an inane
waste of time or a revolution in communication? Does it
destroy or facilitate discussion, bolster or ruin relationships?
Is it a real solution, in a world where our friends are ever more
far-flung, to Aristotle’s requirement of proximity for perfect
friendship?
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 }
�{ Fa c e b o o k }
19
Profiles, Friending, and
The Wall
The first thing one does after signing up
for Facebook is create a profile: an online
identity, consisting mostly of lists and
affirmations. (My Neighbor Totoro is my
favorite movie. I was born October 1. I
graduated from St. John’s College, Santa
Fe, in 2002. Here’s a picture of my cats!)
But as Facebook’s interface has evolved,
argues Anne Page McClard (SF83), this
static, self-promoting element has faded
from prominence, in favor of many
different forms of interaction. In an
article she co-authored for Anthropology
News in March 2008, she attributes the
popularity of Facebook to its ability to
“[shift] identity-making on the Web away
from the individual to the collective in a
new way, enabling low-maintenance,
automatically generated, interactionbased content creation.” For Johnnies in particular, she says,
who “gain satisfaction through conversation, a collective
activity,” the constant stream of connection is intuitive and
comfortable.
These connections take a wide variety of forms.Through
Facebook one can invite people to a party or a concert, join
groups with common interests, declare fandom for TV shows
and philosophers, even play games ranging from old
standbys such as Scrabble to complex role-playing games
where one pretends to be a vampire or a farmer. The most
basic tie, of course, has led to the neologism “to friend” (and
its opposite, “to unfriend,” the Oxford English Dictionary’s
2009 Word of the Year). Here, with a single mouse click, one
Facebook user gains access to another’s entire profile:
personal information (the aforementioned lists and affirmations), register of other friends, and the all-important Wall.
The Wall is where most one-on-one Facebook contact
takes place; it’s a way to promulgate photos, videos, links,
and status updates (musings quotidian or epic, posted by a
user; e.g., “Anna Perleberg is not on Facebook right now,
because this article is due tomorrow”). Depending on
privacy settings, whatever gets posted on a person’s wall,
whether by that person or one of their friends, can be read by
any friend of the user. Wondering what I’ve been up to lately?
Head for my Wall and peruse reams of fascinating trivialities,
from what I had for dinner one Tuesday (black currant vodka
and duck pelmeni in Cointreau sauce) to what people you’ve
perhaps never met and perhaps never will meet think of
the meal.
But the genius (and arguably, the danger) of Facebook isn’t
its ability to link one friend to another; e-mail, telephone,
letter-writing, and actually speaking to one another get the
job done just as well. Facebook’s innovation over previous
means of communication lies in its distillation of Wall
content from potentially hundreds of friends (the average is
around 130, but a profile can have up to 5,000) into one flow
of content called the News Feed, a kind of online agora where
Wall activities galore appear on one page. Whereas keeping
up with dozens of acquaintances of various ages on various
continents via face-to-face interaction, or even a phone call,
would require vast funds and an exhausting travel schedule—
not to mention the social awkwardness of showing up on the
doorstep of someone not seen since high school—the Facebook News Feed does it all automatically. Interaction and
friendship become effortless, much to Aristotle’s delight.
Or maybe they don’t.
Community and Counterargument
The genesis of this article was, naturally, a Facebook group I
created. “Johnnies on Facebook” currently stands at
265 members; in comparison, the Johnnie Chair, which has
its own profile page, has close to 2,200 friends. (The official
St. John’s College page has about 2,400 and gets about 800
visits a week.) Most members who commented see no contradiction between the examined life and the jovial cacophony
of the Wall and the News Feed. Many feel that Facebook facilitates connection: Lauren Yannerella (SF03) thinks that part
of the reason she uses Facebook is because she went to
St. John’s. “Our alumni tend to cover the globe, and it can be
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 }
�20
{ Fa c e b o o k }
very difficult to keep in touch and stay in the loop. I don’t
want to lose touch with the general student population, and
Facebook means I really don’t have to.”
For Ruth Johnston (A85), who is an invalid and “pretty
severely isolated,” Facebook has proved a boon. “I post lots
of history trivia. I always read with one eye open for what I
can use to amuse the Johnnies. Book illustrators mixed ear
wax into egg white to make book paint! The Black Death
started as an illness native to Asian groundhogs, known as
tarabagans!” She’s also enjoyed forming online friendships
with Johnnies previously unfamiliar: “I’ve picked up a range
of Johnnies I don’t know, as a reward for being interesting.
When I went to Homecoming last fall, a few people I wasn’t
sure I recognized told me, ‘Oh, I follow you on FB!’” And
while Santa Fe tutor Jacques Duvoisin doesn’t usually accept
friend requests from current students, he uses the site to
“hear from the few alums who really matter to me, as well as
all the others who may turn out to be interesting as time
passes.” Facebook’s not a threat to conversation, he says,
“since it primarily connects people who otherwise would not
be likely to converse at all because of time or space (how
Kantian!).”
Not all correspondents painted such a rosy picture. Alexis
Brown (SF00, EC03) uses Facebook primarily to chat with
non-Johnnie friends. “A few folks from SJC who graduated
around the same time as I did utilize a chat room to keep in
touch with one another on a regular basis (daily). It is very
intimate. Facebook is a networking site, and makes it easier
to stay in touch with people on a fairly impersonal level. But
Facebook is way too impersonal for real conversation.”
Where Anne Page McClard casts Facebook’s communal
nature as well-suited to seminar-trained thinkers, Brown
feels that “the individual, for me, was a key element in what
made a good or bad seminar. The individual is very much a
part of a discussion.”
Another alumna, Leila Khaleghi (SF05), highlights the
peculiar knots of etiquette a Facebooker can find herself in.
“People try to contact me on Facebook, we become friends,
yada yada. I assume that it’s just the ‘we went to the same
college’ thing and think nothing of it. Then they write me
messages like we know/knew each other and I literally have
no recollection of ever speaking a word to them. What do you
do in a situation such as this? Do I play along? I feel like Facebook is always getting me into strange and uncomfortable
scenarios.”
Brown’s assertion that “even if a discussion
starts to happen on FB, it falls apart quickly due
to limited space, time, format of the site, etc.” is
indeed borne out by the “Johnnies on Facebook”
group itself. An attempt by this intrepid reporter
to start a seminar-style discussion on the Aristotle quote above garnered a whopping two
responses (although several people had helpful
suggestions as to other Program texts that deal
with the concept of friendship). And while a
cursory search reveals a plethora of Johnnierelated groups—Johnnies Abroad, Johnnies in
Medicine, Johnnies in Chicago, Johnnies in
Public Policy, Johnnies Do It With Arete—
average membership is about 35. Compared with
the 400,000 members of the group “I Will Go
Slightly Out of My Way To Step On That
Crunchy-Looking Leaf,” that’s negligible, to say
the least.
Some Johnnies avoid the site altogether. Jamie
Bowman (SF99) confesses he has no logically
rigorous reason for his opposition, “besides a gut
reaction to anything that many people are so
excited about.” He’s not anti-Internet. “Since
2002, I’ve run a message board for Santa Fe
Johnnies from the mid-to-late ’90s. . . . It’s a
really cool board. It’s very active. I think Facebook is slowly killing it. The board (sfjohn-
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 }
�{ Fa c e b o o k }
nies3.yuku.com) is the local
Mom & Pop coffee shop and
Facebook is Starbucks.”
Besides its ubiquity, he
dislikes how Facebook can
dredge up tenuous associations. “I don’t need to
reconnect with the kid who
sat next to me in 10th-grade
English. I’ve heard many
stories of annoying people
wanting to be your Facebook friend and you have
to make up some excuse
why you don’t want to
meet them for lunch and
‘catch up.’”
Michael Sullivan (A02)
takes a moderate approach. He absented himself from the
site for more than six months because he thought it “debases
relationships by reducing them all to the lowest common
denominator.”
“All of the interactions, with friends I’d been in constant
contact with for 10 years or more and those I’d had no knowledge of since finding them on Facebook, seemed equally intimate and superficial,” he said. Recently, though, he resumed
posting, admitting that while Facebook is “no substitute for
conversation, it’s definitely a substitute for nothing. The fact
is that we no longer live in a polis, and if the technology
which has broken all familial and social ties by driving us to
the four winds doesn’t also bring us back together, then
nothing will. If the shallowness of the relationship-preservation that FB offers bothers me, so does the oblivion which is
the alternative.”
Facebook isn’t the only way Johnnies are reaching out in cyberspace. Many alumni are finding a voice in the blogosphere.
Here are just a few we’ve heard about:
Lisa Simeone (A79), a writer for Baltimore’s Style magazine as
well as a National Public Radio host, writes a lively blog called
“Glamour Girl.” Want to gain some tips on Jackie O’s simple,
but elegant style? Check out Glamour Girl at:
www.baltimorestyle.com/index.php/style/glamour_girl.
Alana Chernila (SF02) blogs about food and life and raising
kids. Every post includes a new recipe, as well as some spectacular photos of raspberries, rhubarb, and her campaign signs
(read the blog for more on that). The blog has a friendly,
21
Utopia or dystopia, Facebook is inhabited by
millions. And while a Google
search of the phrase “Facebook is destroying” generates 54,000 hits—crediting
the social network with
damaging the sanctity of
marriage, academic performance, the economy,
memory, America—it seems
prudent to reserve judgment
about
something
that
entered the public consciousness less than four
years ago. Perhaps Facebook
is the new Gutenberg press,
part of a paradigm shift in
the way human beings communicate. Perhaps it’s just a
diversion. Would that be so bad? Even Aristotle, a thinker
not given to frivolity, recognizes that friendship comes in
many forms, that “[o]ne cannot be a friend to many people in
the sense of having friendship of the perfect type with them.
. . . But with a view to utility or pleasure it is possible that
many people should please one; for many people are useful
or pleasant, and these services take little time.” x
Anna Perleberg (SF02) is a Brooklyn bookseller who checks her
Facebook two dozen times a day, but remains skeptical of Twitter.
Illustrator Caitlin Cass (SF09) recently paid tribute to St. John’s
in her collection of illustrations, Great Moments in Western
Civilization. Read more about Caitlin on her website:
www.greatmomentsinwesternciv.com
personable approach. Check out her recipe for herb dumplings
at www.eatingfromthegroundup.com.
Nate Downey (SF91), author of Harvest the Rain, writes a blog
on sustainability at www.backyarddigest.com. Downey is an
advocate for “gradual greening,” which starts with devoting 10
minutes a day to sustainable living. Read about his visits to the
farmer’s market, composting, and just getting outside.
Baltimore bloggers Lou Kovacs (A02) and Talley Scroggs
Kovacs (A01) borrowed the name of a famous book about the
Chesapeake Bay (Beautiful Swimmers) for a blog about “kitchen
exploits, urban adventures, country forays, and little one's
milestones.” (http://thebeautifulswimmers.blogspot.com)
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 }
�22
{History}
SAM AND CURTIS
Look Back on a Life Spent at St. John’s
by Rosemary Harty (AGI09)
ew people know the
college as well as Curtis
Wilson (HA83), tutor
emeritus and former
dean, and Samuel Kutler
(class of 1954), tutor
emeritus and former
dean. Wilson came to the
college in 1948 as a young
tutor, just after Barr and Buchanan departed.
Kutler was headed to the University of
Chicago until he learned of a college with
about 200 students where he could study
math and read philosophy. What’s most
remarkable about these two individuals is the
way they live the life of the mind. Both remain
active and involved in the college, and
intensely, intellectually curious. Until
recently, Kutler was still leading seminars in
the Graduate Institute, delivering lectures,
and working on a book about poetry and
mathematics. Wilson was awaiting the publication of his new book, The Hill-Brown
Theory of the Moon’s Motion: Its Coming-tobe and Short-lived Ascendancy (1877-1984).
They sat down together in Annapolis this
winter to share their memories from six
decades at St. John’s.
F
On choosing St. John’s
Curtis: I was in the history department at Columbia and was
having trouble with my dissertation. I was assigned to study a
15th-century Italian and do something like a previous student of
my advisor had done with another 15th-century Italian. This was
all on the premise that Galileo was only following things that
were already proposed and done in the Middle Ages—the thesis
of continuity. My gut feeling was that there had been a revolution sometime around there, and it was not continuity. A friend
suggested I attend lectures by Leo Strauss at the New School for
Social Research, so I went and listened to his lectures on Plato’s
Republic. These were wonderful to me because you studied the
text very carefully and then thought out possible interpretations. You didn’t try to fit the text into some historical theme
proposed by scholars. Then my friend suggested I should go
down to St. John’s and talk with Jacob Klein, and he added, “by
the way, when you’re there, ask for a job.” I’d had disappointing
interviews; people willing to hire me, but it meant imposing
some context on me. St. John’s was just—fresh air! We would
actually read the books you need to read in order to have opinions about history or to know that your opinions were not worthwhile.
Sam: I had wanted to go to the University of Chicago, but when
I read the St. John’s catalog, I said, “that’s what I want to do.”
That we studied the ancients was unbelievably important to me.
That we studied ancient mathematics before ending up in the
senior year with the calculus—that was priceless. You could see
the change Descartes and company brought about. Most people
think mathematics is one thing, but it isn’t one river like that.
On laboratory and language
Curtis: I was asked by [then dean] Raymond Wilburn to teach a
class in organic chemistry when I got here—to the whole senior
class, about 40 students. Scott Buchanan and Stringfellow
Barr’s departure was a towering fact, and the seniors effected a
pervasive melancholy. These were the after days; the glory days
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 }
�23
jennifer behrens
{History}
were gone. A second fact of some import to me was that these
students knew no chemistry whatsoever. Teaching them organic
chemistry was a problem because of that, and it was made sort of
a crisis because the textbook was a cookbook, nothing more. We
started out by making cleaning solution that was potentially
lethal, and not used in college laboratories nowadays.
The students were totally skeptical of this enterprise and with
good reason. Somehow, in mid-course, I took them through an
elementary history of chemistry, to seek why and how the
atomic theory got established. I asked them to write papers
about that, and they did a good job. What had happened was that
the lab program had proved a difficulty for the college, and at
some point before I arrived, a decision was made to use ordinary
textbooks. This was not at all in accordance with anything
related to the Program, and with others I spent the next 10 years
working primarily in the laboratory to try to find ways of doing
things that might be more helpful to students.
Sam: Curtis was on sabbatical when I got here in 1950. We were
still making scary things in the laboratory. We called one the
universal solution, and the theory we had was that it would eat
through anything there is on earth if it got through glass. We
thought it could eat through us and right down to the center of
the earth!
There were also some really good discussions in the laboratory, so I found it a good experience. But then, and over the
Sam Kutler (left, class of 1954) knew Curtis Wilson (HA83) as
one of his tutors; later they served together as tutors. Both
men have served as dean, and both have stayed very involved in
the life of the college even after retiring.
years, it was tough for the poor students to fit laboratory into the
schedule. All the other classes were five days a week, and laboratories were only twice. You were preparing crazily to get your
language, mathematics, and laboratory done. I studied calculus
with Curtis, and it was really rigorous. We sure went through the
theory of everything. There were a group of young tutors here,
Robert Bart, Hugh McGrath, Curtis—they were a splendid
group.
Curtis: Hugh and Bob were especially concerned with language.
Latin had been taken out of the program and we got two years of
Greek. Then there was a thought that we could have some time
for English poetry, something a little different at the end of the
second year.
Sam: I didn’t benefit from that. We had two solid years of Greek,
and we translated every word of the Hippolytus of Euripedes.
When I came back as a tutor, then we worked English poetry in
the second terms of tutorials. But it still seems a shame to have
just a year and a half with the Greek language.
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 }
�24
{History}
The community was very small.
Not everything about that was
good, but you knew everybody and
when there was a play performed,
you expected every single faculty
member to be there and say that
you were very good, whether you
were or not. I was in The Winter’s
Tale, and that’s where I met my
wife (Emily, class of 1955).
Tutor Emeritus Curtis Wilson
served two terms as dean and was
one of the first faculty members
in Santa Fe.
On President
Richard Weigle
Curtis: He brought the necessary
attempts to raise funds. But there
was always a tension between him
and Jacob Klein; Jasha watched him
like a hawk, thinking something
dreadful was likely to happen. For
instance, Dick Weigle wanted to
institute having Phi Beta Kappa
here. It was derailed. Then there
were a lot of discussions before the
dedication of the new Mellon
building; certain people were to
be named honorary fellows of
St. John’s. Some people wanted
strongly to have Barr and Buchanan
so named—but not Adler!
On Dean Jacob Klein
Curtis: I visited the college
initially in April 1948, in the
spring, to talk with Jacob Klein
about my dissertation. I met him
first in what was then the Senior
Common Room. He was seated on
a red leather sofa, which I think is
still possessed somewhere at the
college. He smoked cigarettes and
his cigarette ash fell on his vest so
he would be perpetually wiping
away ash. I told him about the subject I was assigned and he said,
“nonsense, all nonsense.” I was at a stage where that seemed a
very gratifying statement. He really felt the responsibility of
being dean, and he took it very seriously. He talked to the whole
college and said, “The Golden Age of Athens is succeeded by the
Alexandrian period. We (St. John’s) are in the Alexandrian
period.” He was trying to address this pervasive melancholy
[post Barr and Buchanan], and what he was saying was, “we have
to get down to work.” I admired him tremendously.
Sam: He would appear in the Coffee Shop at lunchtime and
everybody would gather around him and he would start a discussion, even though he had work to do as dean. I remember once
when students tried to grab him and ask about Picasso. And he
said, “I’ll tell you about Picasso; he was always thinking.” And
whish! He was gone. As a student, I thought that he always had
been dean and he always would be dean. The main thing about
St. John’s was that we read old books, and we took them with
complete seriousness, and he helped enormously with that
because they were so important in his life, Plato and Aristotle.
And the college became settled around that.
Sam: As a student, I didn’t appreciate Dick Weigle. It was only
after he spent 32 years as president that I realized how lucky we
were to have him. He really cared about the good of the college
and he sure kept us alive. The college was concerned about
growing too big, and we thought 300 students was the perfect
number. One day, students burned Weigle in effigy because they
thought he wanted to make the college bigger. He did so by
creating the Santa Fe campus—it was very, very important to
him. And he brought us the women: the women saved us!
On Mortimer A dler
Curtis: He’s not enormously interesting in my opinion. He
influenced some people in his book How to Read a Book, and
many people learned of St. John’s because of it. He had the
opinion that he’d come every year to lecture, but that wasn’t
true. It was a picture he built up and believed.
Sam: It was true to me! When I was dean he would call me up
and tell me when he was free to come to lecture.
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 }
�25
{History}
Sam Kutler left a job as a mathematician at Johns Hopkins’
Applied Physics Laboratory to
join the college faculty.
Curtis: On one of the Adler occasions, the prank was to release
from the back of the auditorium
some thousands of marbles, which
then rolled downhill and gave a
most unnatural sound. Mr. Weigle
stood up at the time and apologized for it. A year or two later,
Adler had dinner in our dining
room, and I told him what that
sound had been. He said, “If I’d
only known, I could have said I
think I’ve lost my marbles!”
up, worried that the “special
thing” that his class had would
vanish from the earth since
they’d left St. John’s. Some like to
talk about a “Golden Age.” I
don’t know about the Golden Age
because when I came it had just
vanished. But I look back on my
times with members of Sam’s
class as a very special time. We
were having good conversations.
The students were learning, and I
was learning.
On being dean
Curtis: My first deanship was 195862. I found it difficult, and I was
discouraged sometimes, but we
did do a few things. We eliminated
German, got two years of French,
and instituted the preceptorials.
You can’t believe how much
discouragement and depression
was rampant in the upper levels of the student body at that time.
They’d been doing the same thing in so many ways. We needed
to stimulate intellectual excitement and interest. It seemed a
good idea to some of us that tutors should choose topics that
they themselves had some interest in pursuing and that allowed
for variety.
The Program is not a complete education for anybody. The
idea is—and always has been at St. John’s—that you’d better go on
learning after leaving the college, for 60 or so years, whatever is
available to you.
I think the dean’s opening lecture is enormously important.
Somehow or other, by example or engagement, the dean should
open up questions, inspire his or her audience with the ideal of
a life of inquiry. It needs to be fresh and unexpected. No, I didn’t
and don’t know how to do it! And I drove my family crazy in the
summers when I was trying to concoct my efforts in that genre.
On change and the college
Curtis: It’s natural for change to happen at St. John’s, and it’s
not something to be bemoaned. I remember I spent a semester
at the University of Toronto in the ’90s and met one of the
students I’d had the previous year. And he immediately spoke
Sam: What can’t change?
Imagine if we read only modern
books? Or even worse, only
ancient books? That interplay
between the two is one of the most important things that we do.
What St. John’s meant in your life
Curtis: It’s like asking a fish to explain how it is to be in the
water. I think my habit of questioning is potentially very good.
Not always! There are hostile circumstances in which questioning is not welcomed and as a consequence, not immediately
helpful. Then one must work quietly towards improving the
atmosphere. But we need potential whistleblowers in our
society. We need people to say: “We don’t get it—why are we
here?” It’s those people who are going to make the difference.
Sam: My student years at St. John’s—they were magic years for
me. I think I would have had greater tunnel vision had I not
come here, and the factors were my fellow students. And the
faculty. There are plenty of works I probably wouldn’t have read
if I hadn’t come to St. John’s: Platonic dialogues, Aristotle. And
I’ve read a lot of Shakespeare since coming to St. John’s. Could
you imagine not reading Shakespeare? x
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 }
�26
{Croquet}
“ W E A R E T H E DA N A A N S T O
YO U R T ROY ”
“St. John’s Fight Song”
O Johnnie, as you play croquet,
Defend our honor on this day.
Your battle cry: Let Middies kneel
To the form of Good reveal.
O hear us when we boldly say,
Defeat the Middies at croquet.
O ye who books do seldom read,
Your unexamined lives concede.
Beware each Middie girl and boy,
We are the Danaans to your Troy!
Defeat the Middies at croquet!
Amen.
doug plummer
O hear us when we boldly say,
Ben Hutchins (A10) greets Midshipman
n the fall of 2001, tutor Tom May
Amanda Howard before the start of the
noticed his students needed more
practice singing in four-part harmony annual match.
and that fewer students seemed to
have experience in singing hymns.
“Ms. (Tanya) Hadlock-Piltz (A05) came to
Casting about for something to sing,
me with the words, and after a few changes,
May came up with the Navy Hymn. “I
we printed them below the more familiar
couldn’t think of anything more appropriate, lyrics to sing at croquet,” May recalls. “The
and I thought we should sing it at Croquet.”
first year, there was no announcement. We
The Navy Hymn sung at the Academy is
sang ‘The Star-Spangled Banner,’ then the
adopted from Britain’s Royal Navy. The orig- Navy Hymn, and then we just vamped right
inal words were written as a poem in 1860 by into singing the St. John’s song. It was interWilliam Whiting, and the melody was by the
esting to watch the change of expression. By
Rev. John Bacchus Dykes, who originally
the time we got to the lyrics ‘beat the
composed the tune as a song called “Melita.” Middies at croquet,’ it was perfectly clear
As the students practiced the hymn for the
that we weren’t singing the Navy Hymn
croquet match, May wondered what else they anymore.”
could perform in honor of St. John’s.
This year, May was surprised by the
While the college has a fight song, May has
number of students and alumni singing
never been a fan: “It’s very dated, it’s all about along. He’d like to see even more Johnnies
the ‘men of St. John’s,’ and it sounds like a
join in, so clip out the words and be ready to
Franz Liszt reject.” Instead, he suggested to
sing next April! x
his students that they develop new lyrics for a
Johnnie version of the Navy Hymn.
I
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 }
Navy Hymn
Eternal Father, strong to save,
Whose arm hath bound the restless
wave,
Who bidd’st the mighty ocean deep
Its own appointed limits keep;
Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee,
For those in peril on the sea!
Most Holy Spirit! Who didst brood
Upon the chaos dark and rude,
And bid its angry tumult cease,
And give, for wild confusion, peace;
Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee,
For those in peril on the sea!
�27
doug plummer
judy mcbride
The 28th annual croquet match against the
Naval Academy took place Saturday, April 18.
More than 2,000 spectators turned out for the
match, with the Johnnies prevailing, 5-zip.
That makes 23 St. John’s victories since the
match began. Fully embracing the misnomer
of St. John’s as “that basketball school,” Johnnies suited up in basketball uniforms and
headbands for their sound defeat of the
cardigan-clad Mids. x
doug plummer
sarah culver
judy mcbride
judy mcbride
{Croquet}
Clockwise from top left: Citali and Patrick
McDowell (A01); Luke Russell (A09); Fashionista and family; Spectacular hats were on
display; Picnics; Swing dancing.
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 }
�28
J. Robert Oppenheimer,
The Cold War, and the
Atomic West
by Jon Hunner (SF74)
Oklahoma University Press, 2009
In November 1942, a professor of
physics from Berkeley and an
Army colonel on a secret government mission drove through New
Mexico’s Jemez Mountains to an
isolated boys’ boarding school.
J. Robert Oppenheimer and
Col. Leslie Groves were evaluating
sites for a top-secret laboratory.
As Jon Hunner (SF74) recounts in
his book, J. Robert Oppenheimer,
The Cold War, and the Atomic
West, the Los Alamos Ranch
School was not an ideal site to build an
atomic bomb. But Oppenheimer, the
improbable civilian director of the
Manhattan Project, loved New Mexico:
“Even though Los Alamos did not fit the
selection criteria for the lab’s location,
Oppie wanted the site. He had lamented in
the 1930s that it was a pity he could not
combine two of the loves of his life—physics
and New Mexico. Los Alamos fulfilled his
dream,” Hunner writes.
Oppenheimer initially thought he would
need about half a dozen scientists to help
him develop the atomic bomb. “By the fall
of 1945,” Hunner writes, “approximately
5,000 men, women and children lived on
the Hill.” The work of these individuals,
who raised families and lived “normal” lives
while they worked to build a devastating
weapon, contributed to a new era in human
history. The West was transformed as a
burgeoning atomic industry took root.
Hunner, professor of history at New
Mexico State University, has long been
fascinated with Los Alamos. His dissertation at the University of New Mexico, a
social and cultural history of Los Alamos,
developed into his first book, Inventing
Los Alamos: The Growth of an Atomic
Community. He spent 14 years researching
and writing that book, yet still felt “I had
really just scratched the surface”
concerning Oppenheimer.
Hunner was eager to return to the
subject. Oppenheimer was an enigmatic
character whose life was filled with great
triumphs and staggering personal
tragedies. He grew up in a wealthy Jewish
family in New York City; his brilliance was
{Bibliofile}
recognized at a
young age. When
he became ill as a
young man, he
was sent west to
recover and fell in
love with New
Mexico. He later
bought a cabin in
the mountains
that would
become a lifelong
refuge for him and
his family. “I
definitely try to
understand the
impact of Los
Alamos on New
Mexico, but also
the impact of New Mexico on Los Alamos,”
Hunner explains. “A lot of people came
from Ivy League colleges, and they started
wearing cowboy boots. Oppenheimer was
right there with them.”
Oppenheimer earned his bachelor’s in
chemistry in Harvard in three years. He
spent a disastrous year in experimental
physics at Cavendish Laboratory at
Cambridge before moving to theoretical
physics at the University of Göttingen. After
he finished his doctorate, he had many positions to choose from, and in part because of
his attraction to the West, headed to
Berkeley.
As a professor, Oppenheimer was a great
theoretical physicist, but most of his
students couldn’t understand his lectures.
When word came that two German
scientists had split the atom, Oppenheimer
joined others in seeking to unlock the
secrets to developing atomic weapons. His
scientific acumen—
but perhaps more so
his naked ambition—
helped him stand out
among other candidates for the job as
civilian director of
the Manhattan
Project. Although he
had never even
managed a physics
department, Oppenheimer turned out to
be a successful
manager of the
project. Hunner
describes the city
that grew from the
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 }
laboratory, as workers and scientists
brought their families, built schools and
hospitals and went about their lives, mostly
in ignorance of the laboratory’s work. He
describes the Trinity test, on July 16, 1945,
as well as Oppenheimer’s reaction: “Around
6:30 a.m., he commented: ‘My faith in the
human mind has been somewhat restored.’”
Hunner admires Oppenheimer in part for
his intelligence and charisma, but also for
“his attempt, after he opened up the
Pandora’s box of atomic weapons, to try to
figure out ethically what he could do” to
prevent the world from destroying itself.
The scientist joined others in a movement
called One World or None, which advocated
the creation of an international agency to
control atomic weapons.
While Oppenheimer’s downfall occurred
during the McCarthy era, he was more a
victim of J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI, of
former colleagues who were eager to
discredit him, and of his own bad decisions.
The hearing on Oppenheimer’s security
clearance ( which allowed him to play a key
role as an advisor on U.S. atomic policy) was
supposed to be secret. “But as soon as the
hearing was over, the head of the atomic
energy commission released a 1,000-page
transcript to newspapers,” Hunner points
out. “It was a well-orchestrated campaign to
discredit Oppenheimer because he was
starting to publicly question the official
policy. It was partly political, partly
personal vindictiveness, and it was also a
fork in the road for our atomic policy.”
Oppenheimer wanted a public, open
dialogue about atomic weapons. Those like
Teller, who would eventually prevail, advocated secrecy. Oppenheimer was also
growing increasingly concerned about the
potential consequences of
the military-industrial
complex in the United States.
After he joined
Princeton’s Institute for
Advanced Studies, Oppenheimer continued to try to
influence public policy.
He was a sought-after
lecturer and appeared on
television programs. During
the Kennedy years, his
reputation “was kind of
rehabilitated by the government,” says Hunner. Oppen-
Jon Hunner
�heimer died of cancer in 1967.
The interest in Los Alamos and Oppenheimer has roots in Hunner’s personal
history. He grew up in the 1950s and ‘60s in
Albuquerque, and his father administered
atomic weapons programs for the Air Force.
“We had photographs of atomic bomb
mushroom clouds hanging on our walls,”
Hunner recalls. “Then when I went to
St. John’s and started talking to my classmates, I realized that not everybody grew
up with photographs of atomic bombs, and
no one else’s parents worked with atomic
weapons. It was kind of a shock.”
His family history is one reason Hunner
considers Los Alamos and Oppenheimer
from a viewpoint other historians may not
share. His book details the devastation in
Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but he also tallies
the millions of lives lost in conventional
warfare in World War II. “I think when we
look at the morality of this weapon of mass
destruction, it’s easy to be pro or con, but
because my own father was involved with
administering nuclear weapons, it’s not so
black and white for me,” he explains. “I
don’t want to think of my father as someone
who was ready to blow up the world. I like to
argue that this is a horrendous weapon, and
it has horrendous implications for
humanity. But it also helped end the most
horrendous war in history.”
—Rosemary Harty
Stateside
by Jehanne Dubrow (A97)
Northwest University Press, 2010
Jehanne Dubrow’s latest volume of poetry,
Stateside, explores a timely theme: the
everyday lives of partners, spouses, and
families left behind when a loved one in
military service ships out to a war zone.
Dubrow wrote the poems before her
husband, Navy Lt. Jeremy Schaub (A97),
left last winter for an eight-month tour of
duty. Yet the poems are written from an
authentic viewpoint of uncertainty, fear,
loneliness—and at times, anger.
Inspired by the Odyssey, the volume is
divided into three sections: before, during,
and after a deployment. Military terminology is mingled with domestic images, a
civilian life contrasted with a life of military
service. In “O’ Dark Hundred” the writer
imagines her husband’s pre-dawn shift:
“My words are just reflections from the
shore, / and the page, imperfect mirror of
jennifer behrens
{Bibliofile}
Jehanne Dubrow
his ship, / where white lights blink above
each metal door.”
“Love in the Time of Coalition”
combines images of a lover’s attention to a
woman with sinister words such as “toxin,”
sarin,” and “plutonium.” “At the Mall with
Telemachus” portrays a harried military
wife dealing with a child’s temper tantrum
in the food court. And “Whiskey Tango
Foxtrot, ” coyly profane, describes the
moment when a wife first hears the news
that her husband is headed to a war zone.
When Dubrow and Schaub dated as
students in Annapolis, she couldn’t have
imagined she would one day be a Navy wife,
separated for months at a time without
definitive word on her husband’s whereabouts. After graduating, Dubrow stayed in
Annapolis, managed a coffee shop, read
Proust, and became serious about poetry.
The couple broke up, and Dubrow went on
to earn an MFA at the University of
Maryland and a PhD at the University of
Nebraska.
Although they had a “tragic, dramatic
breakup,” Dubrow knew that Schaub had
joined the Navy, and after 9/11, she got in
touch. They started e-mailing, got back
together, managed a long-distance relationship while she finished her doctorate, and
were married in 2005. Schaub is about five
months into an eight-month deployment
“on a ship somewhere”; Dubrow is an
assistant professor at Washington College
in Chestertown, Maryland.
When her husband first raised the idea of
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 }
29
volunteering for deployment more
than a year ago, “the danger of his
work became very real to me,”
Dubrow explains. That’s when she
began writing poems about families
and the military, and she conducted
research on the military wife in literature. “What I quickly discovered
was that she’s almost an entirely
silent figure,” Dubrow says. “Basically, the only model we have is Penelope, who is a highly impractical
model for a woman in the 21st
century. She’s patient, she’s devout,
she’s chaste—basically, unimpeachable. The standards she sets are
impossible.”
While the book doesn’t mirror her
own experiences, Dubrow says the
poems allowed her to express her
views and frustrations: “I distrust
this pressure from the military for
women to be silent about their
misgivings and to not express when
things are difficult because that looks like
weakness or it looks unpatriotic.” Her
poems in Stateside seek to show that a
woman’s patriotic sacrifices are no less
heroic because they take place on the home
front.
Dubrow has always drawn from her own
life and her sense of identity for her poems.
Her first volume of poetry, The Hardship
Post (2009), explores her Jewish identity
through the experience of being a
diplomat’s daughter. Dubrow conducted
research for her second collection, From the
Fever-World, during a fellowship at the
United States Holocaust Museum. The
work is a collection of fragments written in
the voice of a Yiddish poet, the product of
Dubrow’s imagination.
Not quite finished with the themes she
explored in Stateside, Dubrow is now
writing a book of lyrical essays on being
married to the military. In addition, she’s
editing an anthology of modern Jewish
poetry and finishing up a volume of poems
exploring her adolescence in Eastern
Europe before and after the fall of the
Berlin Wall. The poems use “the oppressive
tyrannical language of Communism to
speak about the oppressiveness of the
adolescent body. Adolescence is a morbid,
embarrassing, naked time—it makes for
great poems.” x
— Rosemary Harty
�30
{Alumni}
Aristotle in New Orleans, Meditations in Maine
Like evangelists, alumni bring St. John’s ways to the world
by Rosemary Harty
B
efore they even had children,
Aaron Lewis (A95) and his
wife, Elizabeth, worked to get
their small parish school to
adopt a classical/traditional
curriculum. Kirsten Jacobson
(SF96) started a series of philosophy
seminars at a local high school, with her
undergraduate students serving as seminar
leaders. At Tulane University, Ryan
McBride (SFGI96) created a program that
seeks to make debate champions of middleschoolers, and Lee Perlman (A73) is part of
a new freshman program at MIT that brings
together humanities and the sciences.
Much like Scott Buchanan, who brought
great books to working adults in New York
City before he helped bring them to
St. John’s, these Johnnies believe classics
are for everyone.
Ryan McBride, Aristotle in
New Orleans
What is virtue? The students in Ryan
McBride’s undergraduate philosophy
classes at Tulane University are reading
about the concept in Aristotle and Plato,
but they’re also trying to be more virtuous
by working as volunteer debate coaches for
middle-school students in New Orleans
public schools. McBride, a postdoctoral
fellow at Tulane, created “Aristotle in
New Orleans” as a Tulane project that
combines academics with service learning.
In St. John’s terms, McBride explains, his
class is like a preceptorial on the Nicomachean Ethics, “with a lab mixed in where
we go out and take part in our community.”
His idea was simple: “Rather than just
talking about what virtue is, why don’t we
go out into the world and practice
generosity and courage and see how they
are components of the good life?”
McBride himself was never a debater.
But his interest in Aristotle led him to
Book VIII of the Topics, where Aristotle
describes gymnastic dialect, a type of
competitive exercise. He decided to create a
course based around these dialectical
battles. McBride’s students revived this
style of debate and used their experiences
as a basis for thinking about method in
Aristotle’s Ethics and Platonic dialogues.
Inspired by Aristotle and Quintilian, Ryan McBride (SFGI96), fifth from left, back row,
created a course that pairs philosophy with teaching middle school students how to debate.
Before moving to New Orleans, McBride
was a visiting assistant professor at
St. Norbert University. After graduating
from the GI, he taught English at the
University of Oregon, then earned his
doctorate at Marquette University. As a
grad student, McBride spent summers in
New Orleans, and he applied for the postdoc fellowship because he loves the city.
None of the three middle schools had a
debate team before McBride launched his
project last fall. With his department’s
approval, he required a mandatory 40 hours
of service from every student who signed
up for his course. His undergraduates
adjusted quickly to the younger students,
“although some of my students are a little
overwhelmed to be in a middle school,”
especially where students are from
economically disadvantaged families.
Studying the way words work for Aristotle
and Plato gives the Tulane students an interesting way to understand a debate. Quintilian helps by giving classical, yet practical,
advice. “Quintilian makes the pursuit of
becoming the ideal orator into a game,
something that should be fun,” he says.
In their first three debates, the middleschoolers have done quite well. “You can’t
believe how these kids—who were terrified
to speak in front of five or six kids—develop
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 }
the composure to be articulate and on the
ball in front of hundreds of people. They’re
fearless,” he says.
McBride plans to try to expand Aristotle
in New Orleans to reach more schools. He
can count on his undergraduates: of his
40 coaches who took his class last semester,
12 came back to continue as volunteers.
Lee Perlman, Concourse
Lee Perlman has been teaching in MIT’s
freshman alternative program, the Experimental Studies Program, for many years.
Now he’s pleased to be a part of a renewed
emphasis on integrating the sciences and
the humanities through a freshman
program called Concourse. The project’s
roots go back four years, when Perlman
began teaching a class with MIT Professor
Bernhard Trout on “The Philosophical
History of Energy,” which began with Aristotle and ended up with modern science.
“We got the idea of trying to start
another one of these freshman alternative
programs, a great-books-oriented program.
We went to the dean in charge and talked to
him, and it turned out a program already
existed, called Concourse.”
Several decades ago, the university
created the program to address concerns
raised over the division of the sciences and
�31
{Alumni}
humanities, as articulated by C.P. Snow in
his famous essay, “The Two Cultures.”
Over the years, says Perlman, “that mission
faded, and it became a teaching community,
with classes, a lounge, a kitchen, but no real
distinct character.”
This year, Trout and Perlman began
working to revive the original mission of
Concourse. Trout will be the new director,
and Perlman will teach yearlong courses in
the humanities. The program is starting out
slowly, with 60 freshman enrolled in yearlong courses each year, but he hopes to see
it grow to look more like a core texts
curriculum, open to more students.
Perlman earned a PhD at MIT and taught
at Swarthmore and Brown before returning
to MIT’s Experimental Study Group in
1994. Over the years, he’s taught courses
including a seminar on ancient Greek
mathematics and a class on the Philosophy
of Love. What is missing in this program,
however, is giving students the opportunity
to make connections across the disciplines.
“What I found after I started teaching
ancient Greek philosophy was that in the
end, it was really an ethics course. But put
that together with a course on how the
Greeks thought about mathematics and our
place in the universe and that gives you
surprising conclusions.”
Perlman is excited about the possibilities
for Concourse. “My goal is to re-create
St. John’s to the extent that it’s possible and
appropriate in a place like MIT,” explains
Perlman.
Kirsten Jacobson, Philosophy
across the Ages
For Kirsten Jacobson, teaching philosophy
is just one part of her job—getting students
to really talk about philosophical ideas and
their real-world applications is more important.
With that in mind,
Jacobson recently launched
a program called “Philosophy across the Ages,”
connecting University of
Maine undergraduates with
Orono High School
students through seminarstyle discussions of key
texts of philosophy. The
undergraduates lead
sessions by asking a wellcrafted opening question.
This semester, the students
started by reading Plato’s
Apology and Crito. Later in the year, they
took on
readings Descartes’ Meditations and
de Beauvoir’s Ethics of Ambiguity.
Jacobson thrived in the seminar setting at
St. John’s, having transferred from Middlebury. She earned her PhD at Penn State, and
specializes in 19th- and 20th-century continental philosophy. Her teaching style is very
much influenced by St. John’s. “A lot of my
students say, ‘your courses are so different
because you’re so committed to getting us
to talk,’” Jacobson says.
Currently about 10 high school students
are signed up; about three or four University
of Maine students take part in each seminar.
Jacobson and her students meet in advance
to discuss the major themes of a text and
choose an opening question. “I really
emphasize that I want them to think about
not instructing the students, but trying to
engage the text, lead the conversation, and
encourage discussion.”
Jacobson finds it amazing and significant
that teenagers want to read Plato and
Descartes, and she’s consistently surprised
by the depth of their thinking. For example,
in a seminar on the Apology, the students
talked about how important it is to question
authority, that there is a danger to society if
everyone blindly follows the rules. On the
other hand, another student pointed out
that anarchy would result if no one followed
the laws.
With the belief that “philosophy really is
for everyone,” Jacobson titled her program
“Philosophy across the Ages” with a
double-entendre in mind: “I hope we’ll be
having seminars with folks in local retirement communities soon. These conversations should be happening at all stages of
our lives.”
Aaron Lewis: Immanuel Lutheran
School
For many years, Aaron Lewis worked on
Capitol Hill; now he’s a marketing executive in D.C. But for the last decade, he’s
had a side pursuit: working with his
parish, Immanuel Lutheran, to bring the
trivium and quadrivium to the parish’s
school in Alexandria, Virginia. Now
that it’s firmly in place, he’s been
“gobsmacked” at how successful the
model has been.
Lewis and his wife, Elizabeth, worked to
get the curriculum accepted by the parish
before they started their own family. (They
now have three daughters.) Yet Lewis was
so convinced that a classical education was
right for the school that he worked to overcome the initial skepticism that some
parishioners felt about the enterprise.
Lewis served on the search committee for
the new principal, and his wife was on the
school board. “About six years ago, we
hired a principal who was strictly classical,” says Lewis. “He slowly converted
the curriculum from progressive to classical, hiring teachers that had experience
teaching a classical curriculum and
training Immanuel’s rostered teachers in
the ways of classical education.”
Lewis has enough political and
marketing experience to know how to gain
support for the idea. In an area where
private schools are sought after, and property values closely monitored, the Lewises
promoted the idea that school’s academic
program would be equally attractive to
parents and parishioners without children.
And finally, “since it’s a Lutheran school,
we sold it to the parish with the idea that
Martin Luther would have studied under a
similar curriculum.”
The Lewises couldn’t be
more pleased with the way the
school is thriving. Their oldest
daughter will start pre-school
there in the fall. “Once a liberal
education is in your bones, you
really have to pass it on,”
Lewis says. x
Kirsten Jacobson (SF96, right)
hopes her high school project
“Philosophy Across the Ages”
is the beginning of a series of
philosophy seminars in Orono.
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 }
�32
{Alumni Notes}
1946
In March, PETER WEISS spoke on
“The Goldstone Report: Does
International Law Really
Matter?” at the Church Center
for the United Nations. His
answer: “Yes, and the vicious
attacks on Justice Goldstone
prove it.”
1956
JOHN CHASE is a maverick who
doesn’t believe in “careers,” but
in following his heart. Following
his military service, he attended
acting school in England and was
a professional actor, teacher, playwright and director for several
years. He later lived on a farm in
Maine and had a house-painting
business in North Carolina. He
returned to Maine and ran a
charter sailing business out of
Friendship, a small lobstering
community. Now back in N.C.,
he devotes his time to reciting
poetry, writing, and observing
nature. He is currently employed
by the U.S. Census Bureau.
1958
JOHN BREMER has retired from
his endowed chair at Cambridge
College and is living peaceably in
Ludlow, Vt., with his marmalade
cat, Molly. Last year he gave the
commencement address at the
College of St. Joseph in Rutland,
Vt., and was awarded the
honorary degree of Doctor of
Humanities. He has just finished
a new version of the Iliad and
continues to write on Plato. He is
on the board of Black River
Academy Museum in Ludlow and
is writing a history of early
Ludlow for the museum; he has
also devised a celebration for
Shakespeare’s birthday for the
museum. His book Plato’s Ion
was nominated for the Steven
Runciman Award.
“’Tis to Another Sea”
R
ICHARD MOREHOUSE (A83) “was sailing along
fine as an art dealer in 20th-century photographs (morehousegallery.com) when the
recession came along and decimated my
clients.” Morehouse is grateful to the college
for preparing him for inevitable change. “I am
now working in sales for a company that makes the world’s
most scalable software for time series data and events
(osisoft.com). It used to be easier to describe my work! But
the new job is fascinating. I am lucky to be a re-trainable
member of the workforce at a time when jobs are disappearing, never to return. I credit St. John’s for distinguishing
tethered knowledge from untethered true opinion. We never
got any of the latter kind (none at least from the 21st century).
Therefore, by rejection of the absurd, we must have gotten
the former kind—the kind that gets one through recessions
and other turbulent times.” x
1962
DAVID W. BENFIELD reports that
Jim Forrester (class of 1962) and
his wife stopped by on their way
to and from Florida. “It is always
such a pleasure to reminisce
about our good old days with
DEAN WILSON (HA83) and
MR. OSSORGIN (HSF86) and
MR. SPARROW (HA93), among
other favorites! Remember folks,
2012 will bring an important
election in November and our
50th reunion in September! Soon
it will be time to book rooms and
make a seminar book choice.”
“It looks like my film of Anthony
Burgess’ novel A Dead Man in
Deptford, about Christopher
Marlowe, is finally going ahead,”
reports Michael Elias. “Shooting
is planned to begin in September
in England. I also adapted Robert
Silverberg’s classic sci-fi novel
The Man in the Maze. It is based
on Sophocles’ Philoctetes. In
Silverberg’s version the hero is
abandoned on a deserted planet
(Lemnos) in a city that is filled
with killing mazes and traps.
When Earth needs him, he
refuses to come out. Also
finishing a novel about the Incas
and working to get my play The
Catskill Sonata to New York.
Paul Mazursky directed it in Los
Angeles, where it ran for four
months.
1963
Since retiring from teaching
philosophy and literature, DAN
SHERMAN spends roughly half the
year at his house on Brittany’s
north coast, along with Sophie
the goat, the chickens, LuLu and
Chick, the two cats, Coca and
Cola, the miniature goat,
Moumoute, and the three
Haflinger ponies (with strange
Breton names). The rest of the
year he lives in Toronto.
DAVID MICHAEL TRUSTY, nicely
recovered from smashed ribs and
exploded collarbone, is ready to
saddle up and start riding again.
locate Tin City Hotel construction site on Jalan Sultan Idris
Shah.”
News from BART LEE: “My son
Christoffer Lee (and two partners) just won the world championship Negotiation Prize in
Leipzig. He is a second-year law
student at Hastings College of the
Law, San Francisco, and
interning for his second federal
judge. There does come a time
when one is more forthcoming
about the accomplishments of
progeny than one’s own!
Nonetheless, I am pleased to have
hornswoggled the AWA Review
into publishing yet another radio
intelligence-at-work article, this
one about the CIA operations on
Swan Island. The fall included a
week or so in Greece (fortunately
between riots), with visits to the
Mycenae of Agamemnon, the
Corinth of St. Paul, and then off
to Delphi for an Oracle. As good
as the Oracle’s intelligence
service was, and that is very good
indeed, it got the Persian War
wrong. Last spring, Australia
beckoned—my, what a big
country! I came to appreciate the
powers of mind required of
Aborigines to survive and thrive
in the Outback. The practice of
law continues to pay the rent,
barely.”
1969
LEE MCKUSICK (SF) is employed
as a para-educator, where she
works with severely disabled
youth. “Every day I get to work
with the fascinating puzzle of
what is learning, how does it
work, and how do I facilitate
learning with my kids.”
1968
DONALD BOOTH will be spending
a year and a half working on a
new, small hotel in Ipoh,
Malaysia, about two hours
northeast of Kuala Lumpur, on
the road to Penang. “It’s near the
mountains,” he reports. “Any
Johnnies who stop by Ipoh
will be welcome. Call me at
(6) 017-569-9588 or e-mail or
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 }
1970
“All is well in Paris,” writes JOHN
DEAN (A). “Never thought this
was where SJC would lead me, but
as Fats Waller used to say, ‘One
never knows, do one?’ Otherwise
I’m professor of Cultural History
at the University of Versailles, do
�33
{Alumni Notes}
a fair amount of public diplomacy
work across Europe; write (on a
rich variety of topics, most
recently articles on: ‘The Businessman as Artist’; ‘The Power of
Cool in U.S. Youth Culture’;
‘Adapting U.S. History to U.S.
Movies’; edit; teach; run conferences—most recently this last fall
2009 in a joint-venture with
American University in Paris on
the subject of ‘European Readings of Abraham Lincoln.’ Can’t
complain. Keepin’ busy.”
YEHUDITH “HUDI” PODOLSKY
(SF) lost her beloved husband,
Joe, of cancer in July 2007.
“But life is full of miracles, and
I’ve married a wonderful man
who had also lost a beloved
partner. We’re creating a
wonderful new family together,
full of children and grandchildren. My work is with high
schools and high school districts
in low-income communities,
mostly in California. These
schools are trying to restructure
in a way that will support richer
relationships between students
and teachers and within teacher
teams. The state of education in
these schools is pretty shocking,
but they’re all on paths that
should make some improvements.”
1971
1974
In November 2009, JOHN STARK
BELLAMY II (A) published his
eighth book, Cleveland’s Greatest
Disasters: 16 Tragic True Tales of
Death and Destruction, with Gray
& Co. Meanwhile, sporadic
excerpts from his lurid memoirin-progress entitled “Wasted on
the Young” have been recently
posted at the CoolCleveland.com
website.
SALLY BELL (SF) “finally decided
to write, first with some
wonderful/joyful news, in that
our daughter graduated this year
with her DVM from Tufts University Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine, after graduating
from Boston University with a
degree in biology summa cum
laude in 2005, then getting
married! She has worked toward
[being a veterinarian] since she
was six years old, unlike her mom
and dad who never figured out
what they wanted to do. Helping
Kath learn to care for her sheep,
rabbits, and chickens along the
way was the most like being at
St. John’s of anything I did.
I never thought I’d be raising
sheep, but after St. John’s,
I wasn’t afraid to try anything.
“Second, some unhappy news,
in that I have been diagnosed
with pulmonary arterial hypertension plus auto-immune hepatitis. I have been disabled and not
working since 2005, and this
brings my chronic illnesses up to
10. Life is terminal anyhow, so I
hope to be in touch with old
friends if I can, and I am grateful
for this warning and the time I
still have. Although Kath didn’t
go to St. John’s, I hope I passed
on to her the self-examination
and the precision of thought that
I learned to reach for. Maybe
someday she will go to SGI. I am
an indifferent correspondent—not
much energy—but anyone can
write at srbell@localnet.com.”
1972
HAROLD ANDERSON (A) is
working on ethnographic
research projects as an independent contractor and teaching
cultural and urban anthropology
at Bowie State University. “Most
interestingly, I am teaching
Cultural Documentation as a
member of the core faculty for the
new Master of Arts in Cultural
Sustainability Program at
Goucher College in Towson, Md.
Have a look at our program
www.goucher.edu/x33261.xml.
It’s really quite wonderful!
Also you can comment on our
cultural sustainability blog at:
http://blogs.goucher.edu/
culturalsustainability.”
Tell Jokes, Be Smarter
J
CAPPS (A91) has a serious day job as associate dean of
the College of Liberal Arts at the Rochester Institute of
Technology. Yet his new book, You’ve Got to Be Kidding:
How Jokes Can Help You Think (Wiley 2009), explores
the lighter side of his discipline. Capps wrote the book
with his father, Donald Capps, a psychologist of religion
and professor emeritus at Princeton Theological Seminary.
“The basic idea behind the book is that there’s a connection
between jokes and thinking critically,” John Capps explains.
“Jokes make us laugh because jokes are about people saying or
doing something irrational. Figuring out why we laugh is figuring
out why something is irrational—and that helps us avoid the same
mistakes. We came to write this book, first, because we like to
share jokes and, second, because it really did seem to us that jokes
are especially good at revealing what is rational and what is not
(an idea going back to Freud).” More on the book can be found on
the publisher’s website: wiley.com. x
OHN
ELLEN CHAVEZ DE LEITNER (SF)
and her husband, Hans, are no
longer empty-nesters: their two
daughters, with families, have
returned to live with them: “So
we have a 2-year-old grandson
and a 4-month-old granddaughter
to cheer our days. I now teach
violin at Northern New Mexico
Community College in Espanola
and play in the San Juan
Symphony in Durango, Colo.,
and Farmington, N.M. With
daughter Cecilia (MM Vocal
Performance, Yale), I opened
Santa Cecilia Music Studio for
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 }
teaching and rehearsing in Santa
Fe. Also, I’m still painting
retablos, participating in the SJC
Alumni Art Show in Santa Fe, as
well as the February Auction and
Spanish Art Market. Any SJC
alumni are welcome to visit me at
my home studio, SF music studio,
or the traditional Spanish Market
this summer. Violin and voice
students would be welcome, too,
as we still have openings. Please
contact me through my website:
www.chavezdeleitner.com.”
1975
“Still relaxing in relaxing Ohio,”
writes TINA BELL (A). “I have
started training to become a
volunteer for a local hospice
organization. I have always been
drawn to that kind of work. A lot
of it involves just listening to
people, being there for them, and
you can help the whole family
with respite care, counseling,
bereavement counseling. I am
looking forward to it. Since my
own parents died I feel I have
enough experience to start to
help others down the same road.
Emily Bell is a struggling young
writer in NYC, Tim going to
counseling school, ditto Joe, and
Julia has really begun to run
marathons a lot. A lot. But she
also has a new cat, Toby.”
1976
ISABEL CZECH (NEE
WERTHEIMER, A) is now the
executive director of ALPSP
North America. ALPSP is the
Association of Learned and
Professional Society Publishers.
She can be reached at:
isabel.czech@alpsp.org. She
continues to live in Philadelphia,
where she roots for the home
team: “Go Phillies!”
�34
{Alumni Notes}
A Mission to Mars
1985
MARSLETT (SF96) has been directing
movies since he graduated. To date, he has made
14 short films of his own, plus collaborative
work. In March, his first feature-length film
premiered at the SXSW Film Festival in Austin,
Texas. “Mars,” done in an animation style
invented by Marslett specifically for the film, tells the story of
three astronauts on the first manned mission to the red planet.
An upbeat romantic comedy, “Mars” moves focus off of slapstick
humor and cataclysmic events. Says Marslett, “Hopefully, the
laughs come from [the characters’] very human responses to
remarkable events.” x
G
EOFF
1979
RICK KEMPA (SF) lives in Rock
Springs, Wyo., where he directs
the honors program at Western
Wyoming College. A book of
his poems, Keeping the Quiet,
was recently published by
Bellowing Ark Press
(www.bellowingark.org/). This
August, he will be the artist-inresidence at the South Rim, while
he works on a collection of essays
about the Grand Canyon from a
backpacker’s perspective.
1982
It’s been a busy year for DON
DENNIS (SF): “Was married in
March 2009 to a lovely dairy
farmer here in the Inner
Hebrides. We run an old baronial
mansion as a 12-bedroom B&B,
and I also give boat tours around
the region in a small commercial
RIB I skipper. But my main business involves both selling and
making our own flower essences
(in the tradition of the Bach
Remedies). Ours are made with
tropical orchids I grow in our
greenhouse here on the Isle of
Gigha. Have just sent a book off
to the printers about them:
“Orchid Essence Healing” should
be in my hands by the end of
April. Johnnies are very welcome
here; we have, as you may guess, a
pretty good library, beautiful
walks, and a snooker room. Oh,
and a 52-acre garden surrounds
the house as well. www.achamorehouse.com and www.healingorchids.com.”
1983
News from JIM BAILEY (A):
“Sharon and I are still in
Memphis,” he writes. “My focus
is health system research and
teaching internal medicine resident physicians. We are organizing our fifth Search for the
Healthy City seminar and study
tour in Italy. Johnnies are more
than welcome!”
PETER MCCLARD (SF) writes:
“Very much enjoying raising a
couple of pre-teens (such a sweet
age), making art (tracymac.biz)
and music, selling our software
business (gluon.com) and staying
in touch with folks on Facebook.
Best to all!”
1984
FATHER BRUCE WREN (SF)
continues his life as a priest in a
small seminary about one hour
east of Paris. He would like to
know the whereabouts of
THEODORE BENSON III and
JEFFREY POPE, to keep in touch.
“I wasn’t at St. John’s long, but
my time there was memorable,”
writes MARY ANN FLYNN
CUSHMAN (A). “I moved on to
science, where I worked as a laboratory researcher and manager for
many years. Being involved in
research piqued an interest in
intellectual property, so I studied
to become a paralegal, then
worked primarily in commercial
transactional law. I am pleased to
say that I am again working with
scientists as an editor for
researchers residing in Japan.”
MAGGIE HOHLE (A) is busy.
“After a tough year following my
mom’s sudden diagnosis and
death (stage IV lung cancer, last
parent, so sad), I’m swamped
with work again, notably translations of a book about the Japanese
‘no-brand’ brand MUJI for
Rizzoli, and of a monograph of
the work of designer Chie
Morimoto. In addition, a project
begun years ago has been
published by University of Texas
Press (a surprise to me!). It’s
called Spiritual Passports: The
Unseen Images of an Artist Who
Never Lived to See Them. Let it be
known that I wasn’t consulted on
the subtitle. We are looking
forward to the high school graduation of the first of the four Hohle
kids and her departure to postsecondary education at some
small liberal arts school, unfortunately not SJC. Anyone out in the
SF Bay Area, please look us up!
maggietext@comcast.net. See
you at the 25th reunion!”
In 2008 MARGO HOBBS
THOMPSON (A) relocated to
Allentown to take a job teaching
art history at Muhlenberg
College, a small liberal arts institution. “It’s a wonderful place,
and Allentown is delightfully
urban and diverse compared to
the wilds of Vermont, my former
home,” she writes. “My husband,
Court, is starting a clock repair
business; he’ll fix mechanical toys
and instruments as well, and you
can reach him through me:
mht712@yahoo.com. And I am
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 }
pleased to announce that my book
on graffiti art, American Graffiti,
was published by Parkstone Press
late last year.”
1986
KRISTEN CAVEN (SF86) writes of
her career: “At last the truth can
be told: after St. John’s it was
either the funny farm or the funny
papers. (Thank ye ol’ gods for the
mightiness of a pencil.) In this
unusual memoir I discuss my
dedication to the ‘liberal’ arts and
the upside of ‘hysteria,’ of which
there was a lot at the women’s
college where I landed. Jack
Lincoln, wherever you are,
I owe you a free copy. Perfectly
Revolting: My ‘Glamorous’
Cartooning Career is available
on Amazon and
www.kristencaven.com this
spring.”
1988
KIM PAFFENROTH’s (A) version
of Dante’s Inferno, Valley of the
Dead, is now available as a
regular trade paperback from
Permuted Press. His first novel,
Dying to Live, is now available in
German from Festa Verlag, with
the title Vom Überleben unter
Zombies.
1989
RAYMOND GIFFORD (A) has
switched law firms, becoming the
managing partner of the new
Denver office of Wilkinson
Barker Knauer LLP, a Washington DC-based regulatory firm.
“Still in the scintillating world of
the law and economics of network
industry regulation—broadband,
electricity and smart grid,” he
writes. “That and going to a lot of
kids’ hockey games for Thomas,
14; William, 10; and Michael, 4.”
�35
{Alumni Profile}
Doctor in the Desert
Mat Strickland (SF96) pursues an alternative path
by Anna Perleberg (SF02)
M
at Strickland (SF96)
doesn’t think of
himself as interesting.
He’s wrong, of course,
but the feeling’s
understandable:
there’s nothing flashy or dramatic about
his life as a pediatrician with the Indian
Health Service in Chinle, Arizona, the
heart of the Navajo Nation. It’s the
very lack of spectacle, though, that’s
extraordinary.
During Strickland’s freshman year at
St. John’s, his mother, who was a
licensed vocational nurse, died of
hepatitis C. Struggling to understand
his loss, and, along with his classmates,
searching for the good and just life, he
was led to the path of medicine as a
possible answer. Thanks to a scholarship, he was able to take science classes
at the University of California at
Berkeley during the summers, and while
working as a paralegal after St. John’s,
he volunteered at Oakland Children’s
Hospital, working with HIV/AIDS
patients.
In 2006 he earned his M.D. and an
Master of Public Health degree from
New Orleans’s Tulane University. “You
make a decision,” he says, “and you
have no idea what medical school is
going to be like, how consuming.”
He completed his residency at Emory
University in Atlanta.
Throughout his medical studies and
training, however, Strickland missed the
sense of “discovery, adventure, and
newness” he had found at St. John’s.
“There’s lot of rigor in medical
training,” he says. “You study the
sciences, memorize the body parts,
memorize the drugs—it’s very structured. I rebelled against that.” Strickland wanted to recapture the feeling of
being part of a close-knit, supportive
community such as St. John’s. He also
missed the big skies and open space of
the high desert. “That sense of vastness
is inspiring,” he says.
Luckily, just as the codified reading
lists of the Program provide different
students with different questions, the
Pediatrician Mat Strickland (SF96) practices medicine off the beaten path, in the heart
of the Navajo nation.
seemingly inflexible field of medicine is
wide enough to provide for the unconventional. Strickland found an outlet for
his resistance to structure near Canyon
de Chelly, in the most remote of the
health centers on the 26,000-squaremile Navajo reservation. The hospital
and clinic where he works serves 13,000
children, the majority of whom live in
extreme poverty. Though the area does
have one traffic light and a grocery
store, many inhabitants don’t have
running water or electricity, making
access to health care that much more
vital. Paradoxically, Strickland found
fellowship in the middle of nowhere,
living on the hospital compound with
the other physicians, similarly
unorthodox souls who may have worked
with Doctors Without Borders or the
Pediatric AIDS Corps in Africa. Like
him, they wanted to take medicine off
the beaten path to where it was most
needed.
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 }
Strickland’s patients, as well, form a
valuable community. Their interdependence makes him a better doctor, he says.
“The thing I like most about medicine is
the relationships. Talking to your
patients and their families, trying to
help them in the truest way—I think I’m
really good at that, talking to people and
empathizing. So much of medicine is
not about, ‘Oh here’s a prescription.’
That’s easy. It’s spending time with the
family, unraveling the real truth to the
matter.
So why does Strickland think he’s not
interesting? Perhaps because he doesn’t
think of himself much at all. “One of the
things you learn at St. John’s is that the
best part of life is relating to others, to
live outside yourself,” he says. “We’re
trapped in our own little world.”
In the blankness of the desert, instead
of isolation, Strickland has found a
world in others. x
�36
{Alumni Notes}
1990
Beyond Redistribution: White
Supremacy and Racial Justice,
by KEVIN GRAHAM (A), was
published by Lexington Books in
January 2010. It is the first book
published by Kevin, who teaches
philosophy at Creighton
University in Omaha, Neb.
KEN TURNBULL (A) has changed
law firms and is now a partner in
the Washington, D.C. office of
King & Spalding LLP.
1991
NATE DOWNEY (SF) is pleased to
report that his philosophical-treatise-cum-ecological-how-to,
Harvest the Rain, will be
published in 2010 by Sunstone
Press. Please visit www.harvesttherain.com for book info or
comment on his sustainabilityblog at www.backyarddigest.com.
1992
ANNE ASPEN (SF) is working for
the Fort Collins Downtown
Development Authority. She’s
doing many of the same things
that she handled as a city planner,
but has a lot more room for
creativity. “I’m focused entirely
on the downtown now and use a
lot more of my architecture
degree and art background. It was
a good move! On the home front,
life is good, too. Jane and I celebrate 15 years together this year,
and we’ve convinced Jane’s
daughter Michelle and the three
grandkids (16, 14, and 8 years old)
to move here, so we have a lots of
great family time now and use a
lot more of my architecture
degree and art background. It was
a good move! Hello to everyone
who’s not on Facebook.”
Shaping Foreign Policy
A
fter taking a break from teaching overseas and
then several years working on research, design,
and management of conservation and development programs in both the United States and West
Africa, Shelley Saxen (SFGI02, SFEC) and her
husband, Doug Saxen (SFGI03, EC) are now
happily living in Mexico. Shelley shapes and implements U.S.
foreign policy as a diplomat with the U.S. Department of State, and
Doug splits his time between teaching, writing, and multimedia art
projects. When not at work, they are swiftly becoming tequila
connoisseurs who enjoy cumbia and lively discussions of whatever
recent Johnnie-ish text they have recently read. x
1993
OMAR MANEJWALA (A) writes:
“After a wonderful four years as
associate medical director of The
Farley Center in Williamsburg,
Va., I have accepted a position as
the Medical Director of Hazelden
Foundation in Center City, which
is the nation’s oldest and largest
addiction treatment center. I’m
also finishing up (in May) an MBA
from the University of Virginia‘s
Darden School of Business. My
wife, Cecily, and I have moved to
the Twin Cities and welcome the
opportunity to connect with
Johnnies in the area.”
1994
PEGGY JONES (SF) and her
husband, Bill ‘Bones’ Jones, will
celebrate their 50th wedding
anniversary in July, opting for a
gala family reunion of four children, their spouses, and 10 lively
grandchildren, and a long
weekend of family activities in
New Mexico. “Our children grew
up in Santa Fe, and Bill and I still
occupy the house where they
grew up, but alas, they all live in
other states now,” she writes.
“Since the 10 grandkids will
range in age from 12 years to
1 month, we’re all expecting to
have a wild and wonderful time
together! And we hope there’ll be
some future Johnnies among
those grandchildren of ours!”
JAMES PASSIN (A) is pleased to
announce the birth of his
daughter, Anya. He lives in New
York City with his wife, Sydney;
his four-year-old son, Oscar; and
little Anya. He has just successfully launched Firebird Mongolia
Fund, a fund focused on
Mongolian securities. He also
founded and manages two global
hedge funds and serves on the
boards of a number of public and
private Canadian and Mongolian
companies.
1997
KIRA MOCK (A) started a new
position on December 7, 2009, at
the American Association for the
Advancement of Science. She is a
senior program manager for the
Energy, Environment and Agriculture S&T fellowship in the
Executive Branch.
HOWARD R. SAUERTIEG (A)
recently became Litigation
Support Specialist with the law
firm of McCarthy Weisberg
Cummings, P.C., Harrisburg, Pa.
1999
“My husband, Jesse, and I are
delighted to announce the birth
of our first child, our beautiful
daughter Iona Jean, on August 4,
2009,” writes COREY A.
CHRISTY (A99).
2000
MARILYN ROPER (AGI) writes
that her daughter Allison, a 2005
graduate of Kenyon College,
finished work on her Master of
Arts in Liberal Arts from
St. John’s in Santa Fe in
December and received her
diploma in May. Marilyn and her
husband, Dan, moved to Hilton
Head, S.C., in 2004.
ZACH and ERIKA (FORMERLY
CARLSON) WARZEL (both SF)
celebrated the birth of their
daughter Corrina Lu on February
15, 2010, in Denver, Colo. Like
her mom, Corrina has a very full
head of hair!
1995
GEOFF (SF), CARISA (SF99) and
Renee Galilea Petrie (big sister,
age 4) welcomed Francesca
Calliope Petrie on February 4,
2010. She weighed 7 pounds,
3 ounces. “Her first name is a play
on Frances, her great-grandfather
and father’s name. We chose
Calliope because she was
Homer’s muse and what Johnnie
doesn’t have the first few lines of
the Iliad embedded in her brain?
Francesca is a calm, communicative baby and we are enjoying her
every day.”
DARIEN LARGE (SF) is living in
Austin and happily married the
man of his dreams, Justin Nevill,
on March 27, 2010. Drop Darien a
line at dlarge@daliverse.com.
COREY A. CHRISTY (SEBASTIAN,
A) writes: “My husband, Jesse,
and I are delighted to announce
the birth of our first child, our
beautiful daughter Iona Jean on
August 4, 2009.”
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 }
2001
�37
{Alumni Notes}
KATY (CHRISTOPHER) DAVIS
(SF) has news: “On October 31,
2009, Lucy Katharine Davis was
born at the Andaluz Birth Center
in Portland, Ore. She’s a sweet,
happy, and mellow baby who loves
everyone, and we are all delighted
to have a little girl in the family.
Three-year-old Sam is getting
used to being a big brother and
grows smarter and more fun
every day; among his many interests are singing the Greek
alphabet and playing with his
stuffed tigers Hegel and
Heidegger. On the farm, we’re
looking forward to lots of baby
goats and an expanded garden
and orchard this summer.”
2002
JONATHAN COOPER (A) is in
Vermont: “After receiving our
MAs in sustainable landscape
planning and design from the
Conway School of Landscape
Design, my girlfriend Katharine
and I moved to Waterbury, Vt.,
to begin our careers. The town is
lovely, the people are friendly,
and the spring thaw has brought
our kittens out to the backyard.
It all seems like a Graham Nash
song, but I can’t think of which
one. Maybe I’m just having
déjà vu…”
JUSTIN (A) and DILLON
(WRIGHT-FITZGERALD, A05)
NAYLOR celebrated the birth of
their second boy, James Matthew,
on November 12, 2009. Big
brother Peter will be 3 in July.
2003
ANN (CARRUTHERS) ORSINGER
(SF) and STEPHEN ORSINGER
(SF) welcomed Odysseus
Remington Orsinger into the
world on January 1. Weighing 10
lbs. 8 oz., he would be able to live
up to the name, they decided. The
family is currently living in
Dallas, Texas, where Stephen is
practicing civil appellate and
family law. Ann is staying home
with Ody and working on her
dissertation in political philosophy (on the role of art in civic
education), freelance writing, and
training to be a life coach.
2004
STUART BANNAN (A) and
DEBORAH (MANGUM) BANNAN
(A06) were joined in Holy Matrimony on January 2, 2010, at Hill
Country Bible Church in
Pflugerville, Texas. In attendance
were several Johnnies including
groomsmen MARTIN ANDERSON
A Novel in Three Days
E
NAONE (A05) won an honorable mention for
her novel draft “Needle and Fang” in the 32nd
Annual International 3-Day Novel contest. “This
takes place every year over Labor Day weekend,
and the goal is to produce the best novel you can in
three days,” she explains. “Producing any novel at
all in that period of time is quite a feat. This year, 650 people
entered the contest and 460 submitted drafts.” Just 15 honorable
mentions were named. This was Naone’s second year in the
competition. “Needle and Fang” is a dark urban fantasy about a
vampire hunter who befriends a vampire because they’re both
struggling with intravenous drug addiction. Naone penned her
novel immediately after a two-week stint on jury duty for a firstdegree murder case, “and the nightmarish details of the trial
definitely made their way into the book.” She’s busy revising the
novel to get it in publishable form. Check it out on the web at:
www.3daynovel.com.x
RICA
(A04) and MICHAEL MALONE
(A04), and bridesmaids LAURA
(MANGUM) MOORE (A04) and
EMILY DEBUSK (A06). KERRY
MORSE (A06), SARAJEAN
WRIGHT (A08) and DWIGHT
KNOLL (A05) also offered their
support and lent a hand with the
festivities. The couple now
resides in Anchorage, Alaska,
where Stuart is an associate in a
law firm and Deborah a graduate
student in counseling psychology.
ERIKA GINSBERG-KLEMMT
(SFGI) lives in Sarasota Florida
and aside from being mother of
two and doing marketing for an
immigration law firm is acting as
advocate and activist for investors
who have been burned in the
Florida foreclosure market...
www.pangaea.to/realforeclose.
ERIC SCHAEFER (SF) and
TIFFANY SIMONS (SF06) are
excited to share that they will be
celebrating a relationship that
began at St. John’s College seven
years ago, with a marriage
ceremony and reception on
May 22, 2010, in San Francisco.
Since leaving St. John’s College,
Eric has become interested in
studying food systems with the
desire to create an urban agricultural system that may one day
revolutionize the way America
gets its food. Tiffany has been
pursuing a BA in psychology at
Mills College in Oakland, with a
focus on cognitive research, and
will graduate this spring. They
are both excited about what the
coming years will bring and hope
to see everyone at the next West
Coast Croquet!
MALCOLM SMITH-CARLILE and
LAURA PERLEBERG (both SF)
were happily married in front of
family and friends in the beautiful
Loretto Chapel in Santa Fe on
March 19. The Smiths continue to
reside in Santa Fe, where Laura is
a librarian at the College of
Santa Fe and Malcolm works
with disadvantaged and
challenged youth.
NEAL HATFIELD TURNQUIST (SF)
proposed to BROOKE ANN
NUTINI (SF05) on June 17 of
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 }
2009, and they will be married on
July 31st of 2010 in New Hampshire.
2005
ISAAC (A) and KATHRYN (A06)
Weiner welcomed Caroline
Esther into their family early in
the morning last November 23.
Caroline was born at home
weighing 10 lbs. 6 oz. She
continues to be healthy and
thriving, though she’s not
enjoying teething very much.
Isaac and Kathryn are pleased as
punch with their beautiful baby
girl.
JARED (AGI) and RHONDA
(FRANKLIN) ORTIZ (A04) have
been busy in recent months:
“Jared recently passed his PhD
comprehensive exams in Historical Theology at the Catholic
University of America; he’s planning to write his dissertation on
Augustine. We are both assisting
our parish’s school, St. Jerome’s
in Hyattsville, Md., in implementing a classical/great books
curriculum (dropping hints about
the Graduate Institute among the
faculty all the while). But the best
news of all is the expectation of a
Baby Ortiz at the end of August or
early September. We’ll be sure to
keep everyone posted.”
2006
GEOFFREY (AGI) and JENNY
(KAWA) BAGWELL (AGI05)
recently celebrated the first
birthday of their daughter Lucia
Marie, who spent much of the day
studying her new books and toys.
Geoffrey is presently a visiting
professor of ancient philosophy at
Xavier University in Cincinnati,
Ohio, and looks forward to the
end of graduate school with his
dissertation defense on Plato’s
Cratylus April 6. Jenny spends
her days with Lucy, exploring new
recipes, and reading Agatha
Christie. They hope to start an
alumni reading group in Cincinnati. Any takers?
�38
{Alumni Profile}
An Accidental Banker
Steve Werlin (A85) lends hope to Haitian women
by Rosemary Harty
S
himer College Professor Steve
Werlin (A85) first went to Haiti as
volunteer in 1997, spending
months in the country teaching
in literacy programs, introducing
St. John’s-inspired seminars to
other educators in the country, and eventually working full-time as a teacher and
community organizer.
Now, as the people of Haiti struggle to
recover from January’s devastating earthquake, he finds himself in an entirely new
and unexpected role: managing a branch of
Haiti’s largest microfinance bank. “It is the
last thing I ever, ever would have imagined
could happen,” Werlin says.
He can trace this new path back to the
lasting influence of the late Brother Robert
Smith (HA90), St. John’s tutor and his longtime friend. In his role as an educational
consultant for the bank, Werlin worked with
bank staff on educational outreach. “One of
the things Brother Robert taught me is that
you’ll find whenever you get people to talk
about what matters to them, it really is interesting,” Werlin says. “I started to hear about
the serious issues involved in operating a
bank, and saw that the good operation of a
branch has a real chance of making a difference in the lives of the people who depend on
it.” When he learned that the bank needed a
new branch manager, “the opportunity was
too good to pass up.”
Werlin lives in the tiny harbor town of
Marigot; he walks just a few blocks from his
two-room home to his job at the local branch
of Fonkoze. The microfinance bank’s name is
an abbreviation of Fundacion Kole Zepole,
Creole for “Shoulder to Shoulder Foundation.” The operation is housed in a one-story
building, half of which is now uninhabitable.
“We have some pretty good-sized cracks,”
says Werlin.
Werlin’s commitment to Haiti had its
genesis at St. John’s. After St. John’s, he
earned master’s and doctoral degrees in
philosophy from Loyola University in
Chicago. As a visiting tutor in the GI, Werlin
met a student, David Diggs (AGI91), who had
been a literacy volunteer in Haiti. Werlin had
been working with Touchstones, a program
created by St. John’s tutors to bring adapted
great books conversations into different
educational environments, from middle
After the devastating earthquake that struck Haiti in January, Steve Werlin (A85)
shifted his efforts from education to banking, making loans to market women through
Haiti’s largest microfinance bank.
schools to prisons. He went to Haiti with
the original goal of adapting Touchstones
for Haiti.
From the beginning Werlin has been awed
by the hunger for education among the
Haitian people. One day, he accompanied
Diggs to a literacy center in an elementary
school. “I saw these fully grown women
cramming themselves uncomfortably into
benches created for nine-year-olds, for two
hours a day, four days a week, just so they
could learn to read and write a little,” Werlin
recalls. “It seemed extraordinary to me what
people will go through for the chance at an
education,” Werlin says.
Werlin worked on literacy education
projects with volunteer organizations, first
with a network of community activists in La
Ganub, then with a group of Baptist ministers who had developed academic programs
for older children. In 1999, Werlin began
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 }
working with the social sciences section of
the National Public University, a project that
gave him the opportunity to get Touchstones
texts printed in Creole and distributed to
educational centers throughout the country.
His work has extended beyond education
to community organizing. For two years,
Werlin met each week with a network of rape
victims who organized themselves to provide
counseling and other services for victims of
rape. Initially, it seemed impossible to get
the women—hardened by experience and
divided by conflicting approaches—to work
together. “Today, they’re a real model of
what collaboration can be when people are
offered the give-and-take of the dialogue to
guide them.”
His work in microfinance naturally
involves financial responsibilities—such as
counting the bank’s money in the morning
and at closing time—but education remains a
�39
{Alumni Profile}
MICHAEL BALES (SF) is representing St. John’s as the only
Johnnie in this year’s Fannie Mae
analyst training program in D.C.
ELEANOR CLARK (A) says:
“I am happily working on
completing my final year of a
graduate degree in TESOL
(Teaching English to Speakers of
Other Languages) at Brigham
Young University-Provo. I love
teaching and exploring new
cultures (which are part of where
I am at right now). The plans so
far are to live and work in London
and at some point go to India.”
TONOPAH GREENLEE (SF) is
currently living in Waltham,
Mass., attending school at Brandeis University. “I am hoping to
become a mama around May of
next year, or rather a M.A./M.A.
in Sustainable International
Development and Coexistence
and Conflict Management. This
coming fall I hope to be working
on sustainable agriculture/water
rights in Latin America (hopefully Brazil).”
ALLISON HENNIGAN (A) and
Dylan Martin met while teaching
English in Prague. “We were
married Jan 4, 2010, in a small
family-only ceremony in Decatur,
Ala. We are now living on Jeju
Island, South Korea, and teaching
English in the Korean public
school system. The kids (elementary and middle school) are
adorable little demons. We’ll be
here until March 2011, maybe
longer. If there are other Johnnies
in the area or passing through,
it’d be nice to meet up.
My e-mail is still
allisonhennigan@gmail.com.”
JACQUELINE KENNEDY (AGI) is in
Naples, Fla., trudging through her
second year at Ave Maria School of
Law. It’s going quickly, she says.
“Not sure if I will stay in Naples
after law school, but I’m definitely
considering Florida as a permanent (at least for the next five
years) home. I’m also a member of
the South Florida St. John’s
Alumni Chapter, which has
provided me with a much-needed
Johnnie connection. I would enjoy
hearing from other Johnnies,
especially any 2004-2006
Annapolis GI alums, especially if
you're in the Florida-Georgia
region, and can be reached
via e-mail at kennedy.
jacqueline@gmail.com.”
HOLLIS THOMS (AGI) recently
had the world premiere of his
third opera, “The Rime of the
major part of his work. Fonkoze lends to
“credit centers,” networks of 30-40 women
who borrow together as a community. These
hard-working, determined women represent
the backbone of the Haitian economy. For
example, Werlin’s clients buy fresh fish in
Marigot and sell it in Port-au-Prince. They
use those profits to buy something else, say,
shampoo or clothing—and return to sell these
products in the rural areas. “All of them
make money the same way,” he explains.
“Buy something here, sell it there.”
One difference between a microfinance
bank and a conventional bank is the support
the bank provides to credit centers and the
support women provide to each other.
Fonkoze reaches out to women in very rural
communities and helps them develop as
“independent centers of mutual solidarity
and support,” Werlin explains.
Even before the earthquake, Werlin
observes, Haitians struggled just for subsistence: 53 percent of the nation’s citizens live
below $1 a day; 75 percent below $2 a day.
Ancient Mariner,” based on
Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s
famous poem, at St. Johns
College in Annapolis on February
14, 2010. Two hundred people
attended the premiere.
The 60-minute work is scored
for three singers, 12 winds and
two percussion, and includes the
projection of 40 prints by
Gustave Dore.
JERICHA PHILLIPS (SF) and PAUL
FRANZ (SF) were married on
March 21, 2010, in Kaneohe,
Hawaii. After Paul receives his
Master’s in Education from Stanford University in August, he and
Jericha plan to move to Hawaii,
where Paul will work with Nalu
Studies, a marine education
program for high-risk teens.
Jericha will find a job when she
finds one.
2007
HOLLY TORGERSON (SF) is
currently working on an MS in
Herbal Medicine at Tai Sophia
Institute in Laurel, Md. In May
she begins the clinical portion of
her studies, where she will begin
to see clients in the faculty-supervised clinic. “I am very excited,
and I invite anyone who wants to
know more to visit my website:
longeviteawellness.com.”
JOHN HOFFMANN (SF) will be
cheerfully attending the University of Chicago Masters of Arts
Program in the Humanities.
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 }
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
section is September 1.
Alumni will also be sent a call
via e-mail.
2008
Loans from Fonkoze are a lifeline for these
market women—and Werlin is quick to point
out that the bank lends only to women. “The
social reality in Haiti is that the woman is the
person who takes personal responsibility for
the family,” explains Werlin. “A lot of the
worst poverty in Haiti results from women
not having that independent source of
income. We make loans to women to support
the family as a whole.”
Overcoming adversity is a way of life in
Haiti; when Werlin began working with the
bank as an educational consultant, the
women were just recovering their businesses
after four tropical storms in 2008. The
earthquake was felt in Marigot; a lot of buildings cracked, but none collapsed. At least 20
percent of the bank’s borrowers lost their
homes, and 70 percent of the homes are
damaged. Those who sell their goods in Portau-Prince have been hit hard. “I know of one
woman who had 250 pounds of fresh fish in
Thermos trunks the day of the earthquake
and it sat for a week—you can imagine what
What’s Up?
The College Magazine
St. John’s College, P.O. Box 2800
Annapolis, MD 21404
rosemary.harty@sjca.edu
that fish was good for,” Werlin says.
Living in Haiti has forever changed how
Werlin views everyday life. “People (outside
Haiti) use words like intolerable, unendurable” to describe what they see in television images and what they read in newspapers, Werlin says. “Those words seem
strange to me now because I’ve seen what
people can endure when they have to. They
have no choice. They find ways. They’re
smart, and they’re very, very tough.”
The international outpouring of support
for the devastating country is helping, says
Werlin. “Right now, Haiti needs an infusion
of resources,” he says. In the long run, Haiti
needs a committed neighbor in America and
supporters willing to help Haiti recover,
thrive, and educate its people.
Werlin is grateful that Shimer supports his
work in Haiti, allowing him to continue to
educate, to finance, to serve the people who
have so inspired him: “I work with remarkable, remarkable people who teach me a lot.
I think that about covers it.” x
�40
{Alumni Profile}
Clues Behind the Clutter
Leah Fisch (SF98) brings order to hoarders
by Rosemary Harty
beat-up copy of the Beatle’s
Yellow Submarine. A basket
full of stuffed animals,
including a Snoopy
acquired in first grade. A
closet brimming with keepsakes, ill-fitting clothes, misfit shoes, and
exercise equipment that will never emerge
from under a heap of mismatched socks.
Attached to things you think you really
should pitch? Leah Fisch (SF98) can help.
After St. John’s, Fisch worked and traveled, learned new languages, and cast
about for the best way to apply her skills
and education. Just back from travels in
Costa Rica, she was crashing at her sister’s
house in 2002 when her mother called to
announce that she’d discovered Leah’s true
path in life.
“She was listening to a radio interview
with someone from the National Association of Professional Organizers, and she
heard her say, ‘clutter is a decision
delayed.’ My mother said, ‘that is so Leah!’
and she called me right away. Two weeks
later, she had gotten me my first job.”
It turned out Mrs. Fisch
knew her daughter well:
organizing (she prefers
the term “reorganizing”)
is a perfect fit for Fisch,
who was featured earlier
this spring on The
Learning Channel (TLC)
show Hoarders: Buried
Alive. As a “recovering
clutterer,” she understands the problem firsthand. “I grew up in a
house of sentimental
Jewish packrats,” says
Fisch. “People found a
way to make do with what
they had, and that’s still in
us. We’ve become very
confused as a society
because we’re always
pressured to buy, buy, buy.
And people hate to throw
things away.”
A
As she built her business, Fisch grew
more interested in the social patterns she
noticed among her clients. She observed
that many people devote themselves to
acquiring material possessions because
they lack satisfying social relationships.
She enrolled in the London School of
Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, where she
earned a master’s degree in demography,
and gained certification as a narrative
therapist at the Evanston Family Therapy
Center in Illinois. “People are overwhelmed,” Fisch explains. “It’s my job to
help them identify and honor their values.
All of it is about helping people clarify
what they want.”
Being attached to stuff is usually not
about the stuff, says Fisch. “We hold onto
things that make us feel bad about
ourselves, we rent a dumpster, put these
things in a dumpster, and it’s more
traumatizing than ever to throw these
things away.”
When a TLC producer first called, Fisch
declined to be involved because similar
cable shows seemed mean-spirited. “It’s all
about people crying as someone throws
their things away.” If she could take a more
compassionate approach, Fisch said, she
might do it. That led to her TV debut in
May. Just 22 minutes long, the show took
up hours of her time, but it was a good
experience, “a chance to show people that
there is another way.”
Listening carefully and looking for what
lies beneath the clutter have been the keys
to Fisch’s success. “A lot of what I do is just
sit with people. When I do the initial tour,
I count the number of times they say
‘should.’ They should get rid of something
but they don’t want to. They should sort
through their books and get them organized, but they can’t. That’s when they cry.”
One client, an insurance executive,
consulted her about reorganizing her
office. In her initial session with “Jean,”
Fisch observed that the office seemed
fairly neat, but as the two talked, Fisch
uncovered a basket wedged between a
filing cabinet and some boxes. It was a
craft project the woman hoped to make,
but was now determined to throw away.
As Fisch talked with her
client, she discovered the
woman was frustrated and
unhappy about being unable to
pursue hobbies because of her
demanding job. They worked
together to organize not just
the physical layout of Jean’s
office, but also her work
routines and her communication style. “The first thing I
had her do was make that
Halloween basket,” she says.
“Then we put together a
training manual for her
assistant, so she could assign
her more tasks and trust them
to be done efficiently. She has
more time for herself, and I
think she’s happier now.” x
Leah Fisch (SF98) guides
clients in reorganizing their
lives.
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 }
�{Obituaries}
ROBERT A. GOLDWIN
CLASS OF 1950
Robert A. Goldwin, class of
1950, died on January 12,
2010, at the age of 88. A brilliant Constitutional scholar,
Mr. Goldwin took Socratic
dialogues from the classrooms
of St. John’s to the Ford White
House, believing that only a
thorough and balanced study
of an issue could yield the
understanding needed for
sound public policy. In the
words of his friend Donald
Rumsfeld, Mr. Goldwin
“was a man of sweeping,
ambitious ideas, but personal
modesty and quiet competence. He had the rare talent
of asking the right questions
at the right time, and gently
nudging discussions toward
the ‘eureka moment.’”
A native of New York City,
Mr. Goldwin was among the
wave of veterans who came to
St. John’s after serving in
World War II. He attended the
University of Arizona before
enlisting in the U.S. Cavalry
for four years, taking part in
the liberation of the Philippines. While stationed at Fort
Meade in Maryland,
Mr. Goldwin and his wife,
Daisy, visited the campus and
chanced upon several references to the college. As
Mr. Goldberg later recounted,
one magazine “had an article
by Mortimer Adler about
liberal education [that was]
full of praise for St John’s. And
the New Yorker that same
week had a profile of a worldfamous authority on the
philosophy of Hegel who
turned down appointment to
the faculty of St. John’s, saying
that he wasn’t qualified to
teach at such a fine school, but
he would like to be a student
there. These led us to get the
college catalog, and reading it
led us to the decision that I
Robert A. Goldwin, alumnus, former dean, and BVG member,
was a distinguished Constitutional scholar at the American
Enterprise Institute.
should go to St. John’s when I
left the army.”
After graduating from
St. John’s, Mr. Goldwin
continued his studies at the
University of Chicago, where
he earned his master’s and
doctoral degrees in political
science. He also taught political science at Chicago, was a
Guggenheim Fellow in 1966,
and taught at Kenyon College.
He help create a summer
program of study in Santa Fe,
which would eventually
develop into the Graduate
Institute.
Mr. Goldwin returned to
St. John’s as dean, serving
from 1969-1973. He was lured
away to a new career in public
service when Rumsfeld, then
serving as U.S. Ambassador to
NATO in Brussels, asked
Mr. Goldwin to become his
adviser. Mr. Goldwin next
served concurrently as a
special consultant to President
Gerald Ford and in the
Pentagon as an advisor to
Rumsfeld, who was then in his
first tour as Secretary of
Defense. In the Ford administration, Mr. Goldwin was
considered a one-man think
In the Ford administration,
Mr. Goldwin was considered
a one-man think tank.
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 }
41
tank, and described by the
press, to his chagrin, as
“Ford’s intellectual-in-residence.” He arranged a series
of small seminars between the
President, government
officials, and academic experts
on topics such as crime,
welfare, higher education,
ethnicity, and unemployment.
After leaving the White
House, Mr. Goldwin joined
the American Enterprise
Institute as a resident scholar
of Constitutional Studies, a
post he held for more than
20 years. He led the institute’s
decade-long study of the
Constitution, which produced
a 10-volume collection of
essays. He was the author of
From Parchment to Power:
How James Madison Used the
Bill of Rights to Save the
Constitution. In addition, he
edited some 30 books on
American politics.
Mr. Goldwin served as a
member of the Board of Visitors and Governors from 1980
to 1988; he became a visitor
emeritus in 1999. In 1977, the
Alumni Association honored
him with an Award of Merit.
He is survived by four children: Nancy Goldwin Harvey
(A69), Jane Goldwin Bandler
(A71), Elizabeth Goldwin
(SF73), and Seth Goldwin.
WILLIAM M. GOLDSMITH
CLASS OF 1945
William Michael Goldsmith of
Vineyard Haven, Mass., an
author, presidential scholar,
political activist and retired
professor, died March 23,
2010, at the age of 90.
Mr. Goldsmith had a long and
varied career that included
work in the labor movement,
civil rights activism and
teaching at Brandeis
University.
Born in New York City,
Mr. Goldsmith attended
Catholic University, but left
�42
after his first year to support
his family, which had suffered
financial setbacks in the stock
market crash. In the summer
of 1940, after reading
Mortimer Adler’s How to
Read a Book, Mr. Goldsmith
hitchhiked to Chicago, determined to meet with University
of Chicago President Robert
Maynard Hutchins to convince
him to admit him to the
university’s liberal arts
program. Hutchins told Mr.
Goldsmith that Chicago was
not for him. Rather, he
belonged at St. John’s.
Hutchins made a few calls and
Mr. Goldsmith was in. The
next few years, he would later
recall, were some of the best
of his life: reading and
discussing ideas deep into the
night while waiting tables and
working odd jobs, sending
extra cash home throughout.
Mr. Goldsmith’s college
career was interrupted again,
this time by World War II. He
enlisted in the Air Force and
shipped out to Guam with a
Signal Corps outfit. He
returned to St. John’s, graduated in 1948, and took a job
with the International Ladies
Garment Workers Union,
doing educational work in the
South. He later became the
Southern Educational
Director for the Textile
Workers Union. In 1954, he
returned to New York, where
he worked for the Ford Foundation and later earned a
doctorate at Columbia University.
At Brandeis, Mr. Goldsmith
taught in the Politics Department and became a founding
member of a new, interdisciplinary department, American
Studies. His three-volume
study, The Growth of Presidential Power, was published in
1974 and is still considered by
many to be the definitive work
in its field. He also created the
{ Obituaries}
Brandeis Papers Commission
at Brandeis University, a
permanent repository for the
papers of Justice Brandeis. He
was instrumental in bringing
to Brandeis the groundbreaking Upward Bound
program, a summer program
for talented high school
students from underserved
neighborhoods.
Mr. Goldsmith retired in
1984. He is survived by his
wife of 50 years, Dr. Marianne
Goldsmith; two daughters,
Suzanne Goldsmith-Hirsch
and Alexandra Forbes;
a son, Michael; and five
grandchildren.
DAVID DOBREER
CLASS OF 1948
David Dobreer, who united
alumni in a strong and active
Alumni Association, died in
San Gabriel, Calif., on
January 17, 2010, at the age of
90. He was a decorated
veteran of World War II, a
dedicated and accomplished
physician, and an active and
loyal alumnus of St. John’s
College. His leadership of the
Alumni Association during a
critical time contributed
significantly to strengthened
ties between the college and
alumni. He served as a
member of the college’s Board
of Visitors and Governors
from 1974 to 1980, and from
1986 to 1992. He became an
emeritus member in 2002.
A native of Washington,
D.C., Dr. Dobreer started with
the class of 1944, but World
War II interrupted his studies.
He served as a lieutenant in
the Army, as a navigator on a
B-24 bomber. He flew 34
missions over Europe and won
the Air Medal with Oak Leaf
Clusters for meritorious
service.
After graduating from St.
John’s in 1948, he earned a
Doctor of Osteopathic Medi-
Jack Ladd Carr was involved in the Mitchell Gallery and the
Alumni Association.
cine degree from the College
of Osteopathic Physicians and
Surgeons of Los Angeles. He
later earned an MD degree
from the California College of
Medicine. He led “great
books” seminars at Hollywood
High School, in his home, and
various other locations in the
Los Angeles area for more
than 40 years, and later
through the Plato Society at
UCLA.
The long-time president of
the Southern California
alumni group, Dr. Dobreer
was an active and involved
alumnus with a genuine love
for the Program. He served for
six years as the first president
of the Alumni Association
after its reorganization as a
national body. The association
flourished and grew under his
leadership. In recognition of
his service to the college, and
in acknowledgement of his
distinguished medical career,
the association selected him
for its highest honor, the
Award of Merit, in 1977.
Dr. Dobreer is survived by
four daughters: Leslee Rigter,
Peggy Dobreer, Sallie Raspa
(A75), and Janice Yaruss.
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 }
JACK LADD CARR
CLASS OF 1950
Jack Ladd Carr, class of 1950,
died January 10, 2010, at the
age of 84. Mr. Carr was an avid
supporter of his alma mater.
He served as a board member
of the college’s Mitchell
Gallery, where he was a
docent. An active member of
the Alumni Association, he
was awarded the Alumni Association Award of Merit in 1990
in recognition of his service to
the college.
Mr. Carr served in the U.S.
Army during World War II and
participated in the liberation
of the Philippines. After graduating from St. John’s, he
earned a master’s degree in
urban planning at Temple
University. He worked in planning in Charleston, S.C., then
returned to Annapolis, where
he served as the first planning
director for the city. He later
joined the Maryland State
Department of Economic and
Community Planning.
His long-time friend, tutor
Curtis Wilson (HA83) remembered Mr. Carr as “publicspirited person” who enjoyed
good-natured arguments, who
�43
{Obituaries}
seriously explored cultural
pursuits, and who cared about
the quality of life in his
community.” John Moore
(HA01), who brought Mr. Carr
into state planning, says,
“Jack handled everything with
diplomacy and patience.
He reflected his St. John’s
background very well.”
Mr. Carr is survived by his
wife, Lois, and stepson,
Andrew.
for beer and conversation.”
The British newspaper The
Guardian noted in a tribute
article that de Sela “created
three extraordinary albums
over the course of 12 years.
She achieved fame more by
word of mouth than through
the media, but won various
awards, including the Québécois Félix in 1997, a Canadian
Juno in 1998, and a BBC award
for world music in 2005.”
LHASA DE SELA (SF94)
Lhasa de Sela (SF94), a trilingual singer and songwriter,
died on January 1, 2010, of
breast cancer. Born in Big
Indian, N.Y., in the Catskill
Mountains, de Sela spent her
childhood traveling through
the U.S. and Mexico in a
converted school bus that
served as her family’s home.
From the early 1990s onward,
she lived in Montreal, where
she sang in bars and learned,
as she told a reporter in 2004,
“how to reach people, even
people who were only there
ELIZABETH BLETTNER
TUTOR
Elizabeth Blettner, a tutor at
St. John’s since 1982, died
April 19, 2010, in Annapolis,
after a short illness. Miss Blettner earned her bachelor’s
degree from Stanford University, and master’s and doctoral
degrees in philosophy from
Penn State University. Originally drawn to literature, Miss
Blettner fell in love with
philosophy and Ancient Greek
as a graduate student, and was
particularly drawn to the work
of Kant.
Miss Blettner was responsible for the current shape of
the college’s sophomore
music tutorial, said tutor
Peter Kalkavage, her longtime friend. “Our current
sophomore music program is
due to the tremendous care
and work Elizabeth put in,”
he says “The college is very
much in her debt.”
A gifted singer who loved
music, Miss Blettner was also
a faithful and supportive
member of the audience
whenever the freshman
chorus performed. In recent
years, she taught frequently in
the Graduate Institute, where
she led a preceptorial on
Ancient Greek. “By all
accounts, she was a superb
tutor of Greek,” Mr. Kalkavage notes. “Her students
were quite devoted to her.”
Miss Blettner was drawn to
St. John’s by the serious
pursuit of academics, he adds,
and she enhanced the college
through her dedication. “She
LAWRENCE SANDEK
CLASS OF 1954
by Lydia Sandek Leizman (A84)
had a deep relation to whatever she would take up: the
study of Plato, the study of
music. Like many of us here,
she was very much shaped by
Jacob Klein. She was a very
dear friend to me.”
In Miss Blettner’s honor, the
St. John’s Chorus dedicated
its spring performance of
Faure’s Requiem to her. x
ALSO NOTED
RALPH BALTZEL (CLASS OF
1943), DEC. 8, 2009
REAR ADMIRAL ALLEN BERGER
(CLASS OF 1939), MARCH 22,
2010
DAVID DICKEY (A67), NOV. 24,
2009
STEFANIE PRIGGE (A86),
DEC. 31, 2009
JOHN RITNER (A84), JAN. 28,
2009
LOUIS SAULT (CLASS OF 1956),
JAN. 10. 2010
KATHRYN STOLZENBACH (A95),
JAN. 20, 2010
all his other tutorials.
He won the senior essay
prize for his year, writing
on Don Quixote. He
My father, Lawrence Sandek, class of
worked in the bindery,
1954, died September 4, 2009, in Palo
where he developed his
Alto, Calif. He was born December 23,
own flat-spine binding.
1923, in the Bronx, N.Y. A veteran of
Some of these books are
WW II, he attended St. John’s on the
still on his bookshelf
GI Bill. The two most frequent
today.
comments that he made in reference to
After St. John’s, my
St. John’s College were: 1: It was the
father settled into family
only college worth attending; and 2: It
life, making his living as
was the first place that felt like his
a freelance writer in the
home.
New York City area. He
At least two alumni are as much due
Larry Sandek (class of 1954, right), shown here with
later spent many years
to his influence: myself (1984), and my
classmate Sam Kutler, thought St. John’s College “the
traveling first in Mexico,
mother’s sister, Arlene Banks Andrew
only college worth attending.”
then India, finally again
(class of 1964). Additionally, his first
settling near family in
child, India Sandek, was born at Anne
Big Bear, Calif. He is survived by three daughters, India
Arundel Hospital while he was a student.
Sandek, Jessica Sandek, and Lydia Sandek Leizman; one
He spoke often of [tutors] Jacob Klein and Simon Kaplan.
son-in-law, Jon Leizman; and six grandchildren x
My understanding is that my father was something of a force
in seminar and the Coffee Shop, but not always as attendant in
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 }
�44
{Special Report: Alumni Relations}
E NG AG I NG A LU M N I
Tapping a wellspring of Johnnie pride
About this Report
Can virtue be taught? Can Aristotle explain a butterfly’s metamorphosis? What
drove Ophelia mad? Does a steel marble really fall at the same rate as a feather?
Johnnies have considered these questions and many more, from their first seminar
on the Iliad or their first days in the Graduate Institute. The habit of questioning
stays with them long after they leave the college.
Over the past year, the college’s Alumni Association, a task force of alumni
leaders, and staff at the college have applied their Johnnie habit of questioning,
considering, and discussing things to the state of alumni relations at St. John’s
College. Among the questions they posed to each other—and to you, alumni, are:
How can the college better nurture the bond with alumni? How can the close relationship formed through a common academic program be maintained after alumni
are scattered to every corner of the globe? How can the college better inform its
alumni about what’s happening on the campuses? And what’s the best way for
alumni to support a college they care about?
This special section of The College explains the work completed by a Presidents’
Task Force, changes to the Alumni Association, and a new leadership forum that
serves as the starting point for widening the circle of alumni involvement. Looking
to get involved? Follow up on the contact info here, and look for periodic updates to
this effort in the magazine, your alumni e-newsletter, and the online community.
by Patricia Dempsey
ow many institutions can
boast an alumnus like Steve
Thomas (SF74) who cares
so deeply about the
curriculum that he’s closely
following the development
of a new math manual for junior lab?
More than three decades after graduating,
Thomas, an attorney and president of the
Alumni Association, remains passionate
about the Program and stays involved to
ensure that undergraduates today have the
same or even a better educational experience than he did. “When I talk to alumni,
this is one thing they deeply care about—the
Program,” says Thomas. “Is it still the
Program? Will it survive? I hear this over
and over again.”
The Program has always been the super
glue, that instant bond among Johnnie
alumni. ”We are defined in part by having
H
gone through the Program,” says Patty
Sollars (A80), a neuroscientist and vice president of the Alumni Association. “It is something we carry with us forever.”
Yet if most Johnnies care deeply about the
Program—as indicated by a recent (2008)
survey—then why aren’t they involved with
local and national alumni programs in
higher numbers? In 2008 the 12-member
Presidents’ Task Force on Alumni Relations
wrestled with this question and embraced
recommendations that Presidents Michael
Peters and Christopher Nelson (SF70)
accepted late last year.
One recommendation was to encourage
the St. John’s Alumni Association to serve as
an umbrella organization for a greater
variety of alumni activities. A new,
streamlined 18-member Alumni Association
Board will consist of 4 officers, the collegewide Alumni Director, the immediate
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 }
Through the Program, Alumni share a
common bond that keeps them close to the
college--no matter where they go.
past-president of the association, and 12 atlarge members. Shorter terms and term
limits for board members will mean more
alumni voices will be heard. And the annual
Alumni Leadership Forum—the first was
scheduled for Annapolis June 11-13, 2010—
will bring alumni leaders together to create
opportunities for alumni involvement in
educational and social activities and work on
assisting the college with fundraising,
admissions, career and graduate school
mentoring, and networking.
Ray Cave (class of 1948), who chaired the
task force, says the changes arose from a
need to actively recognize alumni as valuable
members of the college community. “In the
past not as much attention has been given to
the alumni as to the Program and students,”
says Cave. “Yet it is the alumni who can help
the Program continue.”
The more alumni are involved with
St. John’s, the more they care about its
future, says Cave, a former Time magazine
editor and member of the college’s Board of
Visitors and Governors. “In the first 30 years
after I graduated I gave no evidence that I
was interested in St. John’s,” he says. “But
more important, St. John’s gave no evidence
that it was interested in me. When St. John’s
got interested, so did I—which is what we
hope to see happen with hundreds, or even
�{Alumni Relations}
thousands, of our alumni today. The survival
of St. John’s may well depend on it.”
Expanding the touch points of alumni
involvement is the driving force behind this
new era in alumni relations, explains Matt
Calise (A00), a task force member who also
chairs the Alumni Giving Council (formerly
called Philanthropia) and who directs alumni
relations at Georgetown Law. “We are
steeped in and proud of our history, but we
have a tendency to look back, to dissect,”
says Calise. “We are distinctive pedagogically, but in some ways we are not up with
the times.” The alumni survey showed that
“our alumni are thirsting for more ways to be
connected to the college. So let’s ignite this
passion.”
College-alumni relations in the 21st
century demand innovation, even a cultural
shift says Sanjay Poovadan (SF83), a member
of the Board of Visitors and Governors who
chairs the board’s Alumni Relations
Committee. “The new changes mean a
deeper, richer, widespread alumni engagement. There was a time, in the 1960s, when
our way of education was under siege. We
45
had a circle of wagons around us, and we
looked inward.
“But today we are no longer under siege
culturally, financially or philosophically. We
are strong enough to introduce the ‘new,’ to
branch out our involvement of alumni to
career services, Piraeus, communications,
diversity, fundraising—there are many potential areas for alumni to get involved.”
A major step forward is the Alumni Leadership Forum, an event already generating
buzz. “It’s very American, very Tocquevillesque, with new communities being created
and a bubbling up of ideas,” says Barbara
Goyette (A73), vice president for advancement in Annapolis. The inaugural forum this
June in Annapolis brought together chapter
and reading group leaders, Reunion Class
Leaders, the Alumni Giving Council, and
young alumni leaders. Says Calise, “If
there’s a cracker-Jack alum out there who
wants to get involved, we want to hear from
him or her.” The forum included an update
with college presidents and officers followed
by roundtables among volunteer leaders on
issues affecting the college and alumni.
Expanding alumni involvement also opens
the door to a new generation of volunteer
leaders. Many are tech-savvy and adept at
creating virtual and in-person communities.
Like all Johnnies they are passionate about
the Program and have fresh ideas, including
networking events that go beyond the
seminar to assist with job hunting, dating,
housing and health. Poovadan is eager to
learn from younger alumni, especially those
from the 1980s on. “I want to help change
the culture of the college so we involve all
the alumni voices,” he says.
Among the next generation of leaders is
New York City chapter president Charlotte
Lucy Latham (SF02). Latham is enthusiastic about the changes that include a
smaller board and shorter term limits for
board members. Juggling work, yoga
teacher training, and graduate studies,
Latham will trade four board meetings a
year for the once-a-year Leadership Forum.
“Now I’ll have time to invest my energies in
the activities that mean the most to me—
those here at my chapter,” says Latham.
Another young alumnus, Robert Morris
(SF04), welcomes the changes. An active
leader among D.C. alumni, Morris says
alumni gain the chance to shape “a bigpicture view.” “I want to establish a
common vision of what alumni should be
and do. What is really needed is the answer
to the question: ‘Who are we?’ This is a
network of smart, successful people I really
like and respect, a caring community with
whom I share a common bond. But when I
encounter alumni who say they attended a
quirky, weird college I want to change how
we view ourselves. I’d rather say, ‘I received
the best liberal arts undergraduate education there is.”
Coalescing a common vision among the
college’s 9,500 living alumni poses a
challenge, but at the heart of it all is the
shared experience—unique and enduring—
of being a Johnnie. As Cave puts it, “Alumni
engagement is emotional and intellectual.
Other schools have football games. We have
the Program.” x
During Homecoming 2009 in Santa Fe,
Steve Thomas (SF74) presented Santa Fe
President Michael Peters with a symbolic
check from the Alumni Association,
representing the final installment of the
association’s contributions to the
college’s capital campaign.
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 }
�46
{Alumni Relations}
What’s Next?
by Linda Stabler-Talty (SFGI76)
“YES, you are a member of the Alumni
Association.” Sound familiar? This
appeared on the Alumni Association dues
mailer for years, and now that our association no longer collects dues, the current
board members would like to boldly
confirm that “YES, you are a member of
the Alumni Association”—if you have a
degree from the college, have completed
at least one semester of undergraduate
study or one segment of Graduate Institute
Study, or if you have been welcomed as an
honorary member.
The college presidents wrote to alumni
recently and declared their hope “to build
a more vibrant and mutually sustaining
relationship” with us, the alumni.
Likewise, the association board members
have been hard at work to increase the
opportunities to participate in the diverse
activities of the association and college.
To this end, you can look forward to
mailings and electronic postings that will
explain the changes and help you explore
the possibilities to become more involved.
Here is what will arrive soon:
• Draft of the new Alumni Association
bylaws
• Narrative in plain language of these
by-laws and changes from prior ones
• Explanation of all the structural
changes within the Alumni
Association
• Notification of the Annual Meeting
date/time, including the Association
Slate of Officers and Board
Representatives
Responses to the St. John’s College
Alumni Survey (October 2008),
conducted by an independent
consultant, reveal that St. John’s “has
the basic DNA upon which strong,
ongoing alumni relationships have been
built. . . .” Alumni have strong feelings
for their alma mater, yet alumni
involvement is not correspondingly as
high. Here are some highlights from
undergraduate respondents:
• 73 percent of St. John’s alumni are
very satisfied with their student
Alumni can help plan and organize increased educational opportunities such as
Piraeus, shown above.
• Notice that directors and officers may
be elected by petition
• Transition resolution that will allow
all of the above to move ahead
Also included will be an offer to let
alumni “opt out” of electronic notifications, with hard copies mailed from the
Alumni Office.
The highlight of these changes is the
first annual Alumni Leadership Forum,
June 11-13 in Annapolis. This inaugural
event engages alumni on many different
levels, with results continuing well into
the future. And, you are encouraged to ask
questions, discuss your ideas, and to get in
experience (compared to 47 percent
-83 percent at other institutions
surveyed).
• 70 percent report that overall they
have very positive feelings about the
college today (compared to
34-73 percent at other institutions
surveyed).
• 9 out of 10 alumni take pride in their
St. John’s affiliation and feel that
St. John’s is a part of who they are.
• 6 out of 10 feel they are part of the
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 }
touch with the association as well as your
fellow alumni.
Welcome to this energized era of alumni
activity!
Contact: Jo Ann Mattson at
joann.mattson@sjca.edu, phone
410-295-6926; or Nancie Wingo at
nwingo@sjcsf.edu, phone 505-984-6121; or
johnniealumni@gmail.com.
St. John’s community and have a
stake in the college’s achievements
and success.
• 28 percent report that they only hear
from the college when it’s asking for
financial support.
• 55 percent said the Program was the
most meaningful aspect of their
St. John’s experience.
�47
{Alumni Relations}
What is the Alumni Leadership Forum?
The Alumni Leadership Forum is a major step in the reorganization
of alumni relations taking place at St. John’s. This annual gathering
of volunteer alumni leaders, held during the summer on alternating
campuses, recognizes the contributions of dedicated alumni, trains
them in their areas of volunteer interest, and offers an opportunity
to engage with fellow alumni as well as college officers and staff.
What is the goal of the first forum in Annapolis?
The first Alumni Leadership Forum was held in Annapolis on
June 11-13, 2010. Attendees, including alumni leaders, college staff
and officers, gathered to learn from each other and plan for the
college’s future. Questions for the forum included: How can the
college enhance communication and engagement with its alumni?
How can alumni get involved to help the college? In this way, the
college will be able to better serve the evolving needs of its alumni.
Look for a report on the meeting in e-newsletters as well as the fall
issue of The College.
Who was invited? How can I get involved?
The first Alumni Leadership Forum brought together a smaller
group of leaders than will attend future forums. These include
Chapter and Reading Group leadership, Reunion Class Leaders,
the Alumni Giving Council, and Young Alumni leaders. However,
all interested alumni are encouraged to contact the Alumni Office
on either campus for more information: in Annapolis, 410-2956926; in Santa Fe, 505-984-6121. For questions about the changes
to the Alumni Association or how to get involved, please contact
the Alumni Association at this email: johnniealumni@gmail.com.
How else is the Alumni Association changing?
The St. John’s College Alumni Association remains a separate
501(c)3 organization, but it will work in partnership with the
college to increase alumni involvement. The Alumni Association
Board will manage the partnership of the association with the
college and ensure that the alumni working groups are focused on
key priorities. The volunteer group Philanthropia has been
Alumni Calendar
Make plans now to join your
friends for Homecoming 2010!
This year, the event takes place on
the same weekend on both
campuses: September 24-26.
SANTA FE
Friday
Registration, 4-8 p.m.
Alumni/students networking
reception, 4-5:30 p.m.
Welcome Home reception, 5:307:30 p.m.
Lecture, 8 p.m.
Question Period, 9 p.m.
Saturday
Registration. 8:30 a.m.-noon
Seminars, 10:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
Luncheon and State of the
College address, 12:30-2 p.m.
Levan Hall dedication, 2 p.m.
Alumni Association meeting,
3 p.m.
Bocce and other lawn games,
3:30 p.m.
Art Show reception and Waltz
Party, 5-7 p.m.
Dance, 9-12 p.m.
Sunday
Alumni Association Board
meeting, 9 a.m.-10 a.m.
Brunch, complete with reunionyear toasts, 10:30 a.m.
-12:30 p.m.
renamed the Alumni Giving Council and will continue its work
under the umbrella of the Alumni Association, as will all alumni
volunteer groups, such as Reunion Class Leaders and Chapter
Presidents. There will be more opportunities for alumni: service
projects and career mentoring, for example.
What will this change mean for me?
It means more involvement and communication with alumni and
college staff. The new, streamlined 18-member board consists of
four officers, the college-wide Alumni Director, the immediate Past
President of the Association, and 12 at-large members. Each atlarge member of the board will be familiar with one or more of the
working groups. These working groups will take the lead on many
alumni activities –and offer opportunities for those who want to get
involved. Ideas for working groups are welcome; how and when
these groups form will vary with needs. This opportunity for
increased connection and involvement will benefit of all members
of the college community.
Join the 6,000 Johnnies already participating in the Alumni Online
Community. Go to: stjohnscollege.edu and click on “Alumni.”
Call for Artists: All-college Alumni and Santa Fe
Faculty, Staff and Student Art Show
Artists from both campuses are invited to participate in the
annual fall art show, which will be on display September 25
through October 17, 2010, on the second floor of the Peterson
Student Center. The opening of the show will coincide with
Homecoming on the Santa Fe campus. Plan to attend the opening
reception Saturday, September 25, 5-7 p.m.
Alumni who wish to enter their artwork should contact the
college by August 1 to declare their intent to participate.
Entries need to be received no later than September 10.
For more details, contact Maggie Magalnick at 505-984-6199 or
e-mail maggie@sjcsf.edu.
ANNAPOLIS
Friday
Registration, 4-8 p.m.
Reunion Class/Graduate Institute
receptions, 5:45-7 p.m.
Fiftieth Reunion Dinner for the
Class of 1960, 5:45 p.m.
Lecture, 8:15 p.m.
Question Period, after Lecture
Rock Party, 10:30 p.m.
Saturday
Registration, 8:30 a.m. to noon
All-alumni Meeting/Awards
Assembly, 9:30 a.m.
Seminars, 10:30 a.m.
Family Lunch; Classes of the
1940s and Friends Luncheon,
noon
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 }
Children’s Activities,
1:30-3:30 p.m.
Mitchell Gallery tour, 3 p.m.
Cocktail reception, 5-7 p.m.
Alumni Banquet, 7:30-9:30 p.m.
Homecoming Ball, Great Hall,
9:30 p.m.
Rock Party, Coffee Shop,
10 p.m.
Sunday
President’s Brunch, 11 a.m.
Around the Chapters
�{St. John’s Forever}
greenfield library
48
Field of Dreams
B
efore St. John’s gained fame for several lacrosse
championships in the 1930s, there was just one sport
at St. John’s: baseball. These serious young men in
their striped jerseys, posed in front of the Liberty
Tree, were members of the team sometime between
1901 and 1905, according to Greenfield Library
records. Football came along in the 1880s and St. John’s fielded
powerhouse teams in football as well as lacrosse. (Johnnies once
defeated Washington College on the gridiron by a score of 116-0.)
Today, Johnnies are much more likely to be playing basketball or
soccer, with Ultimate Frisbee fast becoming a favorite sport for
both Santa Fe and Annapolis Johnnies. Santa Fe students are also
playing hockey competitively; they recently captured a city
championship. x
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 }
�{Eidos}
Historically Inaccurate
Richard Saja (SF93)
O
ver the last 10 years, textile
artist Richard Saja (SF93)
has made quite a name for
himself in the design
community. He had his
first solo show, “The
Bright and Shining Light of Irreverence:
Richard Saja and the Historically Inaccurate School,” last year at the Shelburne
Museum in Vermont. The New York Times
has brought attention to his work, which
has also been praised in Antiques magazine,
ReadyMade, and O. He also won a Searchlight Fellowship from the American Crafts
Council and was an exhibitor at the
council’s 2009 show.
Through his company, Historically Inaccurate Decorative Arts (historically-inaccurate.blogspot.com), Saja pursues a unique
niche in the decorative arts. He takes
classic toile prints and embellishes their
designs with hand-embroidered additions
drawn from his own imagination and sense
of humor. Saja describes it as “a cheeky,
irreverent take on a pattern of Western
civilization.”
He began his studies at the Philadelphia
College of Art, spending a year there before
deciding he needed a fresh perspective. He
headed to Santa Fe, where he crashed on a
Johnnie’s floor, went to class on a lark, and
was “blown away” by St. John’s. He joined
the January Freshman class in 1990 and
remains grateful for the challenging education he found at the college. “While I was
terrible in math, junior math with John
Cornell was pure magic.”
After graduating from St. John’s, Saja
taught himself graphics programs such as
Photoshop and Illustrator and landed a job
in advertising. After a layoff in 2000, he
teamed up with Johnnie Martha Alexander
(SF95). The two discovered a mutual love
for textiles, so they joined together to
create a company, Marisaal, dedicated to
creating hand-embroidered pillows that
“made people think.”
After Alexander moved on, Saja has
continued the work through Historically
Inaccurate. While the pillows were popular,
Above and left: prints from Richard Saja’s series “The Lost Girls.” Each measures
24" x 36" and is an archival giclée print on heavy-weight canvas, embroidered with
rayon floss, stretched and mounted. The custom toile design of “The Lost Girls”
was inspired by J.M. Barrie’s characters from Peter Pan. Right: One of Saja’s
“fauxnasetti” bar towels: electronic clip art manipulating the face of a woman used in
hundreds of different iterations by Saja’s favorite 20th-century designer,
Piero Fornasetti.
Saja began to wonder: “Why am I just doing
cushions? I decided to concentrate on
larger-scale pieces,” says Saja. The Shelburne show in 2009 was a great opportunity to showcase his talents. He created an
original work of embroidery called JUST
THIS ONCE, which was paired with the
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2010 }
Erastus Salisbury Field oil painting The
Garden of Eden.
Saja hopes his work is provocative. “A lot
of time, art is passive. I want to work
around themes, to use humor, to force
people to ask why. A lot of that, I got at
St. John’s.” x
�NON -P ROFIT O RG .
U.S. P OSTAGE
PAID
P UBLISHED BY THE
COMMUNICATIONS OFFICE
P.O. BOX 2800
A NNAPOLIS , MARYLAND 21404
ADDRESS SERVICE REQUESTED
C RAFTSMAN
PRINTERS , INC .
�
Dublin Core
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Title
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<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
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St. John's College Greenfield Library
Language
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English
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thecollege2001
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paper
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Volume 35, Issue 2 of the <em>The College</em> Magazine. Published in Spring 2010.
The College
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The
College
St. John’s College • Annapolis • Santa Fe
George Eliot
and Life’s Pursuits
S p r i n g
2 0 0 9
�The College
On George Eliot
W
hat a rebel Mary Anne Evans was.
Throughout her life, she struggled against the bonds of
conformity and society, first by defying her father and refusing to go
to church. In a collection of Eliot’s letters and journals published by
her husband, J.W. Cross, it’s clear that Eliot’s decision caused great
turmoil in the family home.
Cross wrote: “This was an unforgivable offence in the eyes of her father, who was
churchman of the old school, and nearly led to a family rupture. He went so far as to put
into an agent’s hands the lease of the house in the Foleshill Road, with the intention of
going to live with his married daughter.”
Mary Anne eventually relented and returned to live with her father, whom she cared for
through a long decline. After Robert Evans’ death, his daughter (now Marian) devoted
herself to the life of an intellectual, feeding her ravenous mind with works of theology,
philosophy, literature—everything she could get her hands on. Female novelists including
George Sands, the Brontés, and Jane Austen were on her reading list. She spent her
evenings at concerts and soirees, attended lectures by Faraday and Dickens, and immersed
herself in the political issues of her day. As the assistant editor of the Westminster Review,
she fell in with like-minded people, one of whom was George Henry Lewes, a novelist,
dramatist, and occasional actor.
Her long and loving relationship—outside of marriage—with the already married Lewes
caused great scandal and led her family and many of her friends to shun her. The scandal
was one of the reasons Evans adopted the pseudonym George Eliot when she published
Scenes of Clerical Life in 1857. In a biography, Rosemary Ashton explains how Evans chose
the pen name: “She told John Cross that she fixed on George Eliot because ‘George was
Mr Lewes’s Christian name, and Eliot was a good mouth-filling, easily pronounced word.’”
Her identity was well known by the time Evans published Middlemarch, which was a
resounding success and made her quite wealthy.
After Lewes died in 1878, Eliot was devastated. As a way to cope with her grief, she read
Dante with her good friend John Cross, who was struggling with Italian. Though it
shocked many in her circle, Eliot married Cross, 20 years her junior, in May 1880. He was
at her side in their home in London when she died that December.
This issue of The College pays tribute to George Eliot and her Middlemarch heroine,
Dorothea, by exploring the paths of three women at different stages of life and careers.
All have approached life hungry for new challenges and the chance to keep learning.
—RH
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
postmaster: Send address
changes to The College
Magazine, Communications
Office, St. John’s College,
Box 2800, Annapolis, MD
21404-2800.
Rosemary Harty (AGI09), editor
443-716-4011
rosemary.harty@sjca.edu
Patricia Dempsey,
managing 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
J. Matthew Griffis (SF08)
Jenny Hannifin
Sara Luell (A09)
Cathi Dunn MacRae
J.W. Ocker (AGI02)
Jack Owens (class of 1937)
Anna Perleberg (SF02)
Deborah Spiegelman
Magazine design by
Claude Skelton Design
�Spring 2009
The
College
The Magazine for Alumni of St. John’s College
Annapolis
•
Santa Fe
{Contents}
12
Changing Course
d e p a r t m e n t s
page
2
Like Middlemarch’s Dorothea, these
alumnae left one path in life to follow
another, more rewarding one.
•
•
•
•
20
For the Love of Books
•
page
•
•
•
Book lovers revel in places where “stacks
of papery happiness” await.
•
page 12
•
26
Alumni Voices
•
During the Great Depression, Jack
Owens (class of 1937) became a “scholar
and a gentleman” thanks to the “old”
program.
•
30
Homecoming
•
page
•
•
11
28
from the bell towers
A strategic plan for the college
Weathering the “perfect storm”
Twenty-five years of Touchstones
The Georgian connection
A sustainable table in Santa Fe
A Johnnie masters a Mongolian art
A Truman Scholar named in Annapolis
The master of Temple Iglehart
Every day a different challenge
St. John’s is a “cool” college
EC graduates help current students
master languages
Philanthropia’s new leaders
A man who changed lives
News and announcements
letters
bibliofile
•
Sallie Bingham (SFGI94) explores love
and loss in “Red Car,” a collection of
short stories.
Alumni books in brief
32
alumni
page
page 20
Autumn revels in Annapolis and Santa Fe
48
Photo Essay
page
P RO F I L E S
32 Laura Crawshaw (SF75) makes angry
bosses happier.
36 A publishing venture allows Darius
Fueled by his fascination for “odd
things,” J.W. Ocker (AGI02) documents
the weird and wonderful on a blog and
website.
Himes (SFGI00) to promote art and
photography.
39 Fun and games—and business—come
together for Dominic Crapuchettes (A97).
46
page 30
50
52
on the cover
George Eliot
Illustration by David Johnson
obituaries
alumni association news
st. john’s forever
�2
{From the Bell Towers}
“The Best Possible Educational Experience”
dimitri fotos
It takes a clear vision to guide a college, and the vision stateThe campaign raised $134 million in support of the college’s
ment for the college’s 2008-2013 strategic plan is both
priorities: increased funding for financial aid, improving tutor
straightforward and lofty:
salaries and providing more faculty develop opportunities, and
Liberal education at St. John’s College involves adherence to
improving student life. Both campuses have been transformed
an ideal that we attempt to embody in activity. By engaging
by the campaign: two new dormitories stand in Annapolis, and
students in an examination of the fundamental questions that
Santa Fe will begin construction soon on its new Graduate
human beings need to consider and by giving students the
Institute Center, the Norman and Betty Levan Hall.
responsibility for their own learning, we hope to open the world
Even with a sharp economic downturn to contend with, the
to them in such a way that they become excellent citizens,
college is better positioned to address future needs. Leadership
parents, partners, colleagues, and friends. We aspire to provide
on the two campuses is strong, and the Management
the best possible educational experience guided by our mission
Committee unites the two campuses together as one college in
and supported by appropriate resources. As one college on two
effective ways. A committed and talented board helps guide the
campuses, including Board, faculty, staff, students and alumni, college. The Program remains under constant review, and with
we strive to build a commuincreased opportunities for
nity where careful listening,
faculty study, new approaches
respect for the contributions of
to program works and studies
others and thoughtful
have been undertaken, to the
attempts to reach a shared
benefit of students and tutors.
understanding extend to all
Still, the challenges for the
aspects of the life of the
college remain clear:
college.
• How do we sustain what we
The college’s Board of
value? Keeping the college
Visitors and Governors
small presents continuing
formally voted to adopt the
financial challenges.
strategic plan at its fall 2008
• How do we continue to
meeting in Annapolis. The
attract students and expand
document was crafted by
our applicant pool in today’s
faculty, staff, board members,
higher education climate?
and alumni of both campuses
• How do we shape our
who met to review and discuss
campuses’ physical spaces so
every aspect of the college,
that they are best suited to the
from admissions to public
pursuits of the program?
safety. It identifies seven
• How can we become the best
primary goals:
community of learning—
1. Maintain the health and
and what does that mean for
The Program is at the heart of St. John’s, and the new strategic
plan for the college has that principle as its foundation.
vitality of the program of
each member of the college
instruction for undergradcommunity on each of the
uate and graduate students
campuses?
2. Promote a student experi• How can we reach out to the
ence that complements and enhances the program of
world beyond in ways that will benefit those who participate
instruction and supports retention
in what we offer and best bring benefit to the college?
3. Provide the means to support the program of instruction
“How we address and move forward with respect to these
and address college priorities
questions will determine important directions for the college,”
4. Ensure optimal organizational structure, practices, and
says Barbara Goyette (A73) vice president for advancement in
compensation that are necessary to maintain the health of
Annapolis and one of the chairs of the strategic planning
the program, promote effective operations, and improve
committee. “We hope to continue to improve the educational
sense of community
experience for our students and provide the best possible envi5. Develop a physical environment for each campus that is
ronments for carrying out the mission.”
worthy of the program and college community
The complete Strategic Plan can be found on the college
6. Engage alumni in a lifelong relationship with the college
website: www.stjohnscollege.edu, click on “About.” x
7. Strengthen involvement with the greater communities
within which the college exists
The college’s previous strategic plan covered the years 20002008, a time of intense activity dominated by the college’s
capital campaign, but also marked by a change in leadership on
the Santa Fe campus with the arrival of Michael Peters in 2005.
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 }
�{From the Bell Towers}
Weathering the “Perfect Storm”
In January 2008—well before
the global economic crisis was
apparent—members of the
college’s Board of Visitors
and Governors decided the
college should undergo a
planning exercise to prepare
for difficult times.
St. John’s has long benefited
from the expertise of a particular group of board members
who serve on the Finance and
Investment committees, says
Bronté Jones, treasurer in
Annapolis. Most have extensive
experience in areas such as
investing and business development. They serve as a ready
brain trust for Jones and
Santa Fe Treasurer Bryan
Valentine, who work together
on strategic financial planning
for the college.
“The committees asked us to
participate in what we called
‘the perfect storm’ scenario,
where we looked at what we
would do if all these bad things
converged on us at once,” says
Jones. The practice scenario
included a drop in enrollment,
a reduction in donor support,
and a stock market slump. Both
treasurers worked through the
numbers and presented strategies to the board members in
meetings and conference calls
last year. “At the time we were
thinking it was just another
exercise,” Jones says. “But all
of the strategies we drew up in
planning are what we’re
drawing from now.”
Endowment has dropped
about 20 percent, to about
$105 million as of December
31. The college draws up to
5 percent of endowment to help
fund annual operations, so
both campuses are trimming
budgets in response to the
shortfall. The Advancement
offices anticipate a reduction in
philanthropic giving, and both
campuses are planning a 20092010 budget with less tuition
revenue. The Maryland
General Assembly—coping with
the state’s $1.1 billion budget
shortfall—has made cuts to the
Sellinger Program, which
supports private institutions in
Maryland. And mindful of the
effects of the recession on
students and their families,
St. John’s adopted the smallest
tuition increase (2.9 percent)
in two decades.
The college is confronting
the same issues faced by many
colleges and universities. A
survey conducted in December
by the National Association of
Independent Colleges and
Universities (NAICU) found
that 97 percent of respondents
were concerned about falling
endowments and 52 percent
were worried about fall 2009
enrollment.
As a faculty member for the
Higher Education Resource
Institute (HERS), Jones
recently led a budget planning
session for female college
administrators, where she
gained a picture of how other
colleges are coping. St. John’s
is facing tight budgets, Jones
acknowledges, but many
colleges are in serious crisis.
Wellesley College, for example,
is cutting about 85 jobs this
year, in part because of a $200
million hit to its endowment.
Keeping class sizes small and meeting increased demand for
financial aid are the college’s top budget priorities.
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 }
3
Some college budgets
depend more on endowment,
others on enrollment.
St. John’s falls somewhere in
the middle—a recent development, Jones points out,
because increased giving to the
college over the past five years
has boosted both Annual Fund
support and the endowment.
“I consider us quite fortunate
compared to some other institutions,” says Jones. “We are
trimming budgets, but some
other institutions are calling
donors to help pay their utility
bills.”
On the plus side, Jones says,
“we have a larger endowment,
we have loyal donors, we’ve got
access to resources—the contingency fund.” Since 2000, the
college has been putting a
percentage of budget surpluses
into a rainy-day fund that
stands at about $1 million, part
of which either campus can tap
to help meet shortfalls this
year. For the next fiscal year,
both treasurers have asked
campus department heads to
find cost savings in every
budget line. “We’re cutting
everywhere we can to help us
meet the needs of our
students,” says Jones. “We are
preserving financial aid—in fact
we are increasing what is available to students with need –
and we are keeping class sizes
the same.”
Both Valentine and Jones are
planning for a storm that will
last a few years. But like emergency responders who have
drilled and practiced for a
major accident, both are ready
to respond to rapidly changing
developments. “It’s a challenge, but this is what we have
prepared for,” Jones says.
Valentine says the crisis
makes for some long workdays,
because both treasurers are
constantly examining budgets
and revising figures. “We can’t
budget on what we hope will
happen, we have to be prepared
for all kinds of scenarios.” x
�4
{From the Bell Towers}
Touchstones at 25
After tutor Nick Maistrellis
asked the opening question,
there was dead silence—for
90 uncomfortable seconds.
Maistrellis waited as the middle
school students in Hartford,
Connecticut, stared at each
other, at the floor, or at their
Xeroxed copies of the reading,
the Cain and Abel story from
the book of Genesis. In the back
of the classroom, tutors Howard
Zeiderman (class of 1967) and
Geoff Comber were observing,
along with some of the school’s
teachers and administrators. “It
was terrifying,” says Maistrellis,
recalling the details with clarity
26 years later.
Finally, one student spoke up.
A seminar happened. Though
there were moments of chaos as
students embraced their new
freedom, they responded to the
text and to each other.
Maistrellis realized later that
if he had broken the silence and
prodded the students, the experiment would have been a failure.
“The students never would have
taken control of the discussion,” Maistrellis says. “That
was the beginning of making
them responsible for the class.”
From its debut in the Hartford Public Schools in 1983, the
Touchstones Discussion
Project—started by tutors and
fueled in part over the years by
St. John’s graduates, current
students, and alumni volunteers—has grown into an organization with international reach.
More than 100,000 students in
Jordan have read Touchstones
texts in their middle schools.
Last year, at the invitation of the
government of Tanzania,
Zeiderman led seminars for
business and government
leaders with the goal of forming
coalitions to work on long-range
plans for the country’s development. Prisoners in Maryland
have been reading Touchstones
texts with volunteer tutors
(alumni and current students
among them), and
Zeiderman has even
led seminars for
personnel of the
National Security
Agency and Central
Intelligence Agency.
In the United
States, at least 7,500
schools have
included Touchstones in their
curricula, from
elementary grades
through high
school. The organization has 27 Touchstones volumes in
print, plus three
At Touchstones’ Annapolis office are (bottom row, l. to r.): Joan Croker
volumes in Spanish, (AGI08), Jeremy Jokell, and tutor Nick Maistrellis; (back row, l. to r):
a volume in Arabic
Stefanie Takacs (A89), Johanna Anderson (AGI09), Ryan Phillips (AGI07),
for Jordan, and a
and Giuliana De Grazia ( AGI09).
volume in Burmese,
used in Myanmar.
rural Alabama, Pittsburgh, and the same as you are. It leads you
Although it takes many of its
to learn something about yourChicago. The effort was
approaches from St. John’s,
shaped into a nonprofit organi- self.”
Touchstones differs in what it
For years, Maistrellis took
hopes to achieve in participants, zation and incorporated in
time away from St. John’s to
1985 as a 501(c)3.
says Zeiderman. “Touchstones
help run Touchstones, but by
Today, Touchstones is headis a four-stage process to
the early 1990s, he had to leave
quartered in a building in
develop in students the skills of
the organization and return to
historic Annapolis and has a
exploring and thinking both
full-time teaching. Looking
staff of eight, most of them
collaboratively and individually.
back, he’s pleased at what
Johnnies with a missionary zeal
In Touchstones, all—and I mean
Touchstones has accomplished
for education. Adam Meyers
all—students learn to particiand how it has evolved. “We
(A08) began working for Touchpate. It is also a program in how
thought we had the opportunity
stones right after he graduated
students can govern themselves
to do something really big,” that
last year. He runs the Touchas a seminar group and learn to
would make a difference, he
stones program at the Maryland
lead the groups themselves.”
State Correctional Institution in says. “We did.”
The idea developed over
Zeiderman has turned the
Jessup. He coordinates volunlong mid-morning breakfasts
day-to-day management over to
teers and works through the
that Zeiderman and Maistrellis
Stefanie Takacs (A89), Touchbureaucratic red tape, but he
enjoyed every day at an
stones’ new educational
Annapolis restaurant. Tutors at also gets to choose the readings
director, but he’s still involved
and lead seminars. Sitting down
the college were often getting
in leading Touchstones semito discuss a text in a correcrequests to share the St. John’s
nars and training for a diverse
tional facility “was so far from
“method” by schools with
group of people and organizaanything I’d ever experienced
ambitious and innovative
tions. His long-range plan for
before,” says Meyers. “Now that
programs. (Hartford, for
Touchstones? “I want every
I’ve done it a while, what keeps
example, was a magnet school
me interested is the humanity of student in the world to do it,”
with aspirations to send more
he says. Short of that, he’d be
these men. It’s so easy when you
students to college.) Comber
happy if “every student in the
(H95), now tutor emeritus, was go through your normal life to
United States did it.” x
pigeonhole them as hardened
also involved from the begincriminals who have no place in
ning, using contacts across the
—Rosemary Harty
regular society. You can’t help
country to bring Touchstones
but notice that they’re exactly
to schools in places such as
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 }
�5
{From the Bell Towers}
St. John’s, Georgia Style
a group committed to spreading
liberal education and introducing St. John’s to the people
of Georgia.
OLEG’s first accomplishment
was a trip to Georgia in the
summer of 2008, when students
immersed themselves in the
culture and engaged in seminarstyle classes with Georgian
people. Brockett (OLEG’s
executive director), Aduasvili,
her sister Miriam Aduasvili
(A12), Vincent Tavani (A11),
and Acacia Pappas (A11) accompanied Dwayne Lacey (then a
acacia pappas
Although the country of
Georgia has become the focus of
international news during the
past year in its war with Russia
and collapse of infrastructure,
when Nini Aduasvili (A11) came
to St. John’s, not many students
had heard of her home country.
It was Aduasvili’s “passion for
her country and her culture”
that drew fellow Johnnies to
learn more about Georgia, says
Noel Brockett (A09). Together,
Aduasvili and Brockett founded
the Organization for Liberal
Education in Georgia (OLEG),
tutor in Annapolis) on the trip.
With a group of about 40
Georgians at New Gelati
Academy, part of Gigol
Robakidze University in Tblisi,
OLEG held seminars on the
Meno, Euclid, Heraclitus,
Joseph Black, and Jacob Klein.
“We were bringing St. John’s to
them,” says Tavani.
With help from OLEG, New
Gelati Academy is developing a
program based in part on the
St. John’s curriculum. Because
of traditions and the focus on
the community, says Brockett,
“there is a particular potential
in Georgia for an education like
St. John’s.” One
tradition of the
Georgian people is
the supra feast,
when everyone sits
down together at a
table and takes
turns giving
lengthy toasts on a
variety of topics.
While giving the
toasts, says Tavani,
“they get really
philosophical
because they are taking their
time to appreciate and contemplate what makes life life. It
was a lot like seminar sometimes. It reminded us of the
Symposium.”
In addition to supra, Georgians have a long oral tradition
of poetry, often singing and
dancing to poems. Many of
these Georgian poems will be
integrated into the New Gelati
program. “To be a good
St. John’s student, you need to
really enjoy reading and have
the enthusiasm,” says Brockett.
“The Georgian people definitely
have that passion.”
What’s next for the group?
Alex Lawson (A03), an alumnus
who has worked in the nonprofit
development field, is helping
Brockett make OLEG into a
nonprofit organization, and the
group is recruiting board
members. Recently, OLEG was
awarded the $10,000 Davis
Peace Grant, which will help
fund a project to send four
St. John’s tutors to Georgia for
three weeks. x
—Sara Luell (A09)
Nino Aduashvili (A11) teaches Georgian dance one
night a week, one of OLEG’s cultural projects on the
Annapolis campus.
A Sustainable Table in Santa Fe
Organic peanut butter from
Portales, apples and apple
cider from Dixon and Alcalde,
honey from Taos, and hydroponic tomatoes are all part of
the daily food service on the
Santa Fe campus. Changes
began in 2007 when Rex
McCreary came on board with
Aramark, which runs the
dining operation there.
Students wanted food service
that was organic, fair trade,
local, and healthy, and
McCreary delivered. “They
wanted it, and they deserved
it,” says McCreary, who began
the process by talking with
folks at The Tree House, an
organic café and bakery. First
to arrive were organic fruit and
vegetables purchased from La
Montanita Co-op or directly
from farmers. This year almost
all food served, including meat
and turkey, is organic and
bought locally.
Not many colleges in New
Mexico commit to this level of
sustainable food service, but
McCreary says it’s pretty easy
once you let vendors know
what you need. Getting bread
made without refined sugar,
for example, came about just
by asking. But sustainable food
service does require more
people—students, staff, and
tutors—to get involved in the
process. Places like La
Montanita create weekly pick
lists that allow McCreary to
steer towards seasonal (and
thus less expensive) choices.
McCreary participates in a
panel discussion during
freshmen week, and at campus
“town hall” meetings, so
students and parents know he
is willing to hear their suggestions. Currently in the plan-
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 }
ning stages is a kiosk with webbased access to full descriptions of all the food products
served, which will be created
and supported by Aramark.
Until then, students can always
get a full listing of ingredients
just by asking. Recycling,
green cleaning supplies, and
biodegradable disposables
(trashbags, to-go boxes, cups,
and paper plates) are all part of
the efforts. Going tray-less
eliminated waste and reduced
water use. Food donations to
Kitchen Angels (which delivers
food to homebound residents
of Santa Fe) or the St. Elizabeth Shelter are made when
possible. x
�6
{From the Bell Towers}
Singing on the Steppes
On the vast steppes of Mongolia
the nomadic culture is in transition. “It’s not unusual to see
nomads carry Russian satellite
dishes with them each time they
move,” says Colin Forhan (A11),
who lived on the steppes last
summer. “[They] set up satellite
dishes next to their homes,
called gers. These Mongolians
call a home a ger rather than use
the Russian word yurt because
they prefer to use their native
language.” Forhan is also
learning another native Mongolian language: throat singing.
There are numerous types of
throat singing (sometimes called
harmonic chanting or overtone
chanting) practiced around the
world, but Forhan has taught
himself a basic Mongolian form
known as khoomei. When he
sings this way Forhan keeps his
tongue in a fixed position to
produce harmonics clearly. In
throat singing, the singer creates
resonance and amplified sounds
with constrictions and shapes;
the tongue and mouth filter out
certain tones and draw forth
others. The effect is like a loud,
vibrational human guitar string.
Its history is rooted in a desire to
mimic natural sounds such as
wind and water. “The sounds of
throat singing travel great
distances,” says Forhan.
“The landscape is so vast in
Mongolia. This is [in part] the
way this singing started.
Standing at the top of a mountain you can hear your voice in
every direction. Sounds are
louder and more pure.”
Forhan was in high school in
his hometown, Takoma Park,
Md., when he first heard throat
singing. “I was listening to NPR
and someone was throat singing
covers for popular Western
songs. It was the most beautiful
thing I had ever heard.” He
became obsessed and began
teaching himself throat singing
by listening to CDs and surfing
websites for demonstrations.
“It took me three months to
make a semblance of a sound.”
By the time Forhan was a
freshman at St. John’s, he
decided to spend the summer in
Mongolia to learn firsthand from
nomads who are throat singers.
To get to Mongolia, Forhan
joined an archaeology program
offered by the University of
Pittsburgh. After a brief stay in
the capital city of Ulan Bator, his
group traveled 13 hours to the
province of Arkhangai and
pitched their tents. They were
three hours from the closest
town, and they lived like the
Truman Scholar
Annapolis junior Jamaal Barnes (A10) has been named a 2009
Truman Scholar by the Harry S. Truman Scholarship Foundation.
Barnes is one of 60 students from 55 colleges and universities in
the United States who were selected for their leadership potential,
intellectual ability, and desire to make a difference.
Barnes is from Sanford, N.C. He
serves on the Delegate Council and as a
student representative to the college’s
Board of Visitors and Governors. He is a
co-founder of Epigenesis, a student
outreach program designed to instill
leadership skills in disadvantaged
Jamaal Barnes has his sights set on a
career in education.
nomads. “I even
ate boiled goats’
heads and drank
some of the
worst vodka I’ve
ever tasted. It
was a homebrew
made from
goats’ milk.”
Forhan sang
with several of
the nomads and
plans to return
this summer to
Mongolia on his
own. He will stay
with friends in
Ulan Bator, then
head back to the
nomads to throat
sing in the
steppes.
In Mongolia,
throat singing is
a folk music
much like bluegrass is in
Colin Forhan lived like a nomad in Mongolia,
America, says
where he feasted on boiled goats’ heads.
Forhan. “It’s a
special folk
octave lower than the sounds
music that everyone there has
emitted by the vocal chords.”
heard of, though not all MongoFor now Forhan is happy to learn
lians can sing this way.” Some of
the basics. “When I demonthe forms take a lifetime to
strated my throat singing for the
master, and Forhan readily
nomads, they thought it was
admits that he may never learn
the more difficult techniques. He hilarious—an American trying
their singing.” x
describes how in one such technique “the note coming out of
—Patricia Dempsey
the throat singer’s mouth is an
youth; a member of Primum Mobile, a group that sings sacred
music; and a resident assistant. He has long-term plans to earn a
doctorate in education and work for the reform and improvement
of public education.
“This well-rounded and personable young man brightens up
every room he enters,” Annapolis President Christopher Nelson
(SF70) wrote in his recommendation letter to the Truman Foundation. “He is a natural leader whose passion for helping others
inspires those around him.”
Each scholarship provides up to $30,000 for graduate study.
Scholars also receive priority admission and supplemental financial aid at some premier graduate institutions, leadership training,
career and graduate school counseling, and special internship
opportunities within the federal government. Recipients must be
U.S. citizens, have outstanding leadership potential and communication skills, be in the top quarter of their class, and be committed
to careers in government or the not-for-profit sector. x
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 }
�7
{From the Bell Towers}
Leo Pickens (A78), who marks his 20th year as athletic director in
Annapolis this year, believes in playing sports for fun—but give less
than your best effort at crew practice or on the soccer field, and
you’ll hear from him. When he talks about thumos, he usually
smacks one hand into the other for emphasis—give your heart to a
game, Pickens says, and you’re a winner regardless of the outcome.
In Temple Iglehart, he’s also a tutor: kunai basketball games are
sometimes interrupted so he can be sure novice players have a grip
on the rules.
As he was inspired by his mentor, longtime athletic director Bryce
Jacobsen (class of 1942), Pickens hopes to inspire Johnnies to take
up sports with passion and purpose. As a student, Pickens played for
the Druids: soccer, flag football, basketball, and softball. In a year
spent in Santa Fe, he played soccer and ran in the mountains.
Although today he devotes himself to yoga (his headstand is a
thing of beauty), Pickens considers running up Atalaya “one of my
greatest achievements as a human.”
“If memory serves, it’s about a two-mile run from campus to the
top. The elevation gain over that two miles is approximately 2,000
feet. In those days there wasn’t any development behind the college,
so the trail ran through nothing but that lean, austere natural
setting of piñon and Ponderosa and sage. I ran alone, and remember
the purity of the air, scented with the sweetness of the pine, and the
ever-expanding views as you climbed higher up the mountain. The
final very steep ascent was excruciating—one of the hardest things
I’ve ever done physically, and hence the pride. But once up on top
you could see forever, and the effortless, screaming (figuratively
speaking, but sometimes literally!) run down the mountain was as
close to flight as I’ve ever come. Closer to a religious experience,
really, than an athletic one.” x
dimitri fotos
Twenty Years of Thumos
Leo Pickens left a career in banking to return to the college,
where for 20 years he has helped Johnnies discover their
inner athlete.
Every day a different challenge
Johnny Zamora grew up just
a mile from the college in
what was then a virtual
village removed from downtown Santa Fe. As a boy, he
and his buddies would regularly climb Monte Sol. Little
could he have known that his
view from the top included
the future site of the
St. John’s campus. Nor could
he have imagined that a twoweek temporary stint would
turn into a 42-year career in
the college’s buildings and
grounds department.
Zamora’s retirement party
in March was a laid-back
affair; he would have
preferred to leave quietly,
although he was honored to
receive from President
Michael Peters a plaque in
recognition for his service.
Just as he saw his old
neighborhood change as the
city grew, Zamora witnessed
the growth of a college that
was once also quite isolated.
“I started at the college on
February 8, 1967,” Zamora
says. “The lower dorms had
just been finished.” One of
his first tasks was to help
outfit the dorms with furniture and amenities.
Over the course of his
career, Zamora acquired the
licenses necessary to maintain plumbing, electricity,
gas, boilers, and refrigeration. “Every day,” he says,
“was a different challenge,”
from dealing with leaky roofs
and snowstorms to refurbishing dorms on a tight
schedule for summer
program participants.
Among his greater challenges was the 1976 “attack
of the moths.” For unknown
reasons, millions of moths
descended on Santa Fe,
possibly blown in from
Arizona. “There were 500
inside our own home and
tons at the college,” Zamora
says. One distressed student
called Zamora’s office, and
he sent a crew to deal with
the problem. Later, he
received another call from
the student, who protested:
“You sent ladies with
brooms.”
Students were also part of
Zamora’s life in personal
ways. When Zamora married
in 1974, a student played the
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 }
organ for his wedding. This
particular student seemed to
consider Zamora and his
wife, Sylvia, his family away
from home. “He’d call my
wife and ask her what was for
lunch, and if he liked it, he’d
come over. We didn’t mind
at all. This is what you do
with family.”
Tutor Lynda Myers (SF72)
has known Zamora since her
freshman year. “His friendly
smile and upbeat greetings
have always been part of
life at St. John’s for me,”
she says.
A motorcycle aficionado,
Zamora now has more time
for his hobby. “We’ll miss
him here,” Myers says, “but
it is nice to picture him and
Sylvia driving off on their
baby blue Harley, in pursuit
of adventures.” x
�8
{From the Bell Towers}
Sempai and Kohai
The innovative method Santa
Fe tutor Michael Bybee uses in
the Chinese language tutorial
of the Eastern Classics
program demonstrates how
St. John’s is a learning community. “This is nothing more
than taking the St. John’s
College method as seriously as
we can, and applying it to the
study of literary Chinese,”
Bybee says.
In Bybee’s method, sempai
(Japanese for “senior
students,” in this case Eastern
Classics alumni) assist kohai
(“junior students,” those
currently enrolled in the
program). This year’s sempai
are Joyce Spray (SFGI76,
EC08), Alistair Hake (EC08),
Claudia Watson (EC08), and
Michael Johnson (EC08). Past
assistants have included Kay
Duffy (SF04, EC05) and
Wendy Skelley (EC05). By
dividing the class up into small
groups, more language drills
can be completed, which has
proven to be a very effective
way of learning language.
In the four years since Bybee
began inviting EC alumni to
help in the Chinese tutorial,
he’s never had a problem
recruiting volunteers. He first
learned this approach to
language acquisition from the
Japanese educational system in
Hawaii and practiced it for
years while at the University
of Oregon.
At a Graduate Institute
dinner in August 2008, Spray
agreed to help. Hake was
already on board, and the two
were joined by Watson
and Johnson. The
student-tutors attend
each language tutorial
(Mondays and
Wednesday at 4:30 p.m.)
and, after a general
introduction by Bybee to
the entire class, break
up into small groups to
proceed with the day’s
lesson. Fall 2008 texts
were chosen to establish
groundwork in the
language. Texts this
spring focus on Confucius’ Analects, the Xiao
Jing (often called “the
Classic on Filial Piety”),
some Tang dynasty
poetry, and all of Lao Zi.
In 90 minutes
students and tutors go through
that day’s lesson verbally, then
nut through the translation at
hand. Bybee is quick to point
out that they are not translating but rather “reading
Chinese.” The sempai-kohai
approach makes language a
real community effort: the
identification stops being
student to tutor and becomes a
richer experience of junior
student to senior student.
Volunteers have varied
reasons for participating. For
Spray, tutoring “helps use a
part of my brain that hasn’t
been used in a long time.
Working with Chinese is a
stretch—no matter how old you
are, it’s a good thing to do.”
Eager to retain what she
learned in the program,
Watson relishes her role as
“This is nothing more than taking the
St. John’s College method as seriously
as we can, and applying it to the
study of literary Chinese."
Mike Bybee, tutor
Joyce Spray, who
completed both graduate
programs, helps current
students with ancient
Chinese.
sempai. She may pursue a PhD
in Chinese history or anthropology. After years of studying
the texts of traditional Chinese
medicine, Johnson enjoys
working on his own translations and appreciates the
assistance he gets from Bybee.
Johnson is interested in
Chinese language, history, and
philosophy, and says “teaching
it only makes it better.” Hake
spent four years studying
Chinese medicine texts in
England and, much like
Johnson, finds that tutoring
keeps him active and engaged
with his own personal Chinese
studies. He is working on an
Eastern Classics master’s
essay.
The preparation materials
are an important part of the
process and must at least
partially respond to a common
assumption made when
studying literary Chinese: to
do so one needs to have
completed three years of
modern Chinese. Austin Volz
(SF09) worked on the language
materials used in the Chinese
class as an Ariel intern (there
are 30 literary Chinese prepa-
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 }
rations for each
semester). Bybee is quick
to note that these materials are used only for the
language acquisition
phase of the tutorial. The
other goals of a language
tutorial—learning
elements of language in
general, learning how to
write better, and learning
to read particular texts in
the original language in
some detail—remain the
provenance of that year’s
language tutor.
“We’re inviting
students to read literary
Chinese with no background in
modern Chinese,” says Bybee,
and the needs of today’s
Eastern Classics students
require that to be a viable
project. The goals of Eastern
Classics students, and the
prior academic experience
they have coming in to the
program, have changed over
the years. Now it is not
uncommon to have a native
Chinese speaker enrolled in
the EC, or a student with an
undergraduate degree in the
language, and their future
goals might include a
PhD in an Eastern Classicsrelated field.
Eastern Classics alumni are
certainly making their way into
the academic arena, a point
illustrated by an experience of
Bybee’s son, Jon Wheeler. While
investigating a Philosophy of
China and India class at Occidental College, Wheeler asked
Professor Alan Tomhave where
he had acquired his background
in the subject. It turns out
Dr. Tomhave took an Eastern
Classics seminar at St. John’s;
Bybee was the tutor. x
�9
{From the Bell Towers}
Energizing Alumni Giving
The financial downturn calls for
creative ways of engaging alumni
to support St. John’s, and Philanthropia co-chairs Matthew Calise
(A00) and Michael Zinati (SF92)
are up to the challenge.
Philanthropia is the college’s
alumni development council,
established in 1997 and fueled by
energetic volunteers. The
group’s support is one reason
St. John’s has experienced a
steady increase in alumni giving.
The Campaign for St. John’s
College, which ended last July,
raised $134 million for the
college, and alumni contributed
60 percent.
“Typically alumni get jazzed
up by a campaign. . .then the
excitement tapers off,” says
Calise. “The opportunity and
challenge for Philanthropia is to
maintain that high level of
energy. This is our charge regardless of the economy, but now
more than ever we need to keep
relationships going through
peer-to-peer outreach and good
communications.”
Calise, an associate director at
Georgetown University Law
Center’s office of alumni affairs,
believes it is important to lay the
groundwork for the future by
cultivating relationships with
students. St. John’s has just
9,000 alumni, he pointed out.
“That’s an intimate community,”
Calise says. “So we can easily
reach out not only to each other,
but to current students to
embrace the future of philanthropic support for the college.”
“St. John’s alumni really care
about ensuring that today’s
students have the same opportunities that they did to study at the
college,” adds Zinanti. “I believe
we can appeal to this concern by
finding ways to directly affect the
lives of the students and, where
appropriate, create personal
bonds. In tough economic times,
it is important for our alumni to
reach out to today’s students and
really touch their lives.”
Zinanti, an engineer at Ball
Aerospace in Westminster, Colo.,
helped out with Annual Fund
phonathons as a student in Santa
Fe. A hockey fan, Zinanti also
told Jeff Morgan, then campus
vice president for advancement,
that the college needed an ice
rink. When Morgan responded
by inviting Zinanti to head up a
fundraising effort to build one,
Zinanti gained an education in
how philanthropy supports every
aspect of life at St. John’s.
Tuition pays just 70 percent of
the cost of educating a student at
St. John’s; Annual Fund gifts
help make up the rest. “Most
undergraduates are not aware of
the fact that, whether they are on
financial aid or not, their education is subsidized by philanthropic gifts,” Zinanti says. “It
was an epiphany for me. I was on
financial aid but I had taken it all
for granted.”
At Georgetown, Calise works
with law school alumni to “build
communities of engagement.”
He sees a natural fit for this experience with Philanthropia. “We
have two powerful advantages
going for us in the world of
philanthropy,” he says. “We have
a fantastic cause—the education,
the distinctive Program that St.
John’s offers. And we have the
need—60 percent of undergraduates receive financial aid.” x
— Patricia Dempsey
A Man Who Changed Lives
The college lost a good friend when Loren Pope, former
New York Times editor and author of “Colleges that Change
Lives” died last fall. Many a St. John’s students learned of
the college from the small book, which promoted institutions that are “outdoing the Ivies and major universities in
producing winners.”
Long before colleges and universities began criticizing
rankings, Pope urged students and their parents to look
beyond big-name schools to find the college that was the
right fit. St. John’s, he wrote in the most recent edition, “is a
hard-working Shangri-La for the life-of-the-mind teenager
who may hate or is bored by high school or is disgusted with
education’s stupid SAT system. St. John’s has the courage to
reject all that stuff; it’s what you are and what you want out of
college that count.”
Annapolis Admissions Director John Christensen said the
book is often mentioned in admissions essays. Christensen
met Pope when he came to the college soon after Christensen
joined the college in 1978; at the time Pope had a counseling
service in Virginia and often recommended St. John’s to
bright high school students. “My predecessor told me to
expect calls from him from time to time,” he says. “He did call
with some frequency, and those calls were somewhat intimidating at first because I was new to the college and quickly
realized he knew more about it than I did. But he was a
friendly and patient man and those to whom he recommended
the college always seemed a good fit.” x
A Very Cool College
Phonathon volunteers let alumni know that every Annual Fund
gift, no matter the size, is appreciated.
St. John’s recently earned four pages in a college guidebook
called Cool Colleges for the Hyper-Intelligent, Self-Directed,
Late Blooming, and Just Plain Different. The only “downside” the guidebook pointed out is actually a point of pride
for most current Johnnies:
“The students at St. John’s gain mastery of an intellectual
tradition that goes back several thousand years, but they may
not know the latest in teenage street fashion or other aspects
of contemporary culture. However, the students I spoke with
didn’t care. Basically, the students who are drawn to this
curriculum seem not to find any fault with it.” x
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 }
�10
{From the Bell Towers}
News & Announcements
NEH, Hodson Grants
Last fall, the National Endowment for the Humanities made a
$1 million challenge grant
through its “We the People”
initiative to St. John’s in
Annapolis to support the study
of works and ideas in American
history, events, and culture. In
December, The Hodson Trust—
established to support four
private colleges in Maryland—
gave St. John’s a $3 million gift,
matching the NEH grant in full.
“We the People” is an NEH
program that aims to encourage
and strengthen the teaching,
study, and understanding of
American history and culture
through libraries, schools,
colleges, universities, and
cultural institutions. The
funding will provide additional
support in four areas that are
already part of the college’s
academic program and mission:
faculty study groups on works
related to American themes,
support for preceptorials,
lectures on American themes,
and educational outreach to the
community.
The Santa Fe campus also
received a challenge grant from
the NEH: $300,000 for support
of Tecolote, a series of Saturday
programs for New Mexico’s
K-12 teachers created by tutor
STEVEN VAN LUCHENE. The
colloquia (centered on a
different theme each year)
provide occasions for genuine
liberal learning through the
discussion of carefully selected
texts, led by St. John’s faculty
and other experienced leaders.
The grant requires a 3-1 match
over the next four years, and the
college is actively seeking additional support for the program.
Faculty and Staff News
TUTOR MATTHEW DAVIS (A82)
has been appointed director
of the Graduate Institute in
Santa Fe, succeeding Krishnan
Venkatesh. He will begin his
new duties in June. Davis has a
master’s degree in Philosophy
from Dalhousie University and
earned his PhD in Political
Science from Boston College.
He has been a tutor at the
college since 1998.
In Annapolis, tutor SUSAN
PAALMAN will succeed Anita
Kronsberg as assistant dean.
Paalman has a bachelor’s
degree from Rice University
and a PhD from the Johns
Hopkins University School of
Medicine. She has been a tutor
at the college since 1997.
Tutor Emeritus CURTIS
WILSON published an article,
“The Nub of the Lunar
Problem: From Euler to G.W.
Hill,” in the November issue of
the Journal for the History of
Astronomy. The paper explains
how G.W. Hill (l838-1914), a
mathematician working for the
U.S. Nautical Almanac, found
the curve—not an elipse—as the
basis on which a theory of the
moon could be constructed. It
proved much more accurate
than any earlier theory.
Wilson is also the author of
a review of a volume of Jean le
Rond d’Alembert, published
in November by the international quarterly, Historia
Mathematica.
MELISSA LATHAM-STEVENS,
art director in the Santa Fe
Office of Communications, has
won several awards for publications design from the Council
for the Advancement and
Support of Education (CASE)
District IV. Her Homecoming
2008 brochure won an award
for visual design, and her
Summer Classics brochure won
three visual design awards.
The Annapolis campus has a
new library director:
CATHERINE DIXON joined the
college in February. She previ-
ously worked for the Library of
Congress.
Hall of Fame
Earlier this year, WARREN
WINIARSKI (class of 1952, Board
of Visitors and Governors
member) was inducted into the
Vintners Hall of Fame at the
Culinary Institute of America,
in Napa Valley. In 1976, two
fledgling California wineries
made history in France by
winning a tasting that changed
the world’s opinion of New
World wines. One of the
wineries was Winiarski’s Stag’s
Leap Wine Cellars. In the years
that followed the now-famous
Paris Tasting, Winiarski has
relentlessly pursued a quest for
excellence in winemaking.
Praise, Prizes for Scibona
SALVATORE SCIBONA (SF97)
continues to win accolades for
his first novel, The End.
Scibona, who was a finalist for
the National Book Award,
recently received the New York
Public Library’s $10,000
Young Lions Fiction Award.
More Singing in Santa Fe
Capitalizing on Controversy
Who says Johnnies are indifferent to political controversy?
The students spearheading Senior Prank fundraising this year
are selling t-shirts pitting Euclid against Lobachevski. The
project was the brainchild of Nate Oesch (A09), who says that
early returns show Euclid has the edge in the voting. Above,
Clint Richardson and Molly Rothenberg (both A09) model the
front of the shirts. The back of the Euclid says: “Perfection
Without Defection.” The back of the Lobachevski: “Four
Rights Make a Wrong.” x
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 }
Composer and conductor ROY
M. ROGOSIN (SFGI08) has
joined the college in Santa Fe
to develop and lead two new
extracurricular choral groups
on the campus. The St. John’s
Community Chorus is aimed at
providing an opportunity for
Johnnies, as well as select
members of the Santa Fe
community, to sing and
perform a broad spectrum of
choral music from antiquity to
the present. The Chamber
Singers, for which members
must audition, also provides
new opportunities for campus
singers. Rogosin is a professional conductor with international credits ranging from the
Concertgebouw in Amsterdam
and Royal Albert Hall in
London to the sound stages of
Hollywood and the stages of
Broadway. x
�11
{Letters}
Unforgettably Kind Acts
Thanks for the profile in
The College [Fall 2008] on
Jean FitzSimon (A73). She did
some unforgettably kind acts
as a Johnnie, and I’d like to
recognize her and the countless other Johnnies who
befriend freshmen and help
them out. An example of what
she did for me:
I was tall (in the Northeast, a
six-foot female in the 1960s got
only stares and “it’s the 50-foot
woman” comments), and I had
led a swimmer’s life and not
much else, although I had
books instead of Michael
Phelps’ iPod. Since I wasn’t in
the top 10 in the nationals, I
had no Olympic dream (before
Title IX). I never regretted
stopping swimming or going to
St. John’s. In fact, I eventually
won the St. John’s men’s foulshooting contest and got to
play on their basketball, volleyball, and badminton teams
until they made me women’s
athletic director! This would
never have happened but for
students at the gym, like Jean,
who were willing to play with
someone who’d never held a
ball, just for the love of
playing, occasionally skipping
the usual search for someone
to learn from so that they
could give a little time to
someone who wanted to learn.
When I came to St. John’s,
I had a budget of $5 ($27
today) every two weeks for
books, clothes, laundry,
culture, etc., which meant I
worked several jobs. I still wore
my warm-up jacket, a castoff
from an old Holy Cross team,
and my first “grownup” flats,
Converse All Stars. My school
uniform was completed with
men’s jeans and my brother’s
old leather belt, and I was
often mistaken for a boy. I
routinely took off my glasses to
go to the dining hall, assuming
that I would otherwise notice
the sniggers. (Years later, I
found out that my unconscious
statement. But
Jean didn’t just
tell me to
believe in
myself, she just
believed in me,
and changed my
life. She made
me confident
enough to
become actually
somewhat
popular at
St. John’s,
although what
has lasted is the
love of
thoughtful
conversation,
and the belief
that it, like Jean
FitzSimon’s
generosity, can
Now a judge in Philadelphia, Jean FitzSimon
change the
(A73) committed an act of kindness her
world. I even got
classmate will always remember.
profiled in an
early newsprint
lope had earned me the nickversion of The College. A year
name of “the fabulous filly”
later, a younger Johnnie asked
by the seniors.)
me to be her friend because
One day the girls on my floor “I seemed happy, like someone
played let’s-dress-Jane-like-apopular, but kind.” I never told
girl. The next thing I
Jean that she started it all!
remember is Jean FitzSimon,
I have always mentored
whom I didn’t even know,
younger people, in and outside
taking me to a clothing store in my family, and often tell them
downtown Annapolis and
of what someone I didn’t even
buying me the first slinky (and
know did for me at St. John’s,
first full-price) dress of my life
whenever I give them money or
with her checkbook, telling me “too much.” In this, Jean is
I could pay her back later. I
inspiring the next generation
even copied that dress as a
and doesn’t even know it. I’m
pattern when it fell apart about not the only person who
eight years later.
remembers and thanks Jean
To say that I was a nerd
even now.
without social skills would
I hope that the Johnnies who
probably have been an undercould help freshmen will read
and learn from this story just
how gratifying it is to risk
making a fool of yourself or
annoying someone, to try to
give them your time or something you think might be
useful to them. I rank this
lesson and the mighty power
of thoughtful conversation as
my most valuable gifts from
Jane (D’Agnese ) Atwood (A74)
St. John’s.
“One day the girls
on my floor
played let’s-dressJane-like-a-girl.”
Jane (D’Agnese ) Atwood (A74)
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 }
Philosophers’ Songs
Thank you for publishing “The
Battle Hymn of the Republic of
Letters” [Fall 2008]!
Annapolis transfers had told
me of it, but I had never
learned it. It was so much fun
to learn to sing, and now I sing
it (and march along) almost
every day as I walk to work.
Another song the Annapolis
transfers used to sing had the
line “Immanuel Kant was a big
pissant who was very rarely
stable.” Does anyone know
how the rest of that song goes?
Erin Hanlon (SF03)
Editor’s note: Thanks to editor
Cathi Dunn MacRae, The
College has an answer: “The
Immanuel Kant line comes
from a song within a popular
1970s Monty Python comedy
sketch titled ‘Bruces.’ It is
usually referred to as ‘The
Bruces’ Philosophers Song.’
The sketch appeared on Monty
Python’s Flying Circus television show, Episode 22,
featuring four professors, all
named Bruce, from the philosophy department of the
fictional University of Walamaloo in Australia. It’s apparently available on YouTube.
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.
Correction: The photograph
on the back cover of the Fall
2008 issue of The College was
taken by Clarke Saylor (A08).
The credit was inadvertently
given to another photographer;
we regret the error.
�12
{Changing Course}
CHANGING
COURSE
by Rosemary Harty and Deborah Spiegelman
“Far off in the bending sky was the pearly light;
and she felt the largeness of the world and the
manifold wakings of men to labor and endurance.
She was a part of that involuntary, palpitating
life, and could neither look out on it from her luxurious shelter as a mere spectator, nor hide her eyes
in selfish complaining.”
G
eorge Eliot’s Middlemarch
inspired this collection of
stories about alumni who have
considered—and reconsidered—
their paths in life. It seems every
major character in Eliot’s novel
harbors some great ambition, a desire to make
something of his or her life, to gain notice, to
achieve greatness. Some characters are motivated
simply by greed and shallow personal ambitions,
while others—humble Mary Garth, for example, or
the shabby Mr. Featherstone—seek lives of integrity
and service.
Casaubon devotes his entire being to “A Key to All
Mythologies,” the manuscript that all but its author
seem to realize is a hopeless boondoggle. After
discovering his passion for medicine, Lydgate sets
out to reform the profession and make great
scientific discoveries. Things end quite badly for
these two.
But consider Fred, who rejects family expectations and the hypocrisy of a career as a clergyman,
to settle happily into working the land as the assistant of an estate manager. Ladislaw tinkers with art
and politics as he considers the best way to use his
education and energy. Then, there is passionate
Dorothea, who after seeing one ill-fated dream die,
is willing to let it go and follow another—in spite of
the condemnation of family and friends. And in
changing course, she finds greater rewards—in love
and in work—that will make a difference to others.
For the women in these profiles, making a living
hasn’t been the driving force in their lives; their
course changes—from teacher to nurse, from engineer to lawyer, from lawyer to librarian—have
always been most driven by the need to love what
they do.
Opposite: After 12 years as a Montessori teacher, Sarah Bittle
is nearing the completion of a nursing program at Johns
Hopkins University. She’ll be a labor and delivery nurse.
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 }
�gary pierpoint
{Changing Course}
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 }
13
�14
{Changing Course}
“I started thinking that I wanted to be part of something different.”
Sarah Bittle
“You Want to Love What You’re
Doing”
Sarah Bittle (A96)
When it came to working with children, Sarah Bittle was a
natural: patient, nurturing, and eager to share her zeal for
learning with others. It was her success in this field—and a
crystal-clear view of its limitations—that led her to look for
another way to make a difference in the lives of children.
During a break from St. John’s, Bittle taught in an afterschool science program. There she discovered her innate
teaching skills along with the rewards of seeing children who
were excited to learn. “That led me to Montessori, which is all
about kids teaching themselves,” she says. The Montessori
philosophy focuses on developing each child’s unique potential as a human being.
Bittle traveled to Colorado to earn her certification from the
Montessori Education Center of the Rockies. After she
completed her training, she found a job in Kensington, Maryland, as an infant/toddler teacher at the Crossway Community
Montessori School. The school was part of a nonprofit organization with a focus on outreach to low-income, at-risk families
in the greater D.C. area. Bittle managed two classrooms with
six infants apiece and two classrooms with nine toddlers each.
Working with very young children offered the opportunity to
help shape their lives in a positive way. However, her choice
was one she had to explain to friends who wondered how she
could change diapers and deal with temper tantrums. Where
was the intellectual challenge?
But Bittle could see reflected in the youngsters she worked
with each day the concepts she read about in Kant and Aristotle—how experience and potential came together for the
children in her care. She could help children acquire language,
take in new experiences, and make sense of the physical world.
The more they mastered, the more they grew in confidence.
She especially enjoyed working with the mothers of her
students, many of whom struggled with serious problems such
as drug addiction and homelessness, and helping them learn
to be better parents. “You could have hopes that the world
would be different for them,” says Bittle. “I was really proud of
what we accomplished. The program was running before I got
there, but I was able to help take it to another level and make
it consistent. It comes with its frustrations too; you have some
victories and some disappointments.”
Working closely with parents, Bittle saw that good healthcare and health education were critical to improving the
quality of their lives. “One of the things I could see with our
mothers was that they had no idea how to build a relationship
with a doctor. If anything goes wrong, they know they can be
seen by going to the Emergency Room. The ER often became
their primary care clinic.” Bittle explains.
“When they could get regular medical care,
I would go with them to pediatrician
appointments, and for the most part what I
saw really curled my toes. Not only did the
parents not know how to ask questions, they
were offered revolving-door medicine from
doctors who didn’t listen. I started thinking
that I wanted to be part of something
different.”
Bittle knew she couldn’t teach with the
same dedication or energy for many more
years; becoming a school administrator
wasn’t appealing. When she began to see
how much good prenatal care and healthcare education would help both mother and
child, she settled on a new career direction
Sarah Bittle worked for 12 years as a
Montessori teacher before deciding to
pursue a second career in nursing.
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 }
�{Changing Course}
15
“I don’t seem to do anything the easy way.”
Karen Cook
rosemary harty
as a labor and delivery/ neonatal care nurse and three
years ago, took the first steps to pursue it. She investigated accelerated nursing programs and settled on
Johns Hopkins’ 13-month BSN program. She shifted to
a part-time schedule at work and took prerequisite
courses in biology, anatomy, physiology, and statistics
at a community college. She applied for loans, gave up
a great apartment and social life in D.C.’s Adams
Morgan neighborhood, and moved to an apartment in
Baltimore. “I have two roommates who are also in
nursing school,” says Bittle. “We have a medical
dictionary called Mosby’s, and we all sat there the first
few nights, thumbing through it and looking at these
pictures of these horrible things.”
While she is among the oldest students in the
program, Bittle hasn’t found the curriculum to be very
difficult. “I put a lot of energy and emotional commitment into this, but I actually have more spare time
now” than as a Montessori teacher, she says.
Nursing can be stressful, physical work, and often
emotionally demanding, Bittle has found. The Karen Cook enjoyed being a lawyer, but has a real passion for
“amazing moments” she has with patients, just as a library science.
student, have shown this career choice was the right
one. For example, on a recent rotation she spent time
“I Feel Like I’m Doing Something
with a patient who had suffered a stroke. Although he was alert
Worthwhile”
and aware of everything that had happened to him, he wasn’t
able to articulate his thoughts. “He was so intelligent and wellKaren Cook (SF74)
educated, and literate, very Johnnie-like. He knew what he
Anyone who has ever pondered Socrates’ “examined life”
wanted to say, but he would get stuck on a word he couldn’t
would probably understand why Karen Cook has made so
remember or translate,” she says. “It was incredibly frusmany changes in her life.
trating to him, but he bore it with such incredible grace, and I
Over the past four decades, she has married, started a
felt so privileged to have known him.”
family, earned a law degree, and worked in private practice.
Bittle will finish the program in July and has already begun
She divorced, remarried, and put career goals aside to devote
investigating the Washington job market. At a time when
time to a new blended family. She traded the law for library
unemployment is high—and with student loans to pay off—she’s
science, left her library job for a corporate position, and
glad that nurses are in high demand. “I’m really looking
walked away from another good job to pursue a doctorate. She
forward to having a full-time job again,” she says.
is happily settled (for now) as an assistant librarian at
Most Johnnies, Bittle observes, have two qualities that
Louisiana State University in Monroe, where she is also a
foster the openness to make dramatic changes in their lives.
government documents and reference librarian.
“I think it has a lot do with the college, either because of the
“I don’t seem to do anything the easy way,” says Cook.
type of people who are drawn to the Program, or because of
Sacrifices were always involved, such as uprooting her
what we read in the Program. It’s probably a combination
family and selling a home to live the humble life of a doctoral
of both.
student. Yet new pursuits led to greater rewards. Recently,
— Rosemary Harty (AGI09)
Cook—a newly minted Doctor of Communication and
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 }
�16
{Changing Course}
“I missed the books.”
Karen Cook
Information Science at age 55—learned that she received the
University of Alabama Outstanding Dissertation Award for
2008-2009 for her thesis, “Freedom Libraries in the 1964
Mississippi Freedom Summer Project: A History.” It was a gratifying achievement, but finding a topic she cared about and
devoting herself to it—that was even better.
While she had the encouragement and support of family,
Cook had to convince herself that it wasn’t too late to enter a
doctoral program at 49. “I do have to say that I didn’t have the
energy that some of the younger students did,” she says. “But
when I got into the research projects that I really loved, I found
the work energizing. It stopped being something I was doing
for my career and became something important in and of
itself.”
Her independent spirit was one reason Cook chose
St. John’s. She left St. John’s after her junior year to marry
another Johnnie, Carl Huffman (SF74). She finished her bachelor’s degree, in psychology, at the University of Colorado, and
they moved together to Austin, where Huffman earned his
doctorate in ancient Greek philosophy. In Texas, Cook
attended law school, graduating in 1979. When her husband
joined the DePauw University faculty, they settled in Greencastle, Indiana, and Cook put her career on hold for four years
to raise their children.
After 12 years of marriage, the two divorced. Cook met her
second husband, Robert Bremer, through
her son David, who was best friends with
Robert’s son Derek. Bremer had a law
practice, and Cook went to work for him.
She enjoyed the variety of a general practice, where she worked on wills, divorces,
appellate work, small claims, “all kinds of
stuff.” After eight months, the two were
engaged. “We were best friends before
we fell in love and we fairly quickly
decided to get married—we had so much in
common,” Cook says.
Bremer also had a daughter, Shannon.
Cook had two other sons, Peter and John.
Together, they had a son, Arthur, who is
now 20. With a big, new, blended family,
Cook knew change was imminent. “It was
too challenging to have the two of us in
practice together and try to raise these
kids,” she says. “In a law practice you’re at
the mercy of a judge. You have a hearing scheduled for 1:15, a
child with a dentist appointment at 3:30, and the judge comes
back from lunch at 3. That kind of thing started getting very
difficult. It was also difficult to get away from the tension of the
practice. When life at work was nuts, it was really hard not to
have that come home with us.”
Cook took time to consider the long view of her life. What
was she good at? What did she really love to do? “I kept coming
up with two things: books and computers,” she says. “And I
finally settled on becoming a librarian.” She began working
toward her MLS part time at the Indiana University, an hour’s
drive away, while working part time at the law firm. Then, in
Cook’s words, “life gets really interesting.” Her husband was
burnt out on the law. “We decided it was time for my career to
be driving the train,” she says. “I had followed the husbands’
career paths long enough.”
Cook took a job at a public library in southern Indiana, and
her family followed. She was hired to head up technical services—cataloging, acquisitions and preservation. Her knowledge of computers and interest in technology found fertile
ground for development. She was put in charge of selecting a
new computer system and soon was named systems librarian.
“I learned just about everything there was to running a
library,” she says, but after three years, “it was starting to get
routine.” Cook next went to work for a library software
company in Huntsville, Alabama, where
she was the public library product
manager, traveling the country and
working with libraries to ensure the
systems met their need. “I almost doubled
my salary,” Cook recalls. “It was nice to be
able to earn a decent salary, nice to go to
conferences without having to share a
room with six people.”
She held that job for nearly five years
before she felt the familiar hunger for a
new challenge. “I became increasingly
interested in the Web and I was also
suffering from library withdrawal,” she
explains. “I missed the books, and I missed
the environment where you are seeking
knowledge for knowledge’s sake. For
In 2008, Cook completed her doctorate;
she also won awards for her dissertation.
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 }
�{Changing Course}
17
When You’re Considering a Change
Don’t be hasty! Take time to reflect, do some reading and
research, and make contacts, say the directors of the Career
Services offices in Annapolis and Santa Fe.
Margaret Odell in Santa Fe recommends:
Paul D. Tieger and Barbara Barron-Tieger, Do What You Are:
Discover The Perfect Career for You Through the Secrets of
Personality Types, Little, Brown, 2001
Shoya Zichy, Career Match: Connecting Who You Are and What
You’ll Love to Do, AMACOM (a division of American Management Association), 2007
Marsha Sinetar, Do What You Love and the Money Will Follow,
Dell Trade Paperback, 1987, “a bit dated but still great reading.”
Bureau of Labor Standards, Occupational Outlook Handbook,
2008-2009 edition (also available online at www.bls.gov/OCO)
“I would urge working with a career counselor or life coach,”
says Odell. “Also, don’t forget that the Career Services offices
can put career changers in touch with alumni in a wide variety
of fields who are happy to share information about their
careers.”
librarians, part of what drives us is that need to share information with others.”
A former colleague led Cook to a job with a contractor at
NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center. She worked as an online
publisher, editor, and web developer for “NASA Explores,” an
online resource and curriculum guide for K-12 science
teachers. “I was working in an educational environment, but I
found being a government contractor a little problematic,”
says Cook. “I like to speak freely, and that was the final thing
that pushed me completely out of the corporate environment.
I didn’t want to compromise my integrity.”
It was time, Cook decided, to go back to school. In 2002, she
enrolled in the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. In
searching for a dissertation topic, she discovered that some
alternative libraries created by volunteers in Mississippi were
instrumental in contributing to the civil rights movement
through programs designed to facilitate participation in
democracy, further adult literacy, and address the needs of the
Advice from Shahrzad Arasteh in Annapolis:
Richard Nelson Bolles, What Color Is Your Parachute? 2009
Edition, Ten Speed Press, Berkeley, 2009
Barbara Sher, Wishcraft: How to Get What You Really Want,
Ballantine Books, New York, 2nd Edition, 2003.
“Any Barbara Sher book would be a wonderful resource for both
career changers and career seekers,” says Arasteh. “One general
piece of advice I would share (in addition to working with a
career development professional) is to take a little bit of time to
explore and evaluate your skills, passions, values, and interests
before deciding on a new career field. It is also important to
research and test out, in some way, the potential career field or
fields. Then make a commitment to one that is a good fit and
work on getting the experience and knowledge necessary to
transition to it.”
Contacts:
Santa Fe Office of Career Services: 505-984-6067,
modell@sjcsf.edu
Annapolis Office of Career Services: 410-626-2501,
shahrzad.arasteh@sjca.edu.
poor and disadvantaged. “Only half of the counties in Mississippi had public libraries, and only eight in the whole state
served African Americans,” Cook says. Activists for the
Congress of Racial Equality and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee started community centers and libraries
that offered wider access to books, newspapers, and magazines. By 1964, 250,000 volumes were donated to the
“freedom libraries.” Cook’s dissertation topic “brought
together all the things I feel most strongly about,” she says,
namely, literacy, education, and democracy. She’s now at work
turning her thesis into a book. “These were amazing people,
forgotten by history, and they deserve to have their story told.”
Cook graduated in May 2008. Her husband, who had
worked in institutional advancement after leaving the law,
earned a Master of Library Science degree and commutes to
the Louisiana Tech library in Ruston. At LSU-Monroe, Cook is
a government documents and reference librarian, a job she
took knowing it would not offer the long-term challenges she
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 }
�18
{Changing Course}
“I didn’t have a playbook the day I left St. John’s that said, ‘I’m going
to change careers and make it all merge in the end.’”
Liz Travis (SF84)
needs. Earlier this spring she began to shop around for new
opportunities, and at this point in her life, she believes many
doors are still open to her.
Feeling accomplished isn’t just about salary or prestige,
Cook says. “People do look at me strangely, sometimes:
‘You’ve been a lawyer, and now you do this?’ It’s nice to have
money, but that is not a sufficient reason to do something. I
like to feel good about what I do at work. I feel like I’m doing
something that’s worthwhile, and I’m also in an environment
where I’m encouraged to keep learning. That’s probably what
you hear from most Johnnies. There’s always something new
to learn.”
—Rosemary Harty (AGI09)
“I Need to Believe I Make a Difference”
Liz Travis (SF84)
For Liz Travis, the roads taken were neither preordained nor
premeditated, but they have brought her full circle, back to
Santa Fe and ultimately to a job that brings together a liberal
arts education, an engineering background, and a law degree.
Travis’ career path illustrates the importance of taking time
out for reflection. At key stages in her life, Travis took periodic
breaks to assess where she was and where she wanted to go.
After her sophomore year, Travis took time off from St. John’s,
working first as a lifeguard in Florida and then traveling home
to California, where she took “fluffy” classes at the local
community college. “My brain needed a break,” she says.
After a year, she returned to St. John’s to complete her degree,
imagining that she would become either a lawyer or a theoretical physicist.
Her first job was with Rockwell Space Division in California,
where she worked as an analyst in the development of the
space shuttle. When nearby Northrop Grumman, an aerospace and defense technology company, announced a “cattle
call,” Travis applied and got the job—in part, she admits,
through sheer nerve. First, she pointed out to her interviewer
that the advertisement specified that applicants have strong
analytical and communications skills, but not necessarily an
engineering degree; second, she highlighted the math and
science in the Program. Then she challenged him: “I bet you
that on day 89 [of the 90-day probationary period] you’ll want
to give me a raise.”
While she didn’t get the raise exactly as she’d wagered,
Travis attributes her success in the job to skills learned at
St. John’s: the ability to listen, to respect others’ points of
view, and demonstrate proofs—all of which provide “an
amazing toolbox that can be applied to any career,” she says.
Having thus embarked on her first career, Travis made
progressive jumps, from assistant engineer to specialist,
earning a Master of Science in Systems Management from the
University of Southern California along the way. “I learned
everything one could possibly want to know about [then secret]
‘Stealth’ technologies, about management, and about people,”
she says. Taking another leap to lead Alcoa’s research and
development group in the areas of logistics and industrial engineering seemed like a natural progression. When her facility
closed after two years, Travis decided to spend time traveling
and reflecting before her next career move. She took a “sabbatical” from work to live in Mexico and Guatemala, helping
nonprofits and small businesses with process improvements.
Returning to the West Coast via New Mexico, she visited a
fellow Johnnie who was in law school at the University of New
Mexico. “I sat in on a first-year torts class,” Travis recalls.
“The discussion was about assault, and actually about whether
butt slaps, like in a locker room, could be assault. The room
was filled with people from every background and age, and the
discussion was lively. On my way home to California, I had one
of those ‘aha’ moments and knew I was going to law school.”
Travis enrolled in the McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento, where she discovered a focus for her passion. “I loved
the study of the law from the start, but I really got hooked on
natural resources and environmental law, along with local
government and administrative law,” she explains. “I realized
that I was most interested in helping at a community level after
years in the corporate world. I saw and see my role as helping
the decision-makers in their role as fiscal stewards of the
public’s money and trust.”
With law degree in hand at age 40, Travis was asked by
McGeorge to help recruit prospective students while awaiting
her bar exam results. The summer stint turned into a threeyear job as the director of admissions, during which she also
worked pro bono in a legal services clinic. Finally, she decided
it was time to undertake the law formally.
Her return to Santa Fe constituted a converging of paths.
Around the same time that she learned St. John’s was looking
for a director of major gifts, she faced a “life-changing” health
crisis. “It was like all the stars were pointing in the right direction,” and she fulfilled her desire to move back to her college
town. When the position was not offered to her, Travis took and
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 }
�19
teri thomson randall
{Changing Course}
passed her second bar exam, this time in New Mexico. Afterwards, Travis used her legal skills to help friends in business
start-up and development. “Suddenly, I was useful again,
combining the past life of business with the business of
lawyering in a place where I really wanted to live,” she explains.
Travis is currently assistant general counsel for the New
Mexico Department of Transportation. “It’s the most perfect
job [because] I’m working on construction,” she says. “I’m
talking to the engineers; I’m understanding the engineers; the
whole first half of my business life is translated into being the
lawyer for the engineers.”
Had she not taken the path to law school via a first career in
engineering, Travis imagines that her life would not have been
nearly as interesting or fulfilling. Career change requires
courage and confidence, Travis says. “I didn’t have a playbook
the day I left St. John’s that said, ‘I’m going to change careers
and make it all merge in the end.’”
If the work you’re doing every day doesn’t resonate with you,
says Liz Travis, it’s probably time to consider a change.
A guiding principle for Travis has been the need to feel that
she is contributing to a greater good—something one can also
gain in volunteering, such as the service she gives as a member
of the college’s Alumni Association board. But when so many
days are spent working, that work should resonate, she says. “I
need to believe I make a difference, and I need to be challenged to continually learn and grow. Without that challenge,
I begin to feel as if something is missing and that I should be
doing more. . . .When you spend so much of your time at a job,
that time should resonate with you so that it doesn’t feel like
‘work’ all of the time.”x
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 }
—Deborah Spiegelman
�20
{books}
For the
L OV E
of
BOOKS
Sleeker design. More storage. Longer
battery life. Over 250,000 books available
in under 60 seconds. And now Kindle can
read to you. Our revolutionary wireless
reading device just got better.
—from Amazon.com
This is not an anti-technology rant. Progress,
often, is good.
We have iPods, we read e-mail on the BlackBerry, and we post photos and notes to Facebook
pages. We check out audio books from the library
for long car rides. Great conveniences, all.
But it’s sometimes hard to say goodbye to the
good things that our gadgets replace. Sure, a
scratchy vinyl record can be improved upon, but
where are those hole-in-the-wall music stores
full of interesting characters? Facebook is
instant, but there’s nothing like finding a handwritten note from a good friend in your mailbox.
Independent bookstores are not just places to
read books; to a genuine book lover, they’re
sacred temples. On a trip to a new city, they’re
one of the first places you investigate. Is there
good coffee, and not a chain brew? A poetry
reading? Comfortable chairs in hidden nooks?
New paperbacks smell good. Old books have a
history. Kindles may be convenient, but what
about writing notes in the margins?
The College asked three alumni to venture out
and report back on the delights found in their
favorite bookstores. For Anna Perleberg (SF02),
it was easy—she works in one. Matthew Griffis
(SF08) found good bargains and a good story in
beautiful Gig Harbor. And Jennifer Donnelly
(A96) lives in Paris—enough said.
Johnnies don’t need to be told to buy books, of
course, but May is National Independent Bookseller’s Month.
Go celebrate.
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 }
�21
j. matthew griffis
{books}
No Dearth of Books, Gig Harbor,
Washington
J. Matthew Griffis found the tiny No Dearth of Books just to
his liking.
By J. Matthew Griffis (SF08)
I
had to walk nearly a mile. The gas money I saved by not driving
was hardly a reason to forgive the orange-suited construction
crews who with their mighty road cones forced me to leave my
van and take to the streets, like an Arabian desert trekker
whose camel has just died.
But this is a story about books, and a store that sells them. As I trod
the sidewalks of Gig Harbor, Washington, dodging couples with
dogs and contemplating the tranquility of the bay, I realized that by
walking about in the fresh air and plunging into the organized chaos
of whatever catches the eye, I was tapping into an era that while not
entirely vanished, is confined to an ever-decreasing space.
Approaching No Dearth of Books, I had no idea what to expect.
I had no references save the phone book listing that identified it as
probably the sort of independent store I wanted. Eventually my eye
was caught by a window filled with stacks of the good stuff. Not a neat
display of just one current bestseller, but books laid flat atop one
another, piles and piles that completely negated the value of the
window as a means of seeing inside. The bookstore occupied half a
low-slung, one-story building with a dingy “I’ve-seen-better-days”
aspect. The other half contained a Mexican restaurant. Excellent.
There was no front door. Sneaking around the side, I opened a
door and discovered a hallway with glass along both sides. Much
smaller than expected, the bookstore was about the size of a large
bedroom. Overflowing shelves covered the walls. Occupying most of
the floor was an island of stand-alone shelves and small tables, with
stacks rising nearly as high as those on the walls. A walking track ran
all the way around, towers of tomes looming on both sides. There was
room to walk and room to turn, but only just. I felt that if I tripped
and fell, I’d take the whole store with me, everything collapsing like
rows of oversized dominoes. I loved it.
Interlude: I do enjoy the chain bookstore—clean, roomy, and
organized, where the marketability of a product decreases in proportion to its creases. Everything is perfect; nothing is surprising.
Contrast this utopia with its polar opposite: small, cluttered rooms
with insufficient lighting, a musty smell, and a sense of magical
discovery. What treasures might be hiding around the next turn or in
the box shoved under a table? All bookstores are variations on these
two themes, and No Dearth of Books, with its naked, tubular bulbs
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 }
�22
{books}
anna perleberg
A display at Watermark Books in Kansas City, where WAR AND
PEACE was a top seller.
lining the ceiling, its pleasant odor of dust, and its stacks of papery
happiness, is a perfect example of the latter.
In spite of the chaotic feel, the stacks weren’t really disorganized.
Signs indicated groups by genre, and if the proprietor did not know
exactly where and what every book was at all times, he did an excellent job of faking it. Harry Dearth, a kindly older man with a quiet
wit, has owned and managed this store for 11 years.
With an emphasis on nautical volumes and Northwest history, his
store contains a plentiful supply of everything else, from massmarket fare to psychology texts to Program heavies such as Tolstoy,
Homer, and Shakespeare. Pricing is used-book standard, with the
majority of books half off list price. I’ve been spoiled by St. John’s
Meem Library book sales, where paperbacks cost a dollar and hardbacks $3. I bit the bullet and committed to a copy of Anna Karenina
in excellent condition ($8) and a humor piece with a promising title,
Politically Correct Bedtime Stories ($4.50). As I checked out,
Mr. Dearth knocked another $1.50 off the Tolstoy novel. Nice.
I asked Mr. Dearth about business these days. He told me it was up
and down, less than in previous years, which he blamed more on the
struggling economy and gasoline woes than on decreased interest in
books and reading. People from all over the world, including South
Africa and China, had signed his guestbook.
Was Mr. Dearth familiar with the Amazon Kindle? He was not.
I explained that it’s a portable digital reader; you store books in
digital form in the built-in memory and read them on its screen.
I expected a rant against newfangled technology that reduced the joy
of reading. Instead, he joked that such a device would “drive you
blind,” and then said that he had no opinion and was sure there were
several sides to the issue.
I agreed, but was surprised—as a member of the technology generation, I was more concerned than he was! So I’ll supply the rant.
I support technological innovation, as long as its creators keep the
dangers in mind. (Don’t these people read science fiction?) I love the
iPod. A device that lets me take the writings of Douglas Adams, Terry
Pratchett, Chaim Potok, Will Shakespeare, and Tom Clancy with
me, without having to lug around a small elephant, sounds
wonderful.
The Kindle can do that. Yet I’m a lover not just of books, but of the
reading experience. No other medium offers the intimacy of reading.
Holding the book and supporting its weight, feeling the pages and
hearing the sound they make when turned—these sensations build a
whole that deserves the name “experience.” However casual we may
be about reading, it is a deeply personal activity that works on more
senses than just sight, and more levels than just thought.
Aren’t there some things that can’t be improved upon? As our
society speeds toward an Internet-driven digital world, I feel some
apprehension amidst my excitement. One day we might wake up and
realize we’ve lost something irreplaceable, to our sorrow. Perhaps
it is groundless anxiety, backlash from Fahrenheit 451. I don’t lose
sleep over it. After all, when an e-book is a mouse-click away, there
are people who get to their feet and visit stores such as No Dearth
of Books.
I asked Mr. Dearth if he was worried about the future of the usedbook trade. He said he wasn’t, that for every bookshop that closed
there would always be another that opened. I hope he’s right. We
shall always be treasure-hunters and bargain-grabbers; I hope we’ll
be bibliophiles as well. Nowhere captures the thrill of exploration,
the delight of discovery, the sheer capitalistic joy in value, and the
love of the book as well as the used bookstore.
O hallowed edifice, may you remain an institution as long as intellect endures!
Confessions of a K ansas
Ninja Bookseller
by Anna Perleberg (SF02)
W
hen you’re from Wichita, Kansas, and move
out of state (as I did when I matriculated in
Santa Fe in 1998), the first thing you have to
get used to saying is “but I don’t live on a
farm.” Much has been written about the
coastal bias against the “flyover states,” and I don’t want to get
into petty regionalisms here; I’d like to emphasize, though, that
Wichita is a Real City, the 51st largest in the country, with ethnic
grocery stores, warehouse art galleries, violent crime—we even
had our own serial killer, until they caught him in February 2005.
In short, anything they have a thousand of in New York City,
Wichita has at least one of: you may have to look harder for it, but
it’s there. So yes, Manhattan has that literary mecca, the Strand;
Portland has Powell’s; San Francisco, City Lights. Wichita has my
workplace and second home, Watermark Books.
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 }
�{books}
anna perleberg
Johnnies are bibliophiles by nature—the kind of people who
decide whether they want to get to know someone by perusing
their bookshelves, head cocked to one side to read the titles—and
I’m a Johnnie by nature; thus, by Euclid’s first common notion,
I’m a natural bookstore employee. Furthermore, having imbibed
a healthy disrespect for authority at a school where 19-year-olds
argue with Plato, I don’t do well in impersonal, bottom-lineoriented work environments. Unfortunately, that’s what a lot of
bookstores are these days: little more than supermarkets pushing
words in bulk, processed thought instead of processed foods, the
formulaic bestseller equivalent to high-fructose corn syrup.
In contrast to this gargantuan, soulless business model, Watermark can seem startlingly old-fashioned. It’s owned by two people
I’ve actually met. Our inventory is computerized, sure, but it’s
also internalized: 80 percent of the books in the store have actually passed through my hands, so I have the formidable ninja skill
of usually being able to walk right up to the book a patron wants,
even when they only remember part of the title. (Sometimes none
of. Sometimes the color is enough. Or, “Oh, it’s that book about
that girl who did that thing.”) The bookstore’s two main foci are
contemporary fiction and children’s books. As the resident classicist, I’ve corrected gaps in our backlist (not a Gulliver’s Travels to
be found when I started in March 2008. Ouch.)
Last summer, we launched a new program, the Watermark
Challenge, featuring mini-lectures and moral support to readers
seeking out more strenuous fare. We started with that intimidating granddaddy of should-read-that tomes, War and Peace, in
the beautifully rendered, magnificently jacketed new Richard
Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky translation. Fifty people showed
up at the first meeting, and we sold about 100 copies total (making
us, I suspect, the only bookstore in America whose Tolstoy sales
23
for last year rivaled their Stephenie Meyer traffic). Having written
my senior paper on Tolstoy’s theory of history, I got to lead a lively
discussion on why he mucked up such a good story with all that dry
philosophical stuff and that dratted locomotive metaphor. Subsequent challenges: The Aeneid, Moby-Dick, and next summer,
Proust, which I’ll definitely have to get in on.
It’s not just the bookstore itself that I love: there’s the in-house
café, famous for tomato bisque with healing powers, homemade
focaccia, addictive cupcakes, and sandwiches with literary names
(although some of the connections are tenuous—“Moby Dick” is
tuna salad, of course, but why is my favorite pesto-and-portobello
“The Odyssey”?) Every month, they rotate recipes from a featured
cookbook: Black Forest cookies from Baked: New Frontiers in
Baking (Matt Lewis & Renato Poliafito), a jasmine-essenceinfused poundcake from The Spice Merchant’s Daughter
(Christina Arokiasamy). Oh, and mint chocolate chip milkshakes
in December.
Most of all, what Watermark has to offer that no corporate-led,
cookie-cutter megastore can rival is its connection to the community, past and present. It’s in the heart of a neighborhood called
College Hill, first laid out in the 1880s, with shady, tree-lined
streets (a rarity on the prairie) and the kind of brick houses that
real estate agents describe as “quaint.” In the same square mile, a
pedestrian (and there still are pedestrians in College Hill) can find
the Wichita Historical Museum, Wichita Community Theater,
and the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Allan Lambe House. For
large events, such as chirpy/laconic National Public Radio
commentator Sarah Vowell’s visit last September, we partner with
the Orpheum Theatre downtown, a lavish movie palace recently
restored to its 1920s glory. Even Watermark’s location in the city’s
oldest strip mall (dating from 1949, and currently housing nothing
but locally owned businesses—a flower shop, a shoe store, a diner,
a barbershop), taps into Wichita’s history.
On a smaller scale, Watermark is very much a local meeting
place. It’s a prime lunch spot, near downtown and Wichita’s
largest high school. Over the holidays, bookstore and café alike
overflow with families and college kids home on break. Besides
the store’s several “official” book clubs (chick-lit, classics, works
in translation, French, Spanish, a group that reads Elizabethan
drama out loud), many more meet in the café or one of the downstairs meeting rooms, which also host school groups, bridal
showers, political discussions, and the Kansas Paranormal
Researchers Guild. And we’re the only place in town that carries
the daily New York Times—which does make Wichita sound
terribly provincial, I’m afraid—and there are a dozen folks who
pick it up every day without fail.
Watermark Books, more than just being a place to buy bound
paper, gathers together the things I love best about my hometown.
On an ordinary day, I can call more than half of my customers by
name, remember what they’ve bought—and they remember what
The in-house café at Watermark Books features bisque with
healing powers.
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 }
�24
{books}
I’ve sold them, what I’ve read recently, what we’ve both liked, and
where we’ve differed. It’s this human factor that’s kept Watermark open since 1977 and keeps it thriving today in an
Amazon.com world. Anybody can sell you the one book you want.
We can find the one you didn’t know you wanted.
maps an elegy for nations that are no more than an early prototype of the world of today. There you find a bloated version of
the present-day Federal Republic of Germany called Prussie,
the empires of China and Russia, a sliver of land marked
Mesopotamie. A previous owner circled the names of towns
up and down the Mississippi. I often wonder whether she
The Haunted Bookstores of Paris
reached them.
Regarding new books, any given quartier has several indeby Jennifer A. Donnelly (A96)
pendent bookstores, with neat copies of Roland Barthes’
mythologies and King Babar’s adventures arranged in their
lthough a resident of Paris for nearly a decade, I
polished windows like chocolate éclairs at the pastry shop. The
still feel haunted by the achievements of the
French government regulates the price of new books, so bigthinkers who, at some time or another, have called
box chains and two-for-one markdowns are uncommon, but
this city home. René Descartes, Blaise Pascal,
when you just want to browse, a librairiste is much less likely to
Molière and Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and
effuse chagrin than a salesgirl at
the
guillotined
Antoine
Yves Saint Laurent.
Lavoisier, are all buried here.
While these French instituWhat they left behind when they
tions have charm, a foreigner
departed, apart from bones,
Annapolis Bookstore Manager Robin Dunn has spent 19
like me also wants books in my
bronze memorial plaques, and
years as a bookseller (and 15 in publishing). Here’s his guide
langue maternelle. Paris has a
unpaid bills, were their books,
to some of the best in the trade:
half-dozen or so Englishmusical scores, theater pieces,
language bookstores, each with
and even the occasional federal
Boulder Bookstore, Boulder, Colo. “They have an
a distinct character. The elegant
constitution. The bookseller
incredibly broad selection of books and a well-trained staff.”
Galignani purports to be “the
helps us communicate with their
The Tattered Cover, Denver (three stores) “In addition to
first English bookshop estabghosts. And these mediums are
being a great bookstore, the Tattered Cover is at the forelished on the continent,” ultieverywhere.
front of the intellectual freedom movement, and they give
mately tracing its origins to the
The first place you notice
back to the community.”
16th century. The Village Voice,
them is the river that bisects the
Powell’s City of Books, Portland, Ore. “So big, the
founded by a solitary Frenchcity. Both banks are lined with
departments are decorated in different, vivid colors so you
woman, admirably wrestles
know where you are.. Used books are shelved right alongside
metal boxes holding used books,
against English chain W.H.
the newer volumes.”
magazines, and prints, tended by
Smith for readings from bestbouquinistes who withstand the
Sam Weller’s Bookstore, Salt Lake City “Amazing,
selling authors. The San Franfamily-owned bookstore stuffed full of new, used, and rare
incessant drizzle in the service
cisco Book Company gives intitles. They know their books here!”
of literature (or at least of print
store credit for used books. The
media). At the numerous
The Strand, New York City “Eighteen miles of books in a
mere name of The Red Wheellabyrinthine building, a good place to buy new books at low
broquantes—a blend of antiques
barrow evokes poetry.
prices.”
shops and rummage sales—a few
Then there is Shakespeare &
Euro coins and some patience
Elliott Bay Book Co., Seattle “In an elegant building in
Company. Founded by AmerPioneer Square, very peaceful, but with lots of readings and
might reward the bookhound
ican George Whitman in 1951,
other events going on all the time.”
with a first-edition, leatherit copped its name from the
City Lights, San Francisco “You have to go for the lore, of
bound tome from centuries past,
and
bookshop
legendary
course, but it’s the best place if you’re looking for literature
pages splashed with red wine and
and poetry. I always find something I didn’t expect.”
lending library run during the
underscored with the pencil of
heady interwar years by another
Seminary Co-op Books, Chicago “It’s in a basement of
some unknowable stranger.
expatriate, Sylvia Beach (who,
the Chicago Theological Seminary in Hyde Park, and you’ll
For me, the primary pleasure
have to make your way around pipes, but it’s the closest
in addition to supplying reading
of these eclectic spots lies in
thing to St. John’s you’ll find anywhere. Absolutely packed;
material for the likes of
their capacity to surprise. The
you may need to weave a web like Ariadne to find your way
Gertrude Stein and F. Scott
printing press has enjoyed a
out. A philosopher’s heaven.”
Fitzgerald, published James
long, storied history in France,
The Regulator Bookshop, Durham, N.C. “It has a musty
Joyce’s Ulysses after traditional
and you never know what you
smell without being moldy.”
channels judged it obscene).
might find. I once bargained
Politics & Prose, Washington, D.C. “The flagship store
The façade of the building,
adamantly for a Géographie
for books on current affairs and politics.”
catty-corner to the Notre Dame,
moderne from 1884, its yellowed
A
Best Among Booksellers
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 }
�25
elena luoto meister
{books}
bows out slightly; the timbers are smoothed with age. Outside,
overflowing bookracks announce the place’s purpose. Inside,
every conceivable nook has been put to use: walls are covered
floor-to-ceiling with shelves, ladders, and rickety chairs at hand
for scaling them. Doorways between rooms are fashioned into
bookcases, although they are nearly unnavigably narrow. A
display table is formed by the top of a rickety piano, whose keys
still play, although the space between pedals and keyboard is
filled with threadbare paperbacks. Planks have been nailed to
the bottom side of the staircase, with old books piled on them.
In various corners, readers sit sprawled upon dusty
mattresses. At night, transient writers curl up on them to sleep,
in exchange for a brief written biography and some help around
the shop. While the case of the mattresses is unique to Shakespeare & Company, it says something broader about the essence
of the English-language bookshops in Paris. They become a
locus for the city’s community of Anglophones, expatriates of
various countries as well as non-native speakers of the
language. Nearly all organize readings, usually followed by wellattended apéros; some host informal critique groups of worksin-progress. These are also the places to get your New York
Jennifer Donnelly senses the lasting presence of long-dead
authors in the bookstores of Paris.
Review of Books or to read calls for submissions from literary
journals and offers of language exchanges. Over the years, the
bookshops and their activities have enabled me to meet a
number of renowned authors as well as make many revered
friends.
Which is one of the reasons that, while in France, I rarely
order from Amazon. It’s not just because La Poste is unreliable
(although it is) or that fees for international shipping are exorbitant (they are). Booksellers abroad, whether of the local
language or your native tongue, offer the traveler discovery,
sometimes refuge, and almost always a pleasant diversion. And,
like all bookstores everywhere, they form a link between the
authors whose earthly remains lie in catacombs and crypts, or
one day will, while their words live on in consciousness and
conversation. x
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 }
�26
{ A l u m n i Vo i c e s }
A Townie Goes to College
In the Midst of a Depression, Life Was Good at St. John’s
by Jack Owens (Class of 1937)
students, and the
professors were well
suited for their job.
My graduating class
contained 75 students.
Early in freshman
year, we were required
to attend a lecture on
mental and physical
health, with emphasis
on social diseases.
Dr. Murphy from the
Naval Academy told us
about the problems
encountered by young
people from 16 to 24 as
they adjust to
becoming adults.
During my years, three
students died: one in
his auto and two by
suicide. One of them I
knew well. He shot
himself in his room.
I think the college
was struggling with the
Depression, as
everyone was. I believe
the presidents took the
job for prestige as well
as a hope to help the
college. One of the
The front walk of the Annapolis campus in 1933, when Jack
three presidents in my
Owens was a freshman.
four years was Amos W.
W. Woodcock. He had
alcohol don’t have worms.” President
just left his job in Washington as head
Woodcock said, “That’s right. People who
of prohibition enforcement, sponsored
drink die.”
by the Women’s Christian Temperance
President Douglas Gordon had a nice
Union (WCTU), because the amendment
motto that most remember: When you
was abolished.
He was not popular on campus. At one of graduate from St. John’s, you will be “a
gentleman and a scholar.”
the student assemblies in the Great Hall,
My four years were an important phase
he gave a lecture on the sins of drinking
of my life. I became more skilled in my
alcohol. He placed two glasses on the
social abilities. I found that I could succeed
lectern, one with water and the other with
in the real world, as I had good basic
alcohol. He dropped a worm in the water
knowledge in many subjects and had
and the worm wiggled. Then he put it in
learned how to do the research you need to
the alcohol and the worm died. He asked
solve a puzzling problem.
the assembly what this demonstration
My freshman year was the last of the
proved. One of the boys in my aisle said in a
hazing. One day a sophomore asked if I was
hushed voice, “It proves people who drink
greenfield library
T
he Depression was full blown
in 1933. I had just graduated
from Annapolis High School
and needed to go to college,
but I did not have the $300
for tuition at St. John’s.
Annapolis was relatively sheltered from
the economic realities because the largest
employer was the Naval Academy. But the
tenor of the times was displayed to me
when a friend and I hitchhiked from
Annapolis to New York City. We were 15.
We stayed at the YMCA and ate at a cafeteria. There I sat next to a nice-looking
man of about 50, who was poorly dressed.
He had ordered a coffee for about five
cents. He drank a little and then he poured
the whole sugar shaker’s contents into the
drink for food.
We had moved from Annapolis to a small
house in Eastport on Spa Creek. My
mother died in the influenza epidemic
when I was about three years old, and my
father had prostate cancer. The only way I
could go to college was by scholarship. The
state of Maryland offered each county a
fund for tuition to St. John’s. I took the test
and succeeded. I later discovered that
about five percent of the Johnnies also had
this scholarship from their own counties.
Annapolis was called “Crab Town”
because so many fishermen unloaded their
catch at the City Dock, to ship from there
to Baltimore. The bay was a veritable
protein factory because of the water’s
bounty. The clear spring water of Spa
Creek was full of healthy seaweed,
crabs, and small fish. I often caught our
dinner from my little boat, dipping for
soft-shell crabs.
My worldly knowledge was limited, and I
was happy to go to St. John’s to knock
heads with young men from all over the
East Coast. To reach my earliest class at
8 a.m., I rowed across the creek for five
minutes and walked about 10 minutes.
St. John’s was a good, typical liberal arts
college with about 350 students. I took the
regular classes my first year: math,
English, history, chemistry, and physics.
The classes were small, never more than 20
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 }
�27
a freshman. I said yes.
“Where is your strawberry box hat?” he
demanded.
“I don’t have one.”
He said, “Get it and wear it.”
I never found one. I guess I am a bit of an
iconoclast. During a “shoot the cannon
run” starting at the old Civil War cannon,
the sophomores lined up with belts to
swing at the freshmen as they ran toward
the Liberty Tree. I was a fast runner, so I
did play that game.
The freshmen also had to learn the
school songs. The best is “St. John’s
Forever.” Another was for the football
team, whose traditional rival was
Johns Hopkins:
St. Johnnies in town,
Oh Hopkins, they are all around.
They will run around your ends,
Gaining by tens. There is no use in
playing
Cause old St. John’s is in town.
We had about six fraternities on campus
where the brothers lived and a big dorm
for freshmen and other students who did
not want to join a frat. A student union on
the first floor of McDowell had a bookstore
and also a pool table where the daily game
was nickel nine ball. There was a small
library and a nice gym for basketball,
and of course McDowell for classes and
administration.
I knew I was missing much of the social
life by living in town, and the food at home
was mainly from a can. So I worked hard to
find more aid to pay for room and board.
I raked leaves under a federal program.
I set up the lab in physics. I did a little
tutoring and got paid a little money. That
did the trick; I moved to the frat house.
All day we dressed much like preppies, but
in the dining room a jacket was the mode.
I recall the first day of the philosophy
course. The professor entered the room
smelling a little flower, not saying a word.
Then he looked at the flower and said,
“Little flower, as I look at thee and smell
thee, I wonder what the world and thee are
all about.” Sitting down, he said, “That’s
what this course is about.” We students
looked at each other and gulped. Although
it was not my favorite course, even now I
can’t get these international words about
life from my mind: Élan vital, ding an sich,
and cogito ergo sum.
In my senior year, I was the person who
initiated the new frat pledges. The dictum
greenfield library
{ A l u m n i Vo i c e s }
Mr. Owens’ senior portrait from the 1937
Rat-Tat, the college yearbook.
was from the Bible: “Vanitas, vanitatum,
omnia vanitas,” with two long paragraphs
in Latin. I told them my translation:
“Don’t be vain like Narcissus, who liked
his looks so much that he kept looking in
a pond at himself, so Zeus turned him into
a flower.”
College activities included the theatrical
Colonial Players, a glee club, a social club,
and enthusiastic intramural sports: softball, touch football, basketball, and track.
The big sport teams were football, basketball, and of course lacrosse.
Having played some lacrosse in town,
I played four years as a Johnnie. During my
junior year, the lacrosse team missed a
train in New York City on our way to West
Point to play Army, so we got to spend the
night in the city. Coach said, “I am bed
checking; be in bed by 10 o’clock.” A New
Yorker on our team convinced four of us to
go to the Roseland Ballroom to “brush up
on our dance steps.” About ten girls were
lined up for “Ten Cents a Dance.” You
picked a girl, paid ten cents, and began the
dance. After about three minutes, the girls
said, “Okay, ten cents more.” We went for
about 30 cents and then headed back to
our room.
While I was playing intramural basketball, the coach, Dutch Lentz, approached
me to say, “Hey, Owens, how about joining
the varsity? Some of my better players are
flunking.” So I joined the team as a sub.
For a small college, we had an outstanding
year in 1937. The University of Maryland
had a good basketball team that year and
we were the underdogs as we played them
at their home. When we were six points
ahead with five minutes to play, one of our
men fouled out. Coach Lentz said,
“Owens, go in the game. Don’t let your
man score.” Well, my opponent was named
King Kong Keller and he looked the part.
His job was to intimidate us. He was a good
athlete but I was good on defense, so I
stayed with him all the way. When we won,
he threw the ball at me. I walked away
having learned, “Debate, but don’t argue.”
It was the first year of the national collegiate contest in basketball, and the Johnnies were selected to represent the state of
Maryland. We played on a Saturday
evening in Philly and got beat. Yet it was a
good day anyway, because when we got
home to the gym, the social club had
transformed Iglehart into a dance hall for
Tommy Dorsey’s Big Band. We were
invited to join the dancers. In those days,
the “Big Apple” was a popular college
dance: four or five couples link arms in a
circle and each dancer has a chance to
“shine” in the center of the ring.
I give kudos to the coaches. I never
heard one coach raise his voice to blame a
player for his game. In 1937, we were
prepared to beat Hopkins in lacrosse and
trained hard. We did beat them; I had a
good scoring day. These four years stand
out in my mind as some of the happiest
days of my life, and I think I qualified for
the college’s aim: “a gentleman and a
scholar.” x
St. John’s forever,
Its fame shall never die.
We’ll fight for its colors
And raise them to the sky.
Mr. Owens in the 1970s.
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 }
�28
{Bibliofile}
Red Car
by Sallie Bingham (SFGI93)
Sarabande Books, 2008
The dozen stories in Sallie Bingham’s short
story collection Red Car, set in locales from
Colorado to Normandy, take a mature
perspective. The narrator of “A Gift for
Burning” tells an off-stage interviewer
about her acclaimed novelist son who
received little of his mother’s attention.
In “Red Car,” the eponymous convertible is
the only constant, while owners and
marriages come and go. And in “The Shot
Tower,” a young woman seemingly abandoned by her lover chooses to carry on
without him. “The girl would always choose
life,” Bingham writes in conclusion.
Booklist said of her most recent work:
“Bingham has been writing fiction for
decades, and her newest short stories evince
the tangy fruits of her labors in their
graceful balance, refined composition,
telling details, and the probity of their
emotions.”
Born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky,
Bingham grew up in a complicated and
powerful family, which owned The
Louisville Times and The Courier-Journal.
At 22, she published her first novel, After
Such Knowledge, in 1961. She has never
stopped writing, even while rearing three
sons and going through a divorce. Her
themes include transgressions in affairs of
the heart, dreams pursued and dreams
unfulfilled, and family grievances.
After her children were grown, Bingham
moved to Santa Fe, where she came across a
Excerpt: “Red Car”
The wife rode in the car for the last time
in March. She had eaten dinner with her
husband in a restaurant they visited on
the way back from the airport, on the
way to the airport, and often in between,
a lively little place with a bar overlooking
the ocean.
They both dreaded going back to the
house. There’s a silence particular to the
end of a marriage, when there are no
words, not even any actions to convey the
despair, the listlessness, of the
approaching end; and the broad white
bed in the big bedroom is no longer even a
hope or a possibility but another item on
an endless list of disappointments and
regrets.
brochure for St. John’s and realized that she
had never read Plato. “For reasons that
are mysterious to me, I missed reading a lot
of the Western classics,” she says. As a
Graduate Institute student, Bingham found
“a lot of the discussions very worthwhile,”
although the math and science requirements were a bit intimidating, she admits.
(One of her stories, “Speaking Greek,”
is based in part on an exchange in a
GI seminar.)
Bingham was exposed to Shakespeare at a
young age and has always been fascinated by
theater. Her first play was produced in 1980,
off-Broadway at the now-defunct American
Place Theatre. Determined to help bring
more plays written and produced by women
to the stage, Bingham teamed up with the
So when he said, “Shall we take a
drive?” she thought it was a good idea, to
put off that end.
They drove out along the bay where
the houseboats are snubbed up against
the highway and the lights from the strip
development waver in oily darkness. He
pulled her in under his arm and drove
with his left hand and she wondered
why, once again, she was allowing him
to drive her when he was drunk, and
why, once again, their past seemed to
have returned: the one-handed driver, the
broad seat, the woman shivering in a
light cotton dress under the heavy arm of
a man to whom she appears, against all
reason, to belong.
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 }
theatre’s co-producer, Julia Miles. The
Women’s Project and Productions, housed
in a converted church, was offering in its
heyday in the 1980s six or more plays a year,
in addition to a variety of workshops. After
she moved to Santa Fe, Bingham suggested
to Martin Platt, then artistic director of New
Mexico Repertoire Company, that they
collaborate on a sustainable regional
theatre. As founder and board member of
Santa Fe Stages, Bingham helped produce
original plays and brought in touring
productions from across the country and
abroad.
Her championing of women writers also
led her to establish the Sallie Bingham
Center for Women’s History and Culture at
Duke University two decades ago. Originally
devoted to housing Bingham’s papers as
well as those of other writers, the archives
have broadened their mandate to include a
variety of public and personal records.
While feminism has been an ongoing
theme in both Bingham’s life and work, Red
Car reflects the clarity one can achieve with
time and distance. “There’s a certain
degree of wisdom as one goes on as a writer
that makes it easier to pick the battles,” she
notes. “Not every battle is worth fighting.”
— Deborah Spiegelman
La Fontaine’s Complete Tales in
Verse: An Illustrated and Annotated Translation
by Randolph Runyon (A71)
McFarland, 2009
Though Jean de La Fontaine’s Contes et
nouvelles en vers were written more than
300 years ago, Randolph Runyon’s new
book is the first complete English translation. The book includes an extensive
commentary and 69 illustrations including
engravings by Jean-Honoré Fragonard
(1732-1806) as well as others from littleknown 19th-century French editions.
La Fontaine’s work is not meant for children. No tortoises, hares or foxes inhabit the
poems. Instead they speak of husbands and
wives, nuns and friars, lovers all ruled by the
power of lust. The Tales are delicately
sensual and yet, like Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, delightfully wicked.
In 1675, at the request of Louis XIV,
copies of the Tales were seized as it was
claimed they contained indiscreet language
and posed a threat to public morals. La
Fontaine denounced them on his deathbed
to win admittance to heaven, yet there are in
�29
{Bibliofile}
fact no unseemly words in the Tales.
As Runyon writes in his introduction,
“La Fontaine went to amusing lengths to
suggest certain things without actually
saying them, in verse that provides food for
the mind as well as the senses.”
A Great Idea at the Time:
The Rise, Fall, and Curious
Afterlife of the Great Books
by Alex Beam
Public Affairs, 2008
A number of the men central to the story of
St. John’s College are major figures in Alex
Beam’s book, A Great Idea at the Time:
The Rise, Fall, and Curious Afterlife of the
Great Books. Robert Hutchins, Mortimer
Adler, Stringfellow Barr and Scott
Buchanan were all involved in an effort to
bring great books to the general public
beginning in 1952.
Beam, a columnist for the Boston Globe,
developed his idea to write about the Great
Books movement after a reader of the
paper asked him why a company called
Liberal Arts, Inc., bought an estate in
Stockbridge, Massachusetts, in 1947. The
query led Beam to Barr and Buchanan’s
attempt to establish a great books college
in Stockbridge after leaving St. John’s.
“Liberal Arts was such a strange name for
an entity, so I started looking into it,”
Beam says.
From there, he discovered the Great
Books Foundation and grew particularly
interested in the development and
marketing of The Great Books of the
Western World, a 54-volume series
featuring 443 works deemed the most
important for educated people to read—or,
at least have on their bookshelves.
Apart from capturing a movement and
describing an ambitious business venture,
Beam enjoyed writing about “these largerthan-life characters.” He expresses great
admiration for Robert Hutchins, but he’s
hard on Mortimer Adler, whom he
describes as Hutchins’ “brilliant, Hobbitlike sidekick.” “[Adler] was a complicated
person, and he deserves much credit for
this dramatic educational movement,” says
Beam. “I admit that I had fun with him and
made sport of him, but to be fair, I acknowledge his strange, egomaniacal brilliance.”
“Tiny St. John’s College” earns a chapter
in Beam’s book, in a section devoted to
showing how the great books live on. Beam
met Annapolis tutor Eva Brann (HA87) at a
great books conference at Yale University
and asked if he could visit her at the
college. “She is the most articulate advocate of the St. John’s ideal,” Beam says.
Beam claims to have written “the only
unboring book written about the great
books.” Widely reviewed, with stories in
publications including The New York Times
and The Wall Street Journal, the book has
gained some attention for the college as a
place where the classics are treasured—
though it wasn’t Beam’s intention. “If I can
get people thinking about and reading the
great books, that’s a good thing,” he says.
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 }
George Van Sant at Homecoming 2008
Taking on the Burden of History:
Presuming to be a U. S. Marine
by George Van Sant (class of 1947)
Xlibris, 2008
George Van Sant, professor emeritus of
philosophy at the University of Mary
Washington, has penned a lively memoir
of his years in the United States Marine
Corps.
Van Sant interrupted his studies to enlist
in the Marine Corps during World War II,
but the war ended while he was still in boot
camp. He served overseas in Pearl Harbor
and North China, and after his discharge
returned to St. John’s to finish his degree.
Later, he went to officer training school in
Quantico and was a second lieutenant
when he was sent to the Korean War, where
he served from 1952 to 1953.
After he finished his Korean service in
1953, he attended graduate school at
University of Virginia, where he earned his
master’s and doctoral degrees in philosophy. For much of his academic career, he
remained active in the Marine Corps
Reserve service.
From the beginning of his military
career, Van Sant wondered if he was cut out
to be a Marine. That answer became clear:
Van Sant was awarded the Meritorious
Bronze Star for valor, for leading his
platoon on a raid into the Chinese trench
line. His military service, it turned out,
“was the crowning achievement of my
life,” he says. x
�30
{Homecoming}
AUTUMN REVEL S
Games in the East, Balloons in the West
Annapolis: September 26-28
Stationed at the Coffee Shop for Homecoming registration, Steve
Thomas (SF74), vice president of the Alumni Association, noted
that planning a fun weekend is an evolutionary process. Seminars
are a must, but events for kids are becoming increasingly important. “This is a family-friendly event where the students take care
of the kids,” Thomas said. “We even have junior seminars.”
At a luncheon for members of the classes of the 1940s, where
about 20 alumni dined with Christopher Nelson (SF70), Henry
Robert (class of 1941) remembered Homecomings “when we were
still having football games.” Anthony Hammond (class of 1947)
traveled with his wife, Sylvia Hammond, from Dorset County,
England. He attended St. John’s for just two years, Hammond
noted, “but I’ve always had a certain affinity for the college.”
In the afternoon, Chris Denny (A93), assistant professor of
theology and religious studies at St. John’s University in New York,
was still talking about the morning’s seminar on the Rev. Martin
Luther King, Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” “I will never
teach it the same way again,” he said. “In a St. John’s seminar
people are committed to discovering the ways in which a text
uncovers truth.”
Ever the rebels, alumni from the 1960s talked politics and
justice with tutors emeriti Sam Kutler (class of 1954) and Larry
Berns (H00). Sharon Wallace (class of 1964) recalled how she and
classmates registered voters and took part in sit-ins. After she
graduated, Wallace said, she “pursued the question ‘what is
justice?’ at the Justice Department.”
Blakely Mechau (class of 1958) mused about the changes women
brought to St. John’s. “I was in the first class in which women were
in every classroom. We went into the Ivory Tower in our plaid
skirts and cashmere sweaters, ready. Today in a seminar on
Locke with tutor Chester Burke (A74) we raised the question,
‘Is knowledge possible?’ It was fitting.”
photos by gary pierpoint
Above (clockwise from top
right): Temple Iglehart,
transformed; Award of Merit
recipient Henry Higman (class of
1948); Annapolis alumni play
“Wits & Wagers.”
Opposite page: Top right, Mikiko
Duvoisin, daughter of Santa Fe
tutor Jacques Duvoisin (A80),
shows off her artwork;
Honorary Alumni Howard Fisher
(l.) and Kent Taylor; Khin Khin
Guyot Brock (SF88) and her
husband, Kevin (SF90);
Award of Merit recipient
Dr. Norman Levan (SFGI74)
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 }
�{Homecoming}
Honors, Honorary Alumni
Santa Fe: October 11-13
For those really early risers, Homecoming festivities in Santa Fe
began before dawn on Friday, October 10, when a group of alumni
boarded vans at 4:30 a.m. to attend the Albuquerque Balloon
Fiesta. Shifting Homecoming later in the fall allowed alumni to
enjoy one of New Mexico’s most popular events.
Most alumni, however, chose a more leisurely start to the
weekend. They registered in the afternoon (a new computer
system moved people through smoothly), attended the welcome
reception in the Lower Common Room, then met up with their
classmates at the various receptions hosted before the 8 p.m.
lecture by Elaine Scarry of Harvard University. After the lecture,
there were movies on the grassy knoll outside Weigle Hall: the
very campy St. John’s Story, along with the critically acclaimed
The Tao of Steve, written by Duncan North (SF87).
Saturday’s seminars were lively and well attended, especially the
class of 1983’s King Lear seminar (led by tutor Phil LeCuyer) and
the class of 2003’s Flannery O’Connor seminar (led by tutor Matt
Davis). Wild weather—including a hail storm—brought the Fiesta
Picnic, scheduled to be held on the Soccer Field, into the dining
hall. Saturday night provided yet more opportunities for socializing: a lecture and book signing by Sallie Bingham (SFGI93), the
All-Alumni Art Show reception, and a banquet and dance. x
Each year, the Alumni Association welcomes honorary alumni
into the fold and recognizes the achievement of St. John’s
alumni:
In Santa Fe, two long-serving tutors became 2008 Honorary
Alumni of the college: Kent H. Taylor served the college as a
tutor for more than 30 years. He contributed to the growth of
the Santa Fe campus almost since its inception. Howard Fisher
was a vibrant part of the St. John’s community on both
campuses for more than 45 years. He began his career at the
college in 1965 in Annapolis and moved to the Western campus
in 2006.
Santa Fe alumni also honor the achievement of two of their
own: George Forest Bingham (SF68) earned a law degree from
the University of New Mexico and has since practiced law in his
home state of New Mexico as well as in Washington, D.C.
He has served as a member of the Board of Visitors and Governors since 1994 and as a member of the St. John’s College
Alumni Association Board. Dr. Norman E. Levan (SFGI74)
is professor emeritus and former chief of dermatology at his
alma mater, the University of Southern California School of
Medicine. He enjoyed a long and distinguished career in medicine, including establishing the Hansen’s Disease Clinic at the
Los Angeles County/USC Medical Center. In 2006, he made a
$5 million gift to the capital campaign to build a graduate
center on the campus. Construction begins this spring on the
Betty and Norman Levan Hall.
In Annapolis, the association granted one Honorary
Alumnus award, posthumously, to Christopher G. Colby, who
joined the college’s Print Shop in 1977 and served as manager
until his death on March 27, 2008. Mr. Colby will be remembered as a gentle, kind, and hard-working colleague, as well as a
friend to many. His daughter, Yve, accepted the award for her
father.
At the Saturday banquet, two alumni were honored with the
Award of Merit: Dr. Henry Higman (class of 1948), who enjoyed
a long and successful career as a neurologist and medical school
professor; and Peter McGhee (class of 1955), who rose to Vice
President for National Programming at WGBH in Boston,
where he guided the development of notable PBS programs
including NOVA, American Experience, and Frontline. x
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 }
31
�32
{Alumni Profile}
The Boss Whisperer
Laura Crawshaw (SF75) Tames Difficult Supervisors
by Anna Perleberg (SF02)
he Boss from Hell is a cinematic staple, from goofy
Michael Scott in The Office to
the ruthless chief in Glengarry
Glen Ross. And there are all too
many real-world analogues.
How to deal? Search for “bad bosses” on
Amazon and you’ll get a slew of how-to
manuals (and a voodoo doll) for surviving
what one author calls “dysfunctional,
disrespectful, dishonest little dictators.”
But Laura Crawshaw (SF75) takes issue
with the labels: “The common myth is that
these bosses are evil or crazy or both. Having
coached them for 15 years, my experience is
that that’s just not true.”
Crawshaw is the world’s first Boss Whisperer; while others have helped employees
cope, Crawshaw works with the problem
bosses themselves, opening their eyes to the
distress their behaviors cause and gently
retraining them to be more productive—often
saving their jobs in the process.
After graduating with her master’s in
social work from Smith College in 1977,
Crawshaw moved to Alaska to work with the
state’s first Employee Assistance Program
(EAP). “There, I was, all sparkly-eyed,” she
says, “and one day I had an emergency
appointment. He was a typical Alaska roughneck—tractor cap, etc.—and looked embarrassed to be there. ‘I’m angry at my boss,’
he said. ‘He calls me names, he disrespects
me.’ I asked him how angry. ‘I’m thinking
about killing him.’”
Crawshaw dutifully tried to determine how
T
serious the threat was:
“‘Have you thought
about how?’ I asked.
‘The gun’s in the car,’
he answered.”
A stunned Crawshaw
scurried down the hall to
ask her supervisor what
to do. “He said to ask him
if we could have the gun,”
she recalls. “So I did: the
guy said yes, and he
looked so relieved.”
As the EAP collected guns in their safe,
Crawshaw puzzled over how a boss could so
stress a workplace that employees contemplated violence. Eventually, she was recruited
as an executive in her company to direct their
EAPs at the national and international level:
“First, I learned the language of emotion”
through her work in psychotherapy, “and
then I learned and observed business.”
This combined expertise led her to start
her own firm in 1995: Executive Insight
Development Group, headquartered in
Portland, Oregon. The group has since
coached leaders in more than 40 Fortune 500
companies around the world. In 2005,
Crawshaw earned a PhD in organizational
behavior from the Fielding Graduate
Institute. Recently, she’s written a guide
called Taming the Abrasive Manager:
Ending Unnecessary Roughness in the
Workplace (Jossey-Bass, 2007).
Though Crawshaw left St. John’s for Smith
College after two years, her time at the
Montaigne would have made a great executive coach
“His insight on the power gained through conversational humility stands the test of
time,” says Crawshaw. “I’ve shared his thoughts with many of my clients, and to see one
abandon dialectical bullying with the simple words ‘I am wrong’ is a powerful moment—
that moment where influence is gained by relinquishing the imperative for “rightness.”
Consider this passage from “On the Art of Conversation”:
Contradictions of opinion, therefore, neither offend nor estrange me: they only arouse
and exercise my mind. We run away from correction; we ought to court it and expose
ourselves to it, especially when it comes in that shape of discussion…Each time we meet
with opposition, we consider not whether it is just, but how, wrongly or rightly, we can
rebut it. Instead of opening our arms to it, we greet it with our claws…I like expression to
be bold, and men to say what they think…It is however, difficult to induce men of my time
to do this; they have not the courage to correct because they have not the courage to stand
correction: and they never speak frankly in one another’s presence. x
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 }
As an executive coach,
Laura Crawshaw
combines the language
of emotion with an
understanding of
business.
college greatly influenced
her work. The Boss Whispering method is inspired
by three great thinkers:
Socrates, Darwin, and
Freud. Socratic questioning helps her coax
comprehension from oblivious managers
without simply telling them to “be nice.”
She describes sorting through theories with a
client who complained that his requests for
ideas were only met with silence: at first,
asked why he thought this happened, he
declared his employees must be lazy or
stupid. Pressed for another option, he
admitted, “I’ve been told I can be kind of
critical.” Crawshaw suggested he test this
notion by rewarding any response at all.
At their next session, the overjoyed CEO
cried, “I did what you said, and they started
talking!”
Darwin and Freud provide Crawshaw with
a frame of reference for why abrasive bosses
develop and a crucial strategy they need to
change their ways. “Businesspeople understand the language of ‘survival of the
fittest,’” says Crawshaw, reeling off workplace idioms couched in animal terms: rat
race, top dog, “it’s a jungle out there.” Freud
later expanded Darwin’s ideas about natural
selection to psychological survival: when
faced with an emotional threat, individuals
resort to defense mechanisms, less literal
“fight or flight” reactions. The aforementioned CEO, for example fought; the
employees who clammed up fled. Identifying
these responses in themselves and others can
help a boss avoid eliciting them.
Lately, Crawshaw has moved from
coaching clients to training others in her
method: she envisions a legacy of Boss Whisperers enlightening, soothing and taming
unwittingly difficult supervisors. “I’m in love
with my work,” says Crawshaw. “My mission
is to end suffering in the workplace.” x
�33
{Alumni Notes}
1937
HAROLD BROOKS and Margie,
his wife of 40 years, celebrated
their 41st wedding anniversary in
November at their home in sunny
Sebastian, Fla. “Most of our
courting days and nights were
spent at St. John’s,” Harold
writes.
1945
DONALD KAPLAN is still involved
in financial planning in Walnut
Creek, Calif. He welcomes
hearing from any classmates of
the war and post-war years at
dk2301@msn.com.
1949
ALLAN HOFFMAN has a message
to all the members of the Class of
1949 and those who attended
St. John’s in the years 1945
through 1949: “This fall in
Annapolis we will be celebrating
the 60th reunion of the Class of
1949. We were the last class to
have both ‘Winkie’ Barr and
Scott Buchanan as our president
and dean. Our numbers were
small then and due to the passage
of time less now. This in all probability will be the last possible
quinquennial reunion for those
precious few of us left. Let’s all
try to make this 60th a memorable occasion. I am sure Scott
and Winkie would want it to be
so. Mark the dates on your
calendar now. I look forward to
being with you in Annapolis one
more time.”
ALLEN JACKSON, the third generation to attend St. John’s, passed
along some family lore
concerning athletics at St. John’s,
particularly the 1905 football
game in which St. John’s beat
Navy 104-0. “The game was
never completed because of a
brawl in the fourth quarter,
including players tossing each
other into College Creek, so Navy
never recorded the event,” says
Jackson, whose grandfather may
have played for the Johnnies. In a
more modern development,
Jackson was recognized for his
work in founding the Fuel Fund
in Maryland. The Baltimore Gas
and Electric Co. presented its
annual Humanitarian Award to
Jackson, who played a major role
in establishing the Anne Arundel
County Fuel Fund in November
1979. He was also acknowledged
for creating the Fuel Fund
Envelope Campaign in February
1980. As chairman of the Anne
Arundel County Economic
Committee, Jackson penned a
letter asking for BG&E customers
to contribute one dollar to help
families with their energy bills.
His appeal was included with
BG&E’s utility bills and raised
$13,000. BG&E matched the
contributions dollar for dollar.
This program swept across the
country.
We have a promising little
St. John’s reading group here in
Ashland, Ore. We have been
studying women—reading
Madame Bovary and Anna
Karenina. We are taking this
inquiry to a more abstract level
now with a reading of Don
Quixote. Best of all, I’m still
alive! But I say this with a hasty
knock on wood!”
HUGH MERCER CURTLER retired
from teaching philosophy and
humanities (great books) at
Southwest Minnesota State
University in 2005 and is
enjoying his retirement
immensely: “I now have time to
read the many books on my ‘todo’ list (mostly histories), writing
when I can, and working on my
golf game. I was talked into
putting together a web page in an
attempt to attract possible agents
or publishers to my latest (of 11)
books. But it hasn’t happened.
Those who are curious (or bored)
might check out the website
(www.hughcurtler.com) where
they will find, among other
things, my e-mail address. I
would love to hear from old classmates and friends.”
1958
MICHAEL SANFORD has retired
from his 10 years as a part-time
classical DJ and news man on
public radio, but he’s still doing
construction work: “I’m putting
finishing details on the house I
built, and I’m remodeling an
outbuilding into a guest house.
1959
LORNA CAHALL recently
published The Actor King,
“a tale born during the angst we
all suffered during the late Bush
reign. I wondered how we can
keep our souls during such a time
About the Robots
AREA JENNESS (HIMELGRIN, SF78) is having
fun building 15-pound combat robots with
her high school pre-engineering students at
Tucson High Magnet School. She lives with
her husband of 22 years, Doug, and 8-yearold son, Daniel, in Catalina, Ariz. “Everything I learned in the lab classes at St. John’s gets put into our
robots!” she says. x
M
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 }
and I decided that, whereas some
turned to religion, I preferred the
mimetic arts—possibly an alternative religion—but very intriguing.
And, how much worse to be
trying to keep your souls under
the Romans. So I spent those
years chasing my characters
Tullius, Mercurius, Lucia, Kepi
and their adventurous troupe as
they survived the 2nd century.
Other than that, Dick and I are
living peacefully in Bend, Ore.,
and staying out of trouble. Dick is
playing the banjo, working with
SMART and trying to teach 10year-olds to program Lego
robots.”
1962
“If Sarah Palin can think of 2012
already, then so can the class of
1962,” declares DAVID
BENFIELD. “This will be our 50th
and the success of our 45th
suggests that we should plan for
it carefully. An election will be
only a few weeks in the future and
hotel and travel reservations will
be scarce. In the summer of 2010
we can have an online conference
session and work out details to
help involve everyone in the
class.”
1964
JULIE WIGGENHORN WINSLETT
has discovered that “life isn’t
over at 65. I never expected to
have a second career this late in
life, but it has happened, and I
love it. I began by teaching
English as a Second Language to
adults for a technical college near
here a few years ago. That was so
much fun that I applied for, and
got, a position at a local university. It’s also The Military College
of Georgia, and I teach English
there (my degrees are in
cont. on page 34
�34
{Alumni Notes}
English). The kids (about
12 percent are cadets) are really
great, although very different
from what I remember we were
like in the sixties. They’re not
very idealistic and are politically
conservative for the most part.
Reading is not something they
pursue with gusto. They’re into
their cell phones and iPods—
completely plugged into an electronic world. So there are challenges that we instructors face
that our tutors and professors
didn’t have to face. But it’s a
great job, and I hope to do it
forever.
My husband, who is a nature
photographer, and I collaborated
on a book called Wildflowers of
Stone Mountain and I edited a
second book entitled Stone
Mountain: A Walk in the Park.
I am currently writing a mystery
set in the high desert of the
Southwest (near Taos) called
Murder-off-the-Grid. It’s slow
going because I have to squeeze it
in during those brief moments
when I’m not grading papers.
But writing a novel is a magical
experience and another thing that
I never thought I’d do.”
1966
IAN HARRIS just returned from a
three-month trip to Sri Lanka,
where he keynoted a conference
on adult peace education, from
Italy where he spoke at both the
University of Florence and Pisa,
and Spain where taught a
master’s course in peace and
development.
From France, CONNIE LINDGREEN reports: “Sitting by a
roaring and much-needed fire
(double-glazed windows not yet
installed), I just finished the
LORNA CAHALL (Class of 1959)
novel, The Actor King, which is a
funny mix of scholarship and
adventure in Hadrian’s time.
Then the Skype ‘phone’ rang and
it was MEL KLINE (A66), so I feel
quite ‘book-ended’ by St. John’s.
With the wonders of webcam, I
showed both Mel and later my
sister, SARAH (A67), the progress
on our construction. There are
walls going up! Reading Masters
and Commanders, about WW
II’s leadership: Churchill, FDR,
Brooke, Marshall, and continuing
to follow the Obama (hooray!)
presidency in both Le Figaro and
the International Herald
Tribune. Scarlatti, Chopin, and
Schubert keep my fingers from
atrophying totally, although I’m
making quite a hash of their
wonderful music. Sigh. My
French is improving; I was able to
tell one of Elliott Zuckerman’s
funny stories to my piano
teacher. Tutoring a young boy in
English. Baking scones and
making tea. Otherwise, like
everyone...waiting for spring!”
SYLVIA SHAPIRO is still living in
Mexico, south of Guadalajara, on
Mexico’s largest lake, enjoying
retirement in Paradise. “Unfortunately,” she writes, my “husband
died on October 1, 2008, which
has left a large hole in my life.
I am busy running a large book
exchange in a local restaurant
(commonly described as the best
in Lakeside) and maintaining the
book section of a local non-profit
thrift shop. My dad, age 92, is
still working as a lawyer and
driving to work every day, so I am
looking forward to a long and
happy life, although I do miss
Northern California.”
1967
CLARK LOBENSTINE writes:
“The InterFaith Conference of
Metropolitan Washington, which
I have been privileged to serve as
executive director for nearly
30 years, has just moved to The
Gate House, 100 Alleson St.,
NW, Washington, D.C. 20011.
My wife, Rev. Carole Crumley,
continues to be senior program
director of The Shalom Institute
for Spiritual Formation. She has
also started as the interim
director of Washington National
Cathedral’s Center for Prayer and
Pilgrimage on a very part-time
basis. She started that center
while on the Cathedral staff for
15 years.”
1968
TOM KEENS (SF) was elected
chair of the California Sudden
Infant Death Syndrome Advisory
Council. This nine-member
council advises the California
Department of Public Health on
issues related to Sudden Infant
Death Syndrome (SIDS) services
to families, public education,
and research in California. He
has already embarked on an
A Johnnie Abroad
AMES F.X. O’GARA (A88) just returned from a year with
the State Department in Iraq’s Wasit province, where he
advised the governor and provincial legislature,
enlarged the U.S. Government’s knowledge of and
contact with Shia religious party leaders, spoke daily
with his 7-year-old daughter, Nancy, via satellite phone,
and otherwise carried on in a manner befitting a
St. Johnnie abroad. He can be reached at jfxogara@hotmail.com
but notes that his Facebook contacts have expanded exponentially since connecting with ROBERT GEORGE (A86).
J
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 }
ambitious program to try to
establish uniformity in the diagnosis of babies dying suddenly, to
determine the impact of different
diagnoses on parent grief and
recovery, to continue the fall in
numbers of babies dying from
SIDS through public health intervention, and to improve communication on Council actions with
the California SIDS Community.
He is a Professor of Pediatrics,
Physiology and Biophysics at the
Keck School of Medicine of the
University of Southern California, and member of the Division of Pediatric Pulmonology at
Childrens Hospital Los Angeles.
CHARLIE WATSON (A) writes
with news of his children. His
eldest, Ivan, is moving from NPR
to CNN International as a
reporter based in Istanbul.
“Won’t be hearing him on the
way to and from work or on All
Things Considered anymore,” he
says. His middle son, Misha, is
living and working in Mystic,
Conn. as a master carpenter and
is currently participating in halfday cycling trips or five-mile
swims. His daughter, Anya, is
finishing a master’s degree in
marine sciences with prolonged
work with Dr. Roger Hanlon at
the Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratories, studying the
natural camouflage methods of
groupers. She is also an enthusiastic cyclist and will be participating in a charity ride, the PanMassachusetts Challenge, a bike
ride across Massachusetts in
efforts to raise funds for cancer
research. He adds, “Masha and I
regret to say we haven’t been to
Annapolis recently, despite close
ties to the area, Baltimore and
Washington. Masha has been
actively working on behalf of the
rehabilitation center at our city’s
hospital and keeping track of
everyone else in our family,
including a 94-year-old mother.
I’m still pretty busy in practice
and trying to help administer a
busy anesthesia department. A
�35
{Alumni Notes}
recent favorite activity (in addition to reading mind-rot fiction)
is learning ultra-sound guided
pain-relieving nerve/plexus
blocks. My most unfavorite is
watching my retirement monies
diminish as the prospect of traveling more in the near future
grows more remote.”
1969
JIM BARTRAM (A) says “hello” to
all his classmates from the 1960s.
“I am now disabled—Alzheimer’s
at 61. I’m still able to make my
beloved recorders, but probably
not for long. I’m still very high
functioning, and should be for
some time.”
BILL LANG (A) has retired from
the Rare Book department of the
Free Library of Philadelphia in
2006, after 30 “very happy”
years at the library. Lately he has
been working part time for the
library’s development department; starting a small business
giving swimming instruction,
mostly to triathletes; working
with disabled swimmers through
the Pennsylvania Center for
Adapted Sports; and helping to
carry his wife’s harpsichord
wherever she needs it to go. “I
will be happy to hear from anyone
from St. John’s, about swimming
or anything else.”
1970
ANDREW GARRISON (A) has
suspended his teaching career at
Miami University to expand his
psychology practice to full time.
His son Jesse is making movies in
New York.
“I have just received page proofs
(some 750 pages worth) of my
new English translation of Henri
de Lubac, Medieval Exegesis,
Volume 3: The Four Senses of
Scripture. It is being published in
Grand Rapids, Michigan by Wm.
B. Eerdmans and in Edinburgh by
T. & T. Clark. This is the third
volume of four. It should appear
this spring,” writes E. M.
MACIEROWSKI (A).
1971
MAGGIE JACOBS (SF) writes:
“My husband, Bob, is happily
retired and spends a lot of time
fishing. Son Daniel is starting his
second year at Willamette in
Oregon. I am upgrading my skills
and getting into web programming. I’ve also taken up knitting
and am studying Hebrew. Life is
good!”
SARAH SARAI (GANCHER, SF)
has recently published poems in
The Mississippi Review, Big City
Lit, Ghoti and other journals;
fiction in Storyglossia. Check
www.myspace.com/sarahsarai
for links.
1973
ELLEN LEITNER (USNER) (SF)
reports, “I’m still living in
Chimayó, where my husband,
Hans, and I raised our six children. The youngest, Rose, just
left for Stanford this fall. Our
next youngest, Genevieve, is
doing well studying classical
guitar at North Carolina School
of the Arts. She sometimes
performs with her older sister
Cecilia, soprano, who will get her
Master of Music degree from Yale
this May after a performance tour
in China and Korea with the
Schola Cantorum. In June and
July she will perform under
Helmut Rilling at the Oregon
Bach Festival. Our other three
children live close to home.
Franz, an architect, designer and
photographer, works in Santa Fe.
Maria, her husband Danny, and
son Kiran also live in SF, and they
sell their organic produce and
mushrooms at the farmer’s
market. Johanna lives here in
Chimayó with her husband,
Jesse, and three sons, Jonah, 8,
Jeremy, 6, and Julian, 4. My
husband, Hans, is a general
contractor, an Austrian trained in
carpentry (www.leitner-construction.com). I’m planning my next
concerts for ‘Enchantment
Chamber Music.’ Mozart’s clarinet quintet, some violin/guitar
duos featuring Duo Guadalupe
(our staple), and other small
ensembles are on the agenda, if
the funds come through. I’m also
teaching a violin class at
Northern New Mexico College in
Española. It’s a lot of fun, and I
hope the new music program will
grow and attract more students
for other classes I will teach, such
as chamber music and jazz violin.
I’ve lost touch with most of my
class, and would really like to
hear from any of them! Contact
me through my website:
www.chavezdeleitner.com.”
1974
ROBIN MCCONWAY HISCOCK (A)
writes: “I started in engineering
consulting, worked for Howard
County, then since 1985 have
worked in consulting for the
federal government. I’ve been
with SRA since 1991, specializing
in database and application
development. I play mandolin
(old time and Irish) and violin
(Swedish). Our daughter,
Meghan, is a sophomore at
Kalamazoo College, Michigan,
majoring in art and art history.”
JON HUNNER (SF) will publish a
biography of Robert Oppenheimer this fall with the University of Oklahoma Press. He
continues to teach U.S. history
and direct the Public History
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 }
Program at New Mexico State
University. His son Harley
graduated from Seattle University
last fall and is on his way to
Mauritania for the Peace Corps.
TED WOLFF (A), principal of
Wolff Landscape Architecture,
has been appointed adjunct
professor of Landscape Architecture at the Illinois Institute of
Technology in Chicago. Wolff has
been practicing landscape architecture in Chicago since 1979. In
1990, he launched his own firm.
1975
TINA BELL (A) shares news,
mostly about her children:
“Daughter Julia, an attorney who
graduated from Boston University School of Law, has been
married now for two years to
Mattew Andrus, also an attorney
and grad of BU Law, and the best
son-in-law in the world. Timothy
Bell graduated from Allegheny
College with a major in writing
(at which he is very, very good) in
May 2008 and is looking forward
to graduate school—doesn’t know
exactly which one yet. Emily
Margaret Bell graduated summa
cum laude from the Boston
University Professors Program
(where she aced a graduate
course in Plato taught by Mr.
Stanely Rosen). Joseph Bell is in
graduate school at Rutgers
University and is studying social
work. Their mother (me) plans to
get a master’s in theology from
Franciscan University at
Steubenville, so she can teach.”
G. KAY BISHOP (A) reports:
“Have been unemployed for two
years, four months, and
counting. Send networking/job
leads ASAP. Also accepting
contributions of cash, jewelry,
small, pawnable electronic
devices, freeze-dried foodstuffs,
fair-trade cacao beans, rare outof-print comic books, copper
�36
{Alumni Profile}
A Direct Line to the Center
Darius Himes (SFGI00) Publishes Beautiful Books
by Jenny Hannifin
D
miriam romais
books on photographer Mark
arius Himes
Klett and Canadian painter Otto
credits his childDonald Rogers. Since then,
hood in smallthey’ve published the work of
town Iowa and a
photographers Lee Friedlander,
book-centric
Julie Blackmon, and Debbie
family with
Fleming Caffery; sculptor John
kindling his lifelong connection
McCracken; and Southern Calito the printed word. “A playful
fornia painters Charles Arnoldi
childhood in the country
and Ed Moses. A particularly
contributed to a deep connection
engaging book is being
with the sensual, tactile world,
published this spring on the
and that directly translated into
little-known food writing of
an abiding love of the tactile
photo-historian Beaumont
nature of books and ink on
Newhall (the first director of the
paper,” says Himes.
Museum of Modern Art’s
Added to that love of books was
department of photography).
a passion for photography,
The inspiration for the name
nurtured at Arizona State Univer“Radius” came from Himes’
sity, where Himes earned a bachtime at St. John’s. “The idea of
elor’s degree in fine arts. While
the radius was always appealing
attending the Graduate Institute,
to me,” he says. “MetaphoriHimes worked part time at photocally, it represents a direct line
eye Books, which was then primafrom the center to the
rily a mail order photography
periphery. Likewise, it leads
bookstore. He spearheaded the
from the outer world to the
drive to turn the company’s 20inner.”
year-old mail order catalog into a
Like so many before him,
nationally distributed magazine,
A love of books and a passion for photography came together
photo-eye Booklist, which in turn
Himes learned of St. John’s from
for Darius Himes with Radius Books.
won national recognition and
Mortimer Adler’s How to Read
international attention.
a Book. He credits his Graduate
The subscription-based quarInstitute studies with teaching
making decisions about what to publish,
terly fed into photo-eye’s website and came
him many things, but ranks two above all.
Radius Books looks for projects that are
about as Himes witnessed the proliferation
First is the importance of approaching
arresting, vital, exquisite, and readable, as
of photography books and saw the need to
texts—and by extension, individuals—
well as artists who work passionately and
intelligently canvas that terrain. “The
without preconceived judgments. “An
diligently on their art.
photo-eye Booklist has been the equivalent
unfettered search for truth, from whatever
What makes the company different from
of having a dear friend with more time
source it may come, and being watchful for
other publishers is a commitment to
than I, and a broader perspective to point
it, is very much a part of the St. John’s
getting art books into the hands of those
out treasures while their bindings are new
Program and spirit,” says Himes.
who might not normally be exposed to
and the ink still fresh,” says Frish Brandt,
Second is the unpredictability of
them. Radius Books donates more than
director of the Fraenkel Gallery in San
seminar. “Regardless of which text we
200 copies of every title it produces to
Francisco.
read, by the end of the evening our various
libraries and educational institutions
Himes’ latest endeavor is Radius Books,
understandings of the text had morphed,
around the country. Nonprofit status
deepened, and expanded in ways that were
a nonprofit publishing company based in
affords the company the ability to raise
simply impossible to predict,” he explains.
Santa Fe. Himes and the company’s three
funds for programs like the library initia“There are always kernels of truth and
partners—David Skolkin, David Chickey,
tive, as well as flexibility in working with
common ground in any conversation, and
and Joanna Hurley, all publishing profesartists and other institutions. Distributing
searching those out is a rewarding process.
sionals—work together to produce exquistitles through D.A.P. (Distributed Art
I’m deeply interested in approaches to
itely designed and printed art books. “We
Publishers), the country’s premier art
unity that can arise from the multiplicity
all firmly believe that the visual arts are
book distributor, means that each Radius
around and within us.”x
vital to the life of society and can educate
Books title receives a wide audience.
and uplift the soul,” says Himes. When
Radius Books’ first season included
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 }
�{Alumni Notes}
mine stock and other gilt-edged
securities. Do not send out-ofdate coupons, old CRT monitors,
live plants, livestock (not even
chickens), circus clowns, scented
candles, or spare children. Might
could use 500-600 bales of clean
newspaper (pre-paid shipping
only) to build Thoreau-style hut
in woods, once I learn how to sew
thatch, build a chimney, and lay a
brick hearth. Will let y’all know.”
KEVIN JOHNSON (SF) has several
“dog legs” in his career path, but
now seems to be steadily on track
for a career in organizational
development, a field which
integrates a background in
psychology with his experience
in the business world: “I live in
Boston with my fiancée, Sonora
Rose, a therapist and bodyworker. I work at Harvard
Medical School and to use my
tuition assistance benefit have
begun a two-year certificate
program in executive coaching,
where I hope to learn how to
become a Tiresias to today’s
Oedipuses. I occasionally lead
seminars for my alumni group,
last time on Dubois’ Souls of
Black Folk, which I heartily
recommend as a backdrop to our
most recent regime change.”
He welcomes contact from
classmates.
After 12 years in Florida, ALAN
MCVAY (SF) and family have
moved to the D.C. area. “My
brother calls me a corporate
gypsy, since company breakups,
bankruptcy, and takeovers have
caused me to move eight times in
the last 25 years. I also travel all
the time for work. It is good to be
back in a place with a decent used
bookstore, Indian food, and the
brightness of fall leaves and
spring blossoms. About the
winter, well, that was dimly
remembered, and mornings near
zero degrees were a shock.
I continue to practice kojosho
and tai chi, but more often
indoors.” His daughter is 15 now,
so he’s thinking about colleges.
“She doesn’t want to go to
St. John’s–too much reading.
That doesn’t narrow it down very
much. Let’s just say she wants to
do something creative.”
ERIC SCIGLIANO (SF) has a new
book coming out this March:
Flotsametrics and the Floating
World is his first collaboration,
with the oceanographer Curtis
Ebbesmeyer, and will be
published by Smithsonian
Books/HarperCollins.
“After five years working in early
childhood education (aka
teaching preschool), I have
returned to high-tech and work
as a programmer and manager
again,” writes BILL TORCASO
(SF). “The ages may change, but
immaturity is ever present.
I married Kate Roper in the
summer of 2007.”
1976
KATE LUFKIN DAY (A) sends
greetings from snowy Syracuse:
“BILL (SF82) and I sent Peter off
to college this fall, and the closest
he would go to the Program was
Columbia. But he’s happy doing
literature and humanities there,
and Japanese; he hopes to study
in Japan for his junior year.
Meanwhile, his elder sister Helen
is in her last semester at
Wellesley. She’s done psychology
and music, but her real triumph
was leading her a capella group
to a coveted recording session
with Ben Folds this spring. Check
her out on Ben Folds’ website
singing “Annie Waits” with the
Wellesley College Blue Notes.
Bill is still teaching philosophy at
Le Moyne College, where he has
labored for years to support and
strengthen the core program.
His book of new essays on aspect
seeing in Wittgenstein (which he
is co-editing, a choice he doesn’t
recommend) is finally complete
and should be coming out some
time this year. For my part, I am
about to start a new job as
Managing Chaplain at Crouse
Hospital and am still rector of a
tiny parish in the hinterland.
DONNEL O’FLYNN (SF73) and
JANET CHRISTHILF O’FLYNN
(SF74) are colleagues in my
diocese (which is still standing,
unlike some Episcopal dioceses),
and JANE HUDSON (A76, hero of
the Nymphs from way back) is a
buddy in Syracuse. She still leaves
me in the dust. Oh, and I’m in
touch with ERIC VATIKIOTIS
BATESON (A73) and his wife and
kids, with whom Bill and I
formed a friendship teaching
boarding school in the ’80s.
(They live in Vancouver, B.C.,
now.) All the best to everyone
trying to stay afloat in our
current economic climate.
Friends can reach me at
kblday@gmail.com.”
1977
DANA GOODE (SF, AGI91) made
her conducting debut in January
2008 with the Londontowne
Symphony. Daughter Evia is a
Ben Carson Scholar and ambassador for the Leukemia and
Lymphoma Society. Please
donate!
1979
DAVID WALD (SF), who lives just
outside NYC, reports that he is
going through shock, and soon
withdrawal, as his 18-year-old
daughter, Esther, prepares to
head off to Oakland, Calif., in the
fall to attend the California
College of the Arts. He is
consoling himself playing the
drums in an arty sort of band.
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 }
37
He is also still enjoying making
documentaries and news stories
about education and related
issues at nonprofit Learning
Matters, Inc. The stories are
regularly featured on PBS’s
NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.
His wife, Betsy, is very happily
ensconced as the branch head of
their local library in Maplewood,
N.J., a block from their humble
abode. He sends his greetings,
best wishes, and hopes for positive change to all!
BEN GOLDSTEIN (SF) and GINA
IRONSIDE (SF80) send this news:
Ben, Gina and young Ben spent
the month of December in
Colombia—visiting relatives and
old haunts, luxuriating in the
spectacular geography, culture,
and climate, and—mostly—
adopting their new son, Cristian.
Cristian is one year younger than
Ben, who is almost 14. Ben is still
unschooling, and Cris is trying
out sixth grade in middle school.
Everyone except Gina is still
playing soccer. Ben’s open-source
web engineering company, End
Point Corporation, continues to
thrive. They’ve received a few
resumes out of the woodwork
from Johnnies applying for jobs.
“Greetings to our old friends far
and wide from both campuses.”
MARIE TOLER RANEY (A) and
JON RANEY (A74) reported on a
recent vacation: “Our sailing trip
to Hawaii was all that we wished,
except that it ended. Jon and I
(and our dog) had a marvelous
month sail of 2,500 miles or so to
Hilo from Washington state in
August, then a couple of weeks
sailing up the island chain. I then
had to return by airplane due to
schedule limitations (somebody
has to work, just not clear just
when I drew the short stick!)
However CHUCK HURT (A79)
joined Jon for the tumultuous
return trip where they were
either becalmed or battling
40-knot winds and 25-foot seas.
�38
{Alumni Notes}
Despite a finger tip squeezed off
1,000 miles from home in the
middle of the ocean and an escort
into Bamfield, B.C., by the
Canadian Coast Guard, they did
get home safely. Now we can
dream of doing the rest of the
Pacific in a couple of years. For
more information on our voyage
see www.svphoenix.net. Hope to
see all our classmates at our
reunion this fall.”
1981
STEVE and BETSY (MILLS)
ACCIANI (SF) are still in upstate
New York. Their four daughters
are Emma, 21, who is a junior at
Wagner College, Staten Island;
Maria, recently accepted at
St. John’s, Annapolis; Anna, 15, a
high school freshman; and Alice,
who is 11 and in fifth grade. “We
are delighted to be in contact
with the following Johnnies:
SANJAY POOVADAN (SF83), LIZ
WALDNER (A85) who was
recently published in the New
Yorker, ROBIN SLONAGER (A78),
JOEL WEINGARTEN (A82),
ALLISON CARPER (SF77), and
BRAD WRONSKI (SF82).”
JOSEPH (SF) and ANNE-MARTINE
MOORE (SF84) are living in
Concord, Calif., with children
and a neurotic dog. Writes
Joseph: “Anne-Martine is on the
staff of Diablo Valley School
(DiabloValleySchool.org), a
Sudbury model school attended
by four of our five kids. As I’m
sure anyone who knows her will
be shocked to learn, she’s still
knitting up a storm. (I got cool
fingerless gloves for Christmas—
nice for holding a cold steering
wheel.) She is also involved in
weaving, stamping and other
crafty-type stuff. I am in the
philosophically difficult position
of personally profiting from
complex tax laws that are occasioned by equipment financing.
I sell software that does the
complicated financial analysis for
large companies. So, if we ever
get a simple, clear tax code,
which I theoretically favor, I’d be
financially sad. On a positive
note, my efforts to learn the
Well Tempered Clavier have
progressed to the point where, at
my current rate, if I simply live
another 450 years or so, I’ll have
the entire thing down cold.”
JOE ROACH and BJ (SISSON)
ROACH (both A) write: “We are
becoming more and more a
Johnnie family. Our older
daughter, KATE, graduated with
the St. John’s (Annapolis) class of
2004. And now, in just a few
months, our younger daughter
MOLLY will be graduating with
the class of 2009. Our youngest,
Nicholas, feels a little left out,
but his time may come in a
few years.”
DANIEL VAN DOREN (A) has been
the president of the New York
City chapter for five years, and
this is his last year. He has
worked in real estate management since 1985 and lives in
suburban New York with his
family. “One of my sons is an avid
birder and we traipse all over the
Northeast looking for bird sightings. If you’ve got any ideas for
good birding spots, let me know,”
he writes.
1982
“I’m still on the rocky road to
tenure and would love to hear
from others who have gone
through it,” writes PATTI D.
NOGALES (A), from the Department of Philosophy at California
State Univeristy, Sacramento.
“Otherwise, my kids are fine
(except for becoming teenagers)
and I am fine (except for them
becoming teenagers)!”
Plugging Along
ICHAEL RYAN (SF86) is plugging along in
Albuquerque, running a business, raising a
teenager, trying to balance work and outdoor
activities. He started readings on the Civil War
and World War II. (“Slowly working my way
back to a Great Book!”) He also taught a
semester of structure for the architecture program at UNM and
referenced Euclid in the very first class. “Unfortunately, he did
not make a second appearance.”
M
1983
MARK and CHRISTINE (A84)
GOWDY-JAEHNIG have now been
living in Decorah, Iowa, for more
than four years. Mark is a partner
in a four-doctor veterinary clinic
and drives through a lot of
beautiful countryside between
farm calls. Christine is nearing
completion of her Montessori
preschool teacher’s certification:
“Beginning graduate studies 22
years after leaving St. John’s was
a challenge, but a good one.
I would love to hear from any
other Johnnies who are also
Montessorians. Our eldest child,
Alexandra, graduated from
Hamline University last spring
and is now one of those partially
employed theatre majors who
inhabit the Twin Cities. We are
delighted that our middle child,
PHILLIPA, found her collegial
home at our alma mater (a junior,
she is very involved in intramural
sports, like her mom!) We still
have one child in the nest, and
are anticipating three more years
of high school sporting events,
choir concerts, and speech
meets.”
1984
ANDREW HYDE HRYNIEWCZ (A)
has worn numerous hats since
graduating: “After completing
my Watson Fellowship (which
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 }
pretty much ruined me for
conventional employment) I
spent a number of years catering
and building houses while
attending social work school in
Baltimore. Migrating from clinical social work to community
organizing to (almost) Community Planning, I started a MArch
program at UM College Park,
finishing up at UC Berkeley and
SFIA (an experimental architecture/ecological design program
in San Francisco). I practiced
architecture and lived in Berkeley
from 1994-1999. I had my mid-life
crisis early, spending 2000-02
studying, traveling, and remodeling friends’ houses in the U.S.
and Europe. I returned to Florida
in 2002 to help my mother die
and settled here. I worked as a
financial assets manager until
2008 when the ‘new economy’
made my job vanish. Currently
I’m starting an online magazine
about (either) ‘really big ideas/
questions/answers’ or ‘brain
candy for smart/curious people’
and trust that it will be solvent
before I’m not.”
TRACY MENDHAM (A) writes:
“I had a joyful summer in 2008.
I started a full-time job as a
learning specialist at Franklin
Pierce University, after seven
years of adjuncting at Franklin
Pierce and other colleges. I
married my partner of 17 years,
Dana Chenier, in a New Hampshire civil union. Finally, we
adopted an Australian Shepherd
puppy named Pearl later that
�{Alumni Profile}
39
Not Just Fun and Games
Dominic Crapuchettes (A97) Turns a Hobby into a Business
by Sara Luell (A09)
C
ladi dell’aira
design. “A lot of the skills that we
omposer, dot-com
learned at St. John’s: how to learn,
programmer, sea
how to assimilate information, and
captain, teacher—
how to communicate with other
Dominic Crapuchettes
people” are needed for success in
(A97) has ventured
business, says Crapuchettes. These
down several career
qualities encourage honesty in
paths. But none has been as rewarding
entrepreneurship—what a company
as his current job: running a company
will live or die by. In a market domithat produces the games he designs.
nated by big-name companies,
No, they’re not video games, but inventhese qualities have helped
tive board games that get people to sit
Crapuchettes become successful
down, talk, play, and laugh together.
quickly, along with his strong focus
Growing up in southern California,
and desire to make an impact on
Crapuchettes was immersed in playing
others. His excitement about
games. Rather than watching TV, once
games, especially games that get
or twice a week his family played games
people talking and laughing, is
such as Scrabble and Monopoly. When
infectious.
Crapuchettes was four, his father
North Star’s most popular game,
started entering him in chess tournaWits & Wagers, “embodies the
ments. By the age of seven, he was
fundamentals of what we were
designing his own games. One game
learning at St. John’s,”
(which he dubbed “Kabloogi”) was so
Crapuchettes says. “It’s pretty
popular among his eighth-grade friends
obvious when you play the game
that it was banned from his middle
how the college influenced my
school. Students had been playing it
design.” Although Wits & Wagers
during class.
is a trivia game, knowing the right
Game designing was put on hold
answers isn’t the key to winning.
when Crapuchettes enrolled in St.
All the answers are numbers. After
John’s. His creative energies were
everyone estimates an answer to
directed toward classical music compothe question, players make bets as
sition, which he seriously considered as
to which one is the closest to
a career. He soon realized, however,
Dominic Crapuchettes is betting on a future in board
games.
correct. “One of the skills, which is
that the market for such work was
a Johnnie skill, is to know the
limited. “If I was going to devote my
met Satish Pillalamarri, a former investboundaries of your knowledge,” says
whole life to excelling at something, I
ment analyst and Jeopardy! contestant.
Crapuchettes, allowing you to know when
wanted it to be something people care
Together they founded North Star Games,
to go with your original intuition or when
about,” he says.
based in Bethesda, Maryland, and began
to bet on other players’ answers.
To pay his way through St. John’s,
work on their first game, Cluzzle, in which
Wits & Wagers has won 20 industry
Crapuchettes played in a professional
players make puzzles out of clay.
awards—more than any other party game in
circuit for the card game Magic: The GathOriginally interested in designing
history. It has been released in several
ering. He won $30,000. During the
strategy games, Crapuchettes discovered
languages, and a version for the Xbox
summers and breaks from St. John’s, he
that many people viewed these games more gaming console is available. Cluzzle has
captained a salmon-fishing boat in Alaska,
as IQ tests than as entertainment. “I said
won nine industry awards. Say Anything,
a job he held after graduation until the
to myself, ‘I am going to design a game
the newest game released within the past
salmon market crashed. Crapuchettes
that I don’t have to bribe people with pizza
year, has already won two awards.
taught for a while, and then learned
in order to get them to play with me—that
Crapuchettes is now developing family
programming and worked for an Internet
people come to me and want to play.” This
versions of Say Anything and Wits &
startup. When the dot-com bubble burst,
goal was behind the development of
Wagers, as well as a booster pack of Wits &
Crapuchettes knew it was time to pursue
Cluzzle and the company’s two top sellers:
Wagers questions. And “I am always coming
his dream of starting a game company.
Wits & Wagers and Say Anything.
up with new game ideas,” he says. x
While working toward his master’s
A St. John’s education has proven useful
degree at the Smith School of Business at
in both the business world and game
the University of Maryland, Crapuchettes
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 }
�40
{Alumni Notes}
month. The fall has been more
somber; my mother passed away
in early November. I am very
much looking forward to the
25th reunion—this is one I will
make sure I get to!”
1985
JAN CONLIN (SF) is awaiting the
birth of her first baby (boy).
Astonished to find herself in business school, DEMI RASMUSSEN
(SF) is taking education into
unexplored territory. How can we
integrate social justice with
appropriate profit? Where does
environmentalism fit into a
business plan? These questions
are part of the curriculum at the
Bainbridge Graduate Institute,
where Demi received her MBA in
Sustainable Business in 2007.
Now working as the Initiative
Manager at the institute, Demi
also assists with teaching courses
including finance, accounting
and Systems Thinking in Action.
Graduates of BGI and other
sustainable business schools are
becoming leaders in the new
economy. (Check her out on
YouTube, at the Official Inaugural Ball for Energy & the
Environment.) As any good
Johnnie would, she has maintained a stance of inquiry and
scrutiny while supporting the
launch of three sustainable businesses, FarmPower, Olympic
BioFuels and GreenWorx. Now
investigating PhD programs,
Demi plans to improve and
increase sustainability education.
1986
After 20 years with a large corporate law firm, PAUL O’HANLON
(A) resigned last month and
started a small firm with three
good friends and colleagues. The
work continues to be interesting,
the office is very relaxed and
clients have been incredibly
supportive. “I’m looking forward
to seeing my classmates at our 25year reunion in 2011,” he writes.
“This time I hope to avoid
sleeping through my hotel alarm
and missing my flight home (but
it was SO worth it).”
1988
ERIN MILNES (A) and Chuck
Guest are the delighted, proud,
and rather tired parents of
Duncan Cullison, born May 22,
2008. Erin is sorry to have
missed the 20th reunion but is
looking forward to showing
Duncan (and Chuck) off at the
Thanks, from Stanford
AVE WALTER (A91) is a teaching fellow in Stanford’s Introduction to the Humanities (IHUM)
program. Last June, he was awarded the Walter
J. Gores Award for Teaching Excellence. The
award is the highest honor the university presents to its teachers at any level. “The Gores
nomination pooled all the students and faculty I have worked
with here at Stanford over the past three years,” he explains.
“Scores of people wrote on my behalf. At the President’s award
celebration, a prize committee member told me my nomination
was ‘amazingly strong.’ In light of my success in this program, I
think my first thanks should go to St John’s.” x
D
25th. Erin can be reached via
Facebook (where you can also see
pictures of the adorable Duncan).
KIM PAFFENROTH (A) has a new
zombie novel out, Dying to Live:
Life Sentence (Permuted Press,
2007). His next, Valley of the
Dead, is being shopped to
publishers; it is a retelling of
Inferno (with zombies). Zombie
versions of other books on the
List cannot be far behind.
“I really enjoyed seeing friends
and tutors at our recent 20th
anniversary homecoming,”
writes CLAUDIA PROBST STACK
(A). “Since then, I have renewed
my efforts to find support for my
documentary film project ‘Under
the Kudzu,’ which chronicles the
history of two segregation-era
black schools in Pender County,
N.C. Anyone who is interested in
the project can learn more by
visiting my website: www.underthekuzu.org. Recently I interviewed a woman whose greatgrandfather was a slave who
farmed the land where she now
lives. She attended one of the
schools I am researching, and
then returned there as a teacher.
Her son attended the same
school, and now he is a wellrespected judge. My home life is
rowdy and fun, thanks to Alden
(age 8) and Jack (age 6). I am
grateful every day for my sons
and my husband, Joe. I would
love to hear from any Johnnies,
especially classmates!”
STEVE VIRGIL (A) arrived in
Winston-Salem this summer to
start his work as the first director
of the Wake Forest Law School’s
new Community Development
Clinic. Virgil, formerly the
director of a clinic with a similar
mission at Creighton University
School of Law in Omaha, Neb.,
was the overwhelming first
choice of the Wake Forest faculty
after a nationwide search. Wake
Forest clinic students will offer
legal services to non-profit organ-
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 }
izations and to entrepreneurs
who create new businesses based
in low-wealth areas in Forsyth
County. The Community
Development Clinic is part of a
larger effort to strengthen the
connections between legal education and the practice of law.
1989
LEE CARPENTER (A) recently
opened his own legal practice in
Baltimore, focusing on wills and
estates; business is booming.
STEVE DEAN (SF) is married:
“Eddie Rangel and I are happy to
announce that—in the 17th year of
our relationship—we were legally
married Monday, November 24,
2008, in Provincetown, Mass.
Rachel Peters, Justice of the
Peace, officiated at the marriage
ceremony. My family is from
Massachusetts, and we’ve been
meeting on the Cape to celebrate
Thanksgiving since 2000. This
was the first year that we were
able to marry, as Massachusetts
just repealed its residency
requirement, and we could think
of no place more beautiful or
appropriate to have the ceremony.”
BETH HEINBERG (A) is teaching
performing arts to middleschoolers in Asheville, N.C., and
performing jazz with her trio,
Honey.
SUSAN PETRONE’s (A) first novel,
A Body At Rest, is scheduled to
be published by Drinian Press in
early 2009. Johnnies may enjoy
the fact that one of the two main
characters turns into Don
Quixote during the course of the
book. (For the record, the other
main character turns into Emma
Woodhouse.)
�41
{Alumni Notes}
1990
1992
Since leaving St. John’s,
MICHAEL LANDIS (AGI) was
married to Leslie L. Kinney in
1991 and had two children,
Daphne (born in 1991) and
Dorothy (born in 1996). He
taught at Southern Vermont and
Mount Snow Academy, and also
worked at Morningside Emergency Shelter, a homeless shelter
in Brattleboro, Vt. “Both daughters are outstanding students and
Daphne was valedictorian of her
graduating class at Guilford
Central School before going on to
the high school last year,” Landis
writes. “I’ve been leading the
local ‘Great Books’ group in
Brattleboro since 1995.” After a
34-year hiatus, Landis returned
to Cuba for a visit in 2004 and
another visit last year (where,
he adds, “I saw Fidel Castro
(perhaps) for his final May Day
appearance.”) Landis returned
this year, and says that his
Spanish is improving and he’s
made many friends throughout
the island.
AARON GARZA (SF) writes: “My
wife, Azenett, and I had identical
twin boys, Ulises and Dante, on
December 22, 2008. My daughters Sofia (8) and Nadya (4) are
both being super big sisters. I’m
in my last semester of law school
at the University of Utah and
hoping to find a good job in this
uncertain economy. We’ve been
in Utah since 2002 and I still
haven’t managed to go skiing, not
even once. I have shoveled a
heckload of snow here, though
(our house is on a corner lot).”
DAVE MARQUEZ (SF) is working
as a film editor on several projects. “While I am currently based
in Santa Fe,” he writes, “I am
reasonably certain that as the
media industry in New Mexico
continues to grow the future will
find me working out of Albuquerque as well as Los Angeles.
I encourage any alumni who are
in the film or television industry
or are interested in it as a career
to contact me via my website:
www.davemarquez.info.”
1991
BLAKE SITNEY (SF) has been
working to help the Mae Maeh
orphanage in Chiang Mai
province of Thailand, where he
made another trip earlier this
hirteen years ago, EMILY GILLILAND (AGI97) was
accepted into AmeriCorps and spent two years in
service through a program called Volunteer Maryland, which trained her to be a volunteer coordinator. “This experience changed my life,” she
writes. “It gave me a job sure, but it was much
more. The greatest take-aways from the experience were the
knowledge that a band of community members can really get
things done and that folks who are involved with AmeriCorps
are some of the most special, talented people in the world:
friends for life and partners in service. [On January 20], we took
the world stage by participating in the Inaugural parade
honoring Barack Obama. Spending the day with 150 of these
passionate service leaders connected to AmeriCorps was
enough inspiration to last all of 2009! Walking past the presidential viewing booth mere feet from the Obamas? I wish time
could have stood still! I think I strained a muscle waving so
hard. It’s not because I am confident that they can fix what ails
the country, but I am excited because they see the potential in
all of us to band together, like AmeriCorps, and get things
done.” Emily took 412 pictures: view them at
www.flickr.com/photos/egilliland/sets/72157612838555784/x
T
winter: “It gets very cold at night
in the winter time in the
Himalayan foothills of Northern
Thailand, so we brought muchneeded mattresses for the kids.
This time Jong and I delivered
120 mattresses, sacks of rice, and
other food staples; I also
continued the Art for Orphans
project. I plan on staying in Thailand for two months working on
software projects for my company
(Marigold Technologies) and
finding humanitarian projects in
my free time.”
2004 and became the assistant
editor of Inside Annapolis magazine. In December 2006, their
second daughter, Devon Caroline, was born. In between, David
changed careers from Java
programming to enterprise architecture and is now a consultant
for the Centers for Medicare and
Medicaid Services. In January,
Megan left Inside Annapolis to
become assistant editor of Taste
of the Bay magazine. They now
live in Severna Park, just north of
Annapolis.
MEGAN SMITH (A) and DAVID
DOUGHERTY (AGI92) have career
and family news. Megan finally
got out of the optical business in
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 }
ELYETTE BLOCK KIRBY (SF) has
been living in Europe for a
decade now, the last two years in
Bucharest, Romania, with her
husband and children, ages 7, 6,
and 4. “The children are
unschooling, and I am enjoying
learning anything about my
passions: biodynamic farming,
yoga, and natural healing.”
J. ELIZABETH HUEBERT SCHOEMAKER (SF) and husband, Jeremy
Schoemaker, welcomed their
second daughter, Joslyn, in July
2008. Elizabeth continues to
practice as an anesthesiologist in
Lincoln, Neb.
1993
JAMES CRAIG (AGI) writes that
he and his wife, Nan, having
spent a year on Easter Island in
the Pacific in 2006-7 and three
months in 2008, will again be
“doing our thing” on the island
this year, from April to July: “I
will be supplementing my B&W
portfolio, Nan will be painting.
Our Easter Island WebLog,
followed by more people than we
ever imagined, will begin getting
new entries near the end of
March: http://web.mac.com
/craigart.”
�42
CLAIRE DARLING (SF) writes:
“I’m generally in love with life as
a self-employed, treatmentoriented massage therapist and
single mom in Portland, Ore. Still
active with the Weston A. Price
Foundation local chapter, (Real
Food movement). Still expecting
the dream of land and a cow to
materialize. Aikido rocks my
world in the mean time. I wish
someone had told me in adolescence that life could be so incredibly wonderful. Anyone wanting
to help ‘process’ my old chickens
and ducks or prune fruit trees,
please contact me ASAP.”
ALEX (AGI) and VANESSA ELLERMANN (A) are expecting their
third son in March. Alex is flying
for Delta and with the Navy
Reserve, and Vanessa is practicing law in D.C. They live in
Kensington, Md., and don’t get to
Annapolis nearly enough.
THOMAS HAMMERMAN (A) just
completed a master’s degree in
Marriage and Family Therapy at
Northwestern University. He is
now working as a post-graduate
clinical fellow at the Family
Institute in Evanston, Ill.
On August 2, 2008, AMANDA
KLEIN (A) married Bryan Carr at
Trinity Episcopal Church in
Seattle. “Bryan is an autodidact
scholar, philosopher, and afterschool teacher who moonlights at
a bookstore to augment his
library of 4,000 books. My
10-year-old son, Gabriel, served
as a groomsman and tore up the
dance floor at the reception; his
father, JONATHAN CRIMMINS
(A95) was one of our three volunteer photographers and a huge
help all around. Through the
generosity of wedding guests, we
were able to honeymoon for two
weeks in the UK and France in
October. (Gabriel stayed home
with his dad.) Highlights
included being driven around in
the Mourne Mountains by an
Ulster native, wandering amid
{Alumni Notes}
the ancient Druid stones of
Avebury, getting a peek at the
research rooms in the British
Museum with the curator of the
Sumerian collection, and
savoring innumerable crêpes and
baked goods in Paris. We had
many wonderful conversations
with friends, but still had ample
time to gaze at each other. I am
truly a lucky woman.”
NANCY MARCUS (A) recently
earned her second and third law
degrees at the University of
Wisconsin Law School in
Madison, Wis., where she also
worked as a judicial law clerk for
the Wisconsin Court of Appeals
and the Wisconsin Supreme
Court. In March, she will be
returning to Cleveland, where
she earned her JD in 1997, as an
associate with the law firm
Berkman, Gordon, Murray and
DeVan. Her practice will include
constitutional law, civil rights,
appellate, torts, and criminal
cases, with an additional specialty
in LGBT rights and partnership
protections.
1994
ANTHONY CHIFFOLO (AGI) says
his book, Cooking with the Bible:
Recipes for Biblical Meals is now
out in paperback; he and his coauthor are busy on their next
book: Cooking with the Movies:
Meals on Reels: “We definitely
need a larger kitchen!”
His 14 years since graduation
have been “stellar,” writes
LEE HOWARD MADDEN KRALL
(SFGI): “My wife and I live here
on the Solano Coast of California.
We’ve lived in New Mexico,
Europe, Japan, and now the Bay
Area. I run an online Medialliance/record label from my
home office; my wife is a trainer.
Our daughter just went off to
college at the University of New
Mexico, studying art history.
I put the liberal arts training to
work, learning to become over
the past 14 years: a teacher, a
chef, a record executive, and also
now, a digital recording artist,
just releasing my eighth album.
I finished a film last year, a
musical documentary: Steve
Roach, Live at Grace Cathedral,
releasing the video to the world
on my four YouTube channels,
where I am a director. My music
The Boys are the
Teachers
E
MCGINTY
JAMES (SF05)
and her
husband,
Mike James,
welcomed their
second son, Theodore John
James, on June 24, 2008. He
joins his brother, August
(age 2), in helping his mother
forget the specifics of her
education. Fortunately, the
boys are teaching her volumes
in their own right. x
RIN
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 }
career is flourishing; the digital
realm has released us from the
confines of the old ways of doing
things; we can now produce
music here at home and
distribute it globally throughout
the Internet; we played and sold
more music last year than ever
before. My latest solo release is
out and available for download at
iTunes, eMusic and
rhapsody.com. We’re soon to be
staging a ‘live from CyberiaRecords Studios Cybercast
Sessions’ with some of our
artists—CyberiaRecords, World
Ambient Music.”
ROBYN ANJA WASE (A) was
married on May 3, 2008, to John
Helmon, father of two teenagers,
Alyssa (16) and Chris (14). “I’m
already introducing St. John’s
College to Alyssa in hopes that
she will consider that option as
she picks her next school. John
and I both work at Microsoft and
live in Kirkland, Wash., which is
just outside of Seattle. We stay
very busy, but would love to hear
from any and all classmates via
phone, e-mail, Facebook, or in
person!”
TIFFANY WINNE (SFGI), corporate managing director of the real
estate advisory firm Studley, has
been named to the prestigious
Crain’s Chicago Business
“40 Under 40” list. This list
appeared in the Nov. 3, 2008,
issue of the business journal.
Winne joined Studley in 2002
after working in management
consulting. She was also recently
named associate branch manager
for the Chicago office. Winne is
involved in the Jane Addams Hull
House organization, where she
serves on the property committee
of the board of trustees.
�43
{Alumni Notes}
1995
1996
GEORGE S. ERVING (SFGI) has
been granted promotion to Associate Professor of Humanities,
Honors, and English, with tenure
at the University of Puget Sound,
effective with the 2009-10
academic year. “I have a recently
published essay on Coleridge and
the Newtonian tradition (European Romantic Review 19.3 July
2008) whose genesis was in a
preceptorial I had with Jack
Steadman.”
SARA BITTLE (A) was a Montessori teacher for 12 years after
graduation and ran and taught in
an Infant-Toddler Montessori
program for at-risk children as
part of a larger organization
called Crossway Community in
Kensington, Md., outside of D.C.
Last spring, I left my first
career to return to school to
Johns Hopkins School of
Nursing in Baltimore. I am in
their accelerated Bachelor’s of
Science of Nursing program,
which is designed for students
who already have a bachelor’s
degree in something other than
nursing.” She graduates in late
July and will begin to practice,
hopefully as a labor and delivery
nurse, in either the D.C. or
Baltimore area. I hope to
eventually get my master’s and
become a nurse midwife, but
for now just want to spend some
time in the delivery room as
an RN.”
KATE FELD (A) and her husband,
Richard Roe, have exciting news:
“Our daughter, Molly Patricia,
was born in May and is keeping
us all entertained. It’s been an
eventful year. I’ve also started a
nonprofit organization focused
on writing and technology. Our
first project, a writers’ map of
Manchester, England, is now live
at rainycitystories.com. And
we’ve moved to the delightfullynamed town of Ramsbottom. Any
Johnnies venturing to the northwest of England are welcome to
stop in for a pint.”
ZACH (A) and Michelle
RASMUSON are living in the rural
Anderson Valley of Northern
California. They have two girls,
Fay (6) and Marlowe (2).
KIRA ZIELINSKI (SF) is living
with her fiancé, Nathan, in
Mobile, Ala. She continues to
work hard on her transition from
helicopter pilot to small business
owner, having taken over ownership of a coffee house a year ago,
and divides the remainder of her
time between home improvement
and plotting how to get back to
the mountains. Kira can be
contacted at
k_zielinski@juno.com.
MICHAEL ELIOT BARTH (AGI)
married Jennifer Paige Parks in
Vail, Colo., this past August. The
couple resides in New York City,
where Michael heads an international education development
firm based at Columbia University (upublic), and Jennifer works
as the director of Strategic
Initiatives at the law firm White
& Case. Recently Mr. Barth was
appointed Special Advisor to the
Royal Education Council of
Bhutan, where he is developing
the country’s first graduate
schools of law and education.
A Beacon of Light
I
n early 2008, MATTHEW RAREY (AGI06) volunteered in a
journalistic capacity at the Ukrainian Catholic University
in order to write about “this beacon of light on the
Catholic Church’s Eastern Front.” Ukraine, he writes, “is
at the crossroads of Catholicism and Orthodoxy, an
important center of the seemingly interminable
ecumenical dialogue.” He later accepted a job as communications director for the Ukrainian Catholic Education Foundation
in his native Chicago. The foundation educates Americans about
the needs of the Church in Ukraine, specifically UCU, the only
Catholic university in the former Soviet Union. “Her classical
curriculum is a rarity in that neck of the woods—or anywhere in
the West, for that matter. (Mandatory Greek and Latin, anyone?)
I’ll likely be back in the former USSR this summer, visiting UCU
after participating in an academic conference in Vilnius centered
on Catholic social teachings: terribly necessary to revitalizing
the burnt-out shell of post-Soviet civic and spiritual life.”x
1997
JESSE BERNEY (A) and JENNIE
DAIR BERNEY (A98) are overjoyed to announce the birth of
their daughter, Isabel Lamb
Berney, in January.
BENJAMIN BLOOM (A) reports:
“Terry and I are expecting our
first baby in July. The bad news is
Terry won’t let me call the baby
Euclid if it’s a boy.”
JEHANNE DUBROW (A) has left
Lincoln, Neb., is back in Maryland, and has a new poetry collection out: “I’m currently living in
Chestertown, Md., where I teach
creative writing and literature at
Washington College. Jeremy is
serving on a destroyer in Norfolk,
Va. So, we do a great deal of
commuting and see one another
on the weekends! Our dog, Argos
the Wheaten Terrier, enjoys
spending time in both port cities.
In other news, my first poetry
collection, The Hardship Post,
was published by Three Candles
Press in early 2009. My second
book, From the Fever-World, just
won the Washington Writers’
Publishing House Award and will
be published in the autumn of
2009. A third poetry collection,
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 }
Stateside (which addresses my
experiences as a ‘Navy wife’), is
forthcoming from Northwestern
UP in 2010.”
“All’s well,” writes REBECCA
GAFFNEY (A). “Although San
Diego is my home, Red Letter
Days Events is growing at a rapid
pace, and we’re in the process of
opening an East Coast office in
Washington, D.C. I look forward
to visiting Annapolis as much as
possible!”
MELANIE KIRBY (SF) and her
partner Mark Spitzig are blessedly “buzzed” to announce the
birth of their newest queenbee,
their daughter Isis Rose Blossom
Spitzig. Isis was born November
11, 2008, in Taos, and according
to Melanie, “she is smiling and
beekeeping already!”
BRENDA M. JOHNSON (AGI)
resides in Baltimore, in the
wonderful Mount Vernon cultural
center of the city. “I am enjoying
being a docent at the Walters Art
Museum and especially enjoy
teaching school children about
art and art history,” she writes.
“In addition, because I can walk
just about everywhere I want to
go, getting to the theater,
�44
{Alumni Notes}
symphony, and restaurants is easy
and gives me lots of choices for
entertainment and enrichment.”
INYA LASKOWSKI (SF) spent
November 2008 at an artist’s
retreat in San Miguel de Allende,
Mexico. In October she curated
an exhibition for Japanese artist
Chiyomi Taneike Longo, titled
Kokoro no Tabigi at Gallery
Route One, Point Reyes, Calif.,
which culminated with a tea
ceremony. Inya had a sculpture
showing at the Quicksilver
Gallery, Forestville, Calif.,
in January.
KIT (A) and SONYA SCHIFF
LINTON (A00) happily announce
the birth of their son, Henry
Calvin Linton: “We are all doing
well in Durham, N.C. Our
daughter, Viola, is four years old
now, Kit works as a consultant for
IBM, and Sonya is an attorney. If
anyone wants to get in touch with
us, e-mail at
kitandsonya@hotmail.com.”
JILL NIENHISER (SFGI) received
a diploma in acting from the
National Conservatory of
Dramatic Arts in December and
is now auditioning for roles in
Washington D.C.-area theaters.
By day, she is a Mastermind at
Mind & Media, in Alexandria,
Va., a communication consulting
and media production company.
She also continues to serve as
webmaster for the nonprofit
Weston A. Price Foundation
(westonaprice.org), which will
launch a redesigned website this
spring with online membership,
social networking for members,
and a blog.
1998
LEAH FISCH (SF) is entering her
eighth year as a reorganizer. Her
new company, Recycle the City
(www.recyclethecity.com), is in
NYC and in the process of
becoming a 501(c) 3. “It is my
revolution, and I’m so excited
that it comes at the perfect time.
It has also been fantastic reconnecting and meeting Johnnies in
the city, even ones whom I did
not personally know when in
school. I look forward to many
fun experiences with them.”
BRENDA (BURGER) MACON (SF)
writes: “My husband (TODD
MACON, SFGI98) and I are living
in Durango, Colo., with our
beautiful baby daughter, Mia
Jolie Calliope Danger Macon.
We have just started selling first
edition and rare books. Our
company has a more conservative
name: Points West Fine Books.
In our spare time, Todd teaches
English and History of Religion
at a private boarding school, and
I teach drawing and painting
classes on the weekends.
We continue to be grateful to
St. John’s for bringing us
together, and for teaching us the
art of delightful conversation
...still a valuable pursuit after
10 years of marital bliss! Our love
of books continues to grow and
we enjoy sharing this with others
in a truly beautiful part of the
country. We are having fun, and
welcome all old friends to give us
a jingle.”
ELIZABETH TRICE (SF) is living
in her hometown of Portland,
Maine, working on regionalization projects for county government, and consulting on urban
housing developments for people
living alone. She also plays bass
and sings with her tango band,
Tango Mucha Labia.
1999
After graduation, TESS COBURN
(A) spent two years in China
teaching English. “During that
time I discovered that I had a
passion for clothing design.
I have since started my own
design company, Teresa Crowninshield. I now split my time
between Massachusetts and
China, designing and producing
my collection and performing
music with my band,
Beastwith2Backs. I wish all the
best to the class of 1999.”
2000
GREG BAMFORD (SFGI) is chair
of the English Department at The
Overlake School in Redmond,
Wash. His second daughter,
Annabel Greer Bamford, was
born in November.
ROBIN HEARN (SFGI) is happy to
announce that she will be sitting
for her architectural licensing
exams for the State of Oregon in
February 2009.
2001
CHRISTOPHER BALDWIN
BARNETT (AGI) recently finished
his doctorate at the University of
Oxford: “I worked out of the
Faculty of Theology and wrote a
dissertation on Søren
Kierkegaard. Also, my wife,
Stacy, and I recently welcomed
our third (!) son, Paul, who was
born on August 22, 2008.”
DAN FRAM (SF) is grinding his
teeth through the second (and
thankfully final) year of the
Mississippi Teacher Corps
teaching English to eighthgraders near Jackson, Miss.,
“where public education proves
to be the polar opposite of astral
harmony, public politics proves
to be polarized racially, and
public entertainment proves an
elliptical arc between twin poles
of salvation and sin.” He is
available on Facebook for
suggestions on how to return to
the life worth leading.
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 }
2002
PETER BOYCE (SF) is studying
textiles and sculpture at
Maryland Institute College of Art
and lives in Baltimore.
KATHERINE BROOKS (SF) is
living in Scotland doing a
master’s in philosophy and
thinking about going on to a
PhD. She has also been studying
ancient Greek language and
thinking about concentrating in
ancient philosophy.
AMANDA (KENNEDY) FINNEY (SF)
will graduate from Southern
Methodist University Dedman
School of Law in May 2009.
She hopes to next announce that
she’s passed the bar exam.
On January 12, MIRABAI
KNIGHT-LASCOUTX (née
KNIGHT, SF) married Katherine
Knight-Lascoutx (née Lascoutx,
currently getting her degree in
Greek and Latin at Hunter
College) at City Hall in Boston,
Mass. As soon as they arrived
back in Penn Station the
following evening, their marriage
was officially recognized in the
State of New York. Hurray for
incremental improvements!
Mirabai is still working as a
CART provider (academic
stenographer) for deaf and hardof-hearing students studying
everything from art to pharmacy,
and Katherine is a tutor at the
Hunter Reading/Writing Center.
Also, they found a cat in the park
near the Cloisters last spring and
named him Alcibiades. Life is
pretty great.
2003
BRENDAN NORWOOD (A)
graduates as president of his class
from Columbia University’s
College of Physicians & Surgeons
�45
{Alumni Notes}
this May. Norwood plans to begin
a residency in emergency
medicine in July.
ERIKA GINSBERG-KLEMMT
(SFGI) lives in Sarasota, Fla.,
with her three kids and hubbie.
Last year she taught writing at
Ringling College of Art and
Design and French at Riverview
High School. She just coauthored her first book The
Complete Anchoring Handbook.
She is now working on her first
solo book, based on her years
of sailing.
2004
In November 2008, EMMA
ELLIOTT (A) started a job as an
editor with the Rabobank in
Utrecht, the Netherlands.
MELISSA THOMAS and MARTIN
ANDERSON (both A) were
married on July 18, 2008, in front
of about 80 guests, including
BILL MOROCCO (A94),
ANDERSON TALLENT (A04),
SUMMER STARR (A04),
DEBORAH MANGUM (A05),
G. AUGUST DEIMEL (SF04), and
SARAH WAGNER (A08). Reports
Melissa: “COURTNEY MAY (A04)
was the perfect bridesmaid.
Groomsmen MICHAEL MALONE
(A04) and STUART BANNAN (A04)
were truly awesome friends and
wore tuxedos for us on a 90degree day. It was a beautiful
ceremony and we were both
thrilled to make it official!”
KETURA KESTIN (A) is living in
New York City and working at
CBS News. In addition, she is
currently filming in Toronto as
director of development for
Serendipity Productions. She has
three films in pre-production.
Please feel free to send along
scripts or any inquiries on
investing to: kkestin@earthlink.net.
2005
MATTHEW GATES (A) is in his
third year of service as a Peace
Corps agroforestry volunteer in
rural Senegal.
NICO JENKINS (EC) is living in
France while attending a PhD
program at the European Graduate School in Saas Fee Switzerland: “It is a program sort of set
up like the original St John’s
Graduate Institute program in
that it meets for only one month
of the year for a very intensive
series of classes (meeting 10
hours a day) with leading philosophers and artists. This summer I
will be studying with Alain
Badiou, Slavoj Zizek, and
others.”
JESSE POSNER (SF) graduated
from George Washington University Law School in 2008 and is
now working as an associate in
New York for the law firm Dorsey
& Whitney, LLP.
2006
A play by NORMAN ALLEN (AGI),
The Christmas Foundling, based
on stories by Bret Harte, was
produced in Seattle, Wash., and
Sonora, Calif., in December
2008. A new musical version of
Carmen, for which he wrote the
libretto, opened at the Karlin
Music Theatre in Prague in
October 2008. His play for young
audiences, The Eve of Friday
Morning, opened at The Shakespeare Theatre Company in
Washington, D.C., in January
2008. Norman is also chair of the
English Department at Cesar
Chavez Public Charter High
School in D.C.
DARYA PETERSON (SF) is
completing instructor training at
IMPACT Personal Safety this
February. She became the
outreach coordinator for the
organization in the fall of 2008.
She has been involved with the
organization for one and a half
years. IMPACT is a nonprofit
organization that empowers
people to live fuller lives by
teaching defense against verbal,
physical, and sexual assault.
AMY YOUNGKIN (A) relocated to
Chicago and accepted a clinical
research associate position at the
University of Chicago in the
section of Hematology/
Oncology. “I like my work. I love
my friends. I could do without
the weather.”
2007
“I am currently living in Phoenix
and working for the Great Books
charter school, Great Hearts
Academies, teaching fine arts,”
writes AMANDA MOON (AGI).
“It is wonderful!”
2008
BILLY GRAY (AGI) writes: “My
husband, Daniel, and I are living
in Dallas. It is currently his turn
to be the full-time student. I am
writing, barista-ing and taking a
literature class. Things are
good!”
JONATHAN LYNN LEBLANC
(SFGI) is pursuing a PhD in political science at Louisiana State
University in Baton Rouge: “My
field is political philosophy, and I
am currently studying political
theology, and republicanism. I
am also a graduate assistant in
the LSU Public Policy Research
Laboratory.”
KIM (NICHOLS) LEMENTINO (SF)
recently married Eli Lementino
and gave birth to a son, Wesley.
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 }
She is living in Albuquerque and
will be pursuing a PhD in electrical engineering at University of
New Mexico this spring.
ROY ROGOSIN (SFGI), an
“absolutely not-retired” professional conductor, is excited to be
joining St. John’s to create a
choral program to include all
students, staff, and faculty.
“We’ve already had our first
orientation and our goals are
eminently achievable,” he writes.
JESSIE SEILER (A) has joined the
Peace Corps. “I’ll be departing
February 27 for Senegal, where
I’ll be doing preventative health
education in a rural area for the
next two years. Internet access
will be super limited, but I’m
going to try to keep a blog at
http://jseiler.blogspot.com/. See
you guys in April of 2011. If there
are any Johnnies who are
thinking of applying and have
questions, please let me know! I
love to talk to Johnnies about the
Peace Corps, it just makes so
much sense in a weird way for us
to go from the philosophical to
the practical like this. At least, I
hope it does.” x
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 July; deadline for the alumni notes
section is May 31.
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
�46
J. Burchenal Ault
J. BURCHENAL AULT (H83)
FORMER COLLEGE OFFICER,
BVG MEMBER
J. Burchenal Ault, who served as
a part-time tutor, vice president,
provost of both campuses, and a
member of the Board of Visitors
and Governors, died on October
29, 2008. He was 82. Mr. Ault’s
lasting contributions to the
college include working to bring
teachers from inner-city schools
and Middle Eastern countries to
the college’s Graduate Institute.
Mr. Ault was born in Glendale,
Ohio, in 1926. He earned a bachelor’s degree in English from
Yale University and held an
honorary degree (Legis Doctor)
from Long Island University.
After graduating from Yale,
he was commissioned an officer
in the Marine Corps Reserve
in 1947 and served in the
Korean War.
He began his career in the
fabrics industry, as a salesman
with Bates Fabrics, Inc., in
New York City. He later joined
the Radiation Research Corp.
of Westbury, New York,
eventually becoming president
and chairman of the executive
committee.
In 1970, pursuing his deep
interest in education, Mr. Ault
moved to Santa Fe, working first
as a part-time tutor, then as vice
president of the Santa Fe
{Obituaries}
campus from 1970 to 1980. He
was provost of both campuses
between 1980 and 1985. In 1983,
the Alumni Association made
him an Honorary Alumnus.
After leaving St. John’s, he
served as consultant to Armand
Hammer United World College
of the American West and Vice
President of Financial Affairs at
the Santa Fe Institute. He also
worked as an independent
fundraising consultant.
Mr. Ault divided his time
between the undergraduate and
graduate programs. In addition
to attracting teachers from
urban schools to the GI, he also
brought teachers from Middle
Eastern universities to the graduate program, with the support
of grants from the U.S. Information Agency and the DeWitt
Wallace Foundation. Over 10
years, 60 teachers from 11 countries took part in the graduate
program. “Those who experienced St. John’s inevitably were
drawn to think deeply, perhaps
for the first time, about aspects
of their own culture and tradition,” Mr. Ault once said.
Mr. Ault and his wife,
Florence, had five children,
twelve grandchildren, and three
great-grandchildren.
ARLAND CHRIST-JANER
FORMER ST. JOHN’S VICE
PRESIDENT
Arland Christ-Janer, who began
his career at St. John’s and went
on to a distinguished career
leading institutions including
Boston University, died on
November 9, 2008, in Sarasota,
Florida. He was 86.
A Nebraska native, Mr. ChristJaner attended Carleton College
and then the Yale Divinity
School and the University of
Chicago Law School. In World
War II, he was a member of the
39th Bomb Group, as
bombardier on the Yankee
Dollar. He joined St. John’s as
assistant to the president, a post
he held from 1954 to 1960. He
also served as treasurer and vice
president. He became president
of Cornell College in Iowa and
later was appointed president of
Boston University in 1967. In
1970, Mr. Christ-Janer was
named president of the
nonprofit College Entrance
Examination Board. He left that
job in 1973 to return to college
administration with the New
College, a private, liberal arts
college in Florida; he was credited with saving the college by
persuading lawmakers to incorporate it into the state university
system in 1975.
BILLY LIEB (CLASS OF 1945)
CINEMATOGRAPHER, ARTIST
Cinematographer, nature lover,
peace activist, and artist Billy
Lieb died on November 26,
2008, in San Diego, California.
Born in Mt. Vernon, New York,
he lived in West Los Angeles for
many years. Mr. Lieb studied at
St. John’s for two years before
World War II interrupted his
studies. He fought in Europe as
a tank gunner stationed in
France, Belgium, and Germany,
participating in the Battle of the
Bulge in 1944.
Following the war, he settled
in Los Angeles and resumed his
education at the University of
California at Los Angeles.
He worked for many years in
the motion picture industry as a
cameraman and film editor for
Arland Christ-Janer
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 }
Walt Disney, among others.
Upon retiring he became deeply
involved in the peace movement. At the age of 63, he
walked in the Great Peace
March of 1986 across America,
followed by trips to Europe and
Russia with Veterans For Peace
groups. Later he returned to his
love of art, taking classes at
Santa Monica College. His
special passion was making
wood sculptures and assemblages, many with found objects
such as driftwood. He also
volunteered at the Getty Art
Museum and was a longtime
member of the Sierra Club.
LOUIS KURS (H00)
ANNAPOLIS TUTOR EMERITUS
Annapolis tutor emeritus Louis
N. Kurs died on August 22,
2008, at the age of 83. He
began teaching at St. John’s
College in 1964, moving from
Chicago, where he taught in the
geology department at the
University of Illinois. Mr. Kurs
attended the Colorado School
of Mines from 1942-43 and
again in 1946, and Columbia
University from 1943-45. He
received his Master of Science
from the University of Chicago
in 1948, and taught geology and
physical science at various
institutions in the Chicago area
until moving to St. John’s.
He particularly enjoyed
teaching freshman laboratory
and mathematics and worked
enthusiastically to ensure that
every student achieved his or
her best. He was always ready to
engage in conversations about
the books and the Program, and
his enthusiasm for St. John’s
caused most of his family to
follow him to the college. The
St. John’s College Annapolis
Alumni Association gave him an
honorary membership in 2000.
He retired from full-time
teaching in 1992, although he
continued his involvement in
the community until his death.
�47
{Obituaries}
Mr. Kurs is survived by Alice
(SFGI71), his wife of 58 years,
as well as by his four daughters
and their husbands: Claire Kurs
(A74) and Pascal Gambardella;
Jean (SF75) and Jim Blair;
Eleanor (A80) and John Verdi,
Annapolis tutor; and Elizabeth
and Hans-Peter Soeder (A81).
He is also survived by seven
grandchildren: Daniel and
Peter Gambardella; Antonia
and Luca Verdi; and CarlGustav, Johann Friedrich, and
Armin Heinrich Soeder.
ANNE BERVEN (SF00)
SANTA FE TUTOR
Anne Berven, alumna and
former tutor at the Santa Fe
campus, died on January 30,
2008, at age 39. She served on
the faculty for many years, and
was particularly active in the
music program, devoting herself
to helping students and faculty
develop their musical talents.
At a memorial held on
February 7 in Bothell, Washington, Sam Markham (SF01)
recalled bonding with Miss
Berven over difficulties with
basic geometry and later being
guided by her as a member of a
choir under her direction.
“I always found it ironic that
while Anne was no genius in the
math department, she excelled
at music, which is supposedly
undergirded by mathematics,”
he said. “Proportion and
balance, dynamics and flow,
these were things Anne understood with ease and conveyed
with enthusiasm to her fellow
classmates and students. That
same year Anne created a choir
out of nothing. We were a ragtag
group of students who enjoyed
singing and had been encouraged by her. After several
months of practice under Anne’s
guidance we performed Rachmaninoff’s Vespers. I remember
being very nervous on the day of
the performance, as I was
singing one of the solos. Anne
helped me through my anxiety.
She made the point that singing
for an audience is an offering of
oneself and one’s voice. It is a
vulnerable act that mixes fear,
trust, and fearlessness. Anne
lived her life in this spirit of
courage and vulnerability. I’ve
touched on just one part of what
made Anne a superior human
being. Her wicked sense of
humor and heightened awareness of life were an example to
us all. While many sleepwalk
through life, Anne was awake
and alive to life’s sadness, goodness, and beauty.”
Friends, classmates, and
former students shared
memories of Miss Berven on
a memorial website
(http://anneberven.
wordpress.com), remembering
her warmth, generosity, sense of
humor, and devotion to music.
ALSO NOTED
PATRICIA DAWSON BENSON
(A90), OCT. 17, 2007
LORIN BLACKSTAD (SF08),
NOV. 7, 2008
LEAH BOYD (CLASS OF 1959),
DEC. 9, 2008
JAMES BOYLE (CLASS OF 1939),
OCT. 23, 2008
MELVIN BRAUNSTEIN (CLASS OF
1949), DEC. 1, 2008
PAULETTE DOLLINGER (SFGI89)
EDUCATOR
Paulette Dollinger, who was an
educator in New York City
public schools for 20 years, died
on February 2, 2009, at the age
of 53.
A resident of Queens, New
York, Ms. Dollinger began her
career as an English teacher at
Sarah J. Hale, Clara Barton, and
Lafayette high schools in
Brooklyn. In 1991, she became a
guidance counselor, eventually
serving at several high schools
in Manhattan. She worked at the
Office of High School Admissions in Manhattan, later served
as Assistant Principal for Pupil
Personnel Services at Bushwick
High School in Brooklyn, and
was a guidance counselor
at Canarsie High School.
She had begun training
for drug counseling as a
post-retirement career.
Ms. Dollinger took a
sabbatical to attend the
Graduate Institute in
Santa Fe. According to
her husband, Gregory
Zsidisin, Ms. Dollinger
“considered her time at
St. John’s one of the most
intellectually stimulating
and challenging experiences of her life, and was
very proud to have graduated from the program.”
As a tutor in Santa Fe,
Anne Berven shared her
love of music with
students.
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 }
D. MICHAEL BROWN (CLASS OF
1951), SEPT. 4, 2008
WALTER DUDLEY (SFGI70),
SEPT. 18, 2008
MARTHA (MARI) BILLINGTON
GALEREAVE (SF79),
JULY 4, 2008
NAOMI GARWOOD (SFGI79),
SEPT. 3, 2008
WILLIAM HAKIM (SF79),
DEC. 12, 2008
ANDREW HILL (A98),
DEC. 1, 2008
DINWIDDIE LAMPTON, JR.
(CLASS OF 1938), SEPT. 22,
2008
MICHAEL J. LANDRY (SF70),
NOV. 28, 2008
CLAUDIA “KIT” LARCOMBE
(SF69), SEPT. 17, 2008
IAN CAMPBELL LEA (CLASS OF
1949), APRIL 18, 2007
ASBURY LEE III (CLASS OF
1937), FEB. 20, 2009
ROBERT LOHR (CLASS OF 1954),
OCT. 8, 2008
HENRY MACK (CLASS OF 1945),
SEPT. 28, 2008
JOHN ROBERTS (CLASS OF 1939),
OCT. 14, 2008
ALLEN SCHOOLFIELD (CLASS OF
1945), DEC. 28, 2008
ARTHUR TORELLI (AGI07),
OCT. 21, 2008
�48
{Photo Essay}
Everyday Wonders in a Commuter Landscape
by J.W. Ocker (AGI02)
he world has gotten so that it
proclaims its wonders pretty
loudly these days. Every bit of
ancient, awe-inspiring
natural beauty, every dizzying
example of human architectural prowess and enlightening artistic
accomplishment, and every improbable
creature discovered in the most improbable
places has its own marketing team to ensure
that as many people in the world as possible
know about it. Add this to the way modern
transit has shrunken the size of the globe
and the media that engulfs and connects it
all, and it’s evident that you don’t have to be
an explorer of legendary and daring mien to
see the world anymore.
But there are other ways to see the world
and other wonders not so loudly proclaimed.
Much more humble wonders that are shoved
for lack of a present use into the dusty attic
corners of the world, stowed in small towns
like the forgotten steamer trunks of longdead relatives, lost in the overwhelming
cacophony of the city like a tiny dislodged
jewel in an avalanche of rock, or hidden in
plain view like a coin in the palm of a
conjurer. These aren’t usually called
wonders. They’re called oddities. But that
doesn’t make them any less wonderful.
I’ve had the opportunity to travel abroad a
few times in my life, but most of my existence has orbited that interminable stretch
of life that is the northern half of the Interstate 95 corridor. Even in that small bit of
commuter-heavy landscape, I’ve encoun-
T
tered countless oddities of
history, culture, and art.
In Philadelphia, you can
stand beneath Auguste Rodin’s
towering and grim masterpiece of sculpture, The Gates
of Hell, and then travel two
hours west in the same state to
the ghost town of Centralia to
stand gingerly atop a perennially burning 400-acre underground coal fire that might as
well be the gates of hell.
In New Hampshire, you can
see both ends of the spectrum
of human potential in a single
afternoon—the birthplace of
America’s first serial killer, H.H. Holmes,
standing forlorn and apologetic in the town
of Gilmanton, and the family homesteadturned-park of America’s first man in space,
Alan B. Shepard, Jr., in Derry.
You can visit homemade mummies of
modern vintage tucked into the bathroom of
a small museum in Philippi, West Virginia,
and an official Egyptian mummy whose time
is marked in millennia staring blindly at the
ceiling of a museum in Bridgeport,
Connecticut, while children work at arts and
crafts at a table nearby. To me, both of these
experiences were in some ways more
compelling than an actual trip I took to the
Great Pyramid of Egypt itself.
You can see the grand but conventional
National World War II Memorial in D.C.
anytime you like, but I was much more
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 }
impressed by the surprising international
War of the Worlds Memorial that holds
modest court in an unassuming little park in
the unrecognized-by-most-GPS-units town
of Grover’s Mill, New Jersey.
Most statues are erected in honor of
people who have inspired awe by the heroic
actions of their lives. And I’ve never been
more awed by a statue than when I visited
the sprawling and astounding Dr. Seuss
National Memorial in Springfield, Massachusetts, or the modest, but note-perfect Jim
Henson statue in College Park, Maryland.
Here there be monsters, as well. In addition to the already mentioned mummies,
you can witch-hunt in Salem, Massachusetts,
visit the still-existing grave of an 1800s-era
vampire unearthed in Exeter, Rhode Island,
walk in the shuffling footsteps of zombies in
a mall in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, looked
�49
{Photo Essay}
over your shoulder for the devil who haunts a
pine forest in New Jersey, and pay your
respects to the Invisible Man buried in
Moultonborough, New Hampshire.
In Danvers, Massachusetts, you can move
into a 130-year-old insane asylum recently
converted into a swank condominium
complex. A few states down in Moundsville,
West Virginia, you can spent the night in a
130-year-old prison, watching practitioners
of the peculiar hobby of ghost hunting.
Back up in Fall River, Massachusetts, you
can spend the night at a 120-year-old murder
scene, in the very bedroom of suspected axe
murderess Lizzie Borden.
You can safari through Burlington,
Vermont, to see its flying monkeys, its lake
monster, and its giant ground whales, but a
much more terrifying adventure is a simple
drive-through safari park experience located
in Natural Bridge, Virginia.
The literary inspirations of some of the
greatest writers of the English language
proliferate in this corridor, including
Irving’s haunted Sleepy Hollow, New York;
Thoreau’s idyllic Walden Pond in Concord,
Massachusetts; and Hawthorne’s somber
House of Seven Gables in Salem,
Massachusetts.
I don’t know what exactly the common
denominator is with all these oddities for
me. Some appeal to a personal morbid
streak that runs the length and width of my
entire being. Others are connected to
specific joys in my life such as reading great
literature or watching strange movies. Still
others are just intrinsically attention-grabbing. I do know, though, that each of these
oddities has a story worth listening to, a
peak in the normally flat line that is unfortunately often the best metaphor for everyday
existence. Somehow finding and visiting
these artifacts gives me a share in those
stories. And then that gives me a chance to
tell the stories myself. Most amazing, oddities such as these are located not in far-flung
exotic locations, but within driving distance.
And that’s true no matter where you are. In
fact, if this few states’ worth of ground is any
evidence, the world will never wear out its
wonders…even the odd ones. x
J.W. Ocker (AGI02) chronicles his visits to
oddities at his website O.T.I.S.: Odd Things
I’ve Seen (www.OddThingsIveSeen.com).
Opposite page, Above: An underground fire continues to burn in the abandoned town of
Centralia, Penn. Below (l. to r.): Dr. Seuss National Memorial, Springfield, Mass.; War of
the Worlds Memorial, Grovers Mill, N.J.; and Lake Monster Monument, Burlington, Vt.
Above: J. Seward Johnson Jr.’s sculpture, “The Awakening,” now at National Harbor in
Prince George’s County, Md. At right: detail from Rodin’s “The Gates of Hell,”
Philadelphia.
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 }
�50
{Alumni Association News}
Thirty Years of D.C. Seminars
read, and more the fact that we’re reading
it together,” says Grandi. “It’s a community. Everyone has the experience of
St. John’s, and Johnnies have a way of
approaching the work.”
Papier was the first president when the
reading group officially became a chapter.
Possessing a certain “anarchic spirit,” she
says, the group initially resisted being a
full-fledged chapter; it finally signed up in
the early 1980s. In addition to Grandi and
Papier, Sharon Garvey (SFGI78), and Jean
Dickason (AGI85) served as presidents.
Two alumni who have since passed away,
William Ross (class of 1938) and Sam Stiles
(class of 1954), also served as presidents.
Papier tapped Aickelin, a librarian for a
D.C. law firm, to serve as the group’s
librarian, helping with paper and
electronic distribution of readings.
Economist Carl Seastrum, a Summer
Classics and Executive Seminar devotee
who became a regular at the chapter
seminars, was drafted as treasurer.
At the chapter’s last election, a larger
board of directors was put in place in an
effort to expand the offerings to include
more social events. There’s now a social
committee, headed by Vice President
Robert Morris (SF04), that organizes
regular happy hours and other nonseminar activities, such as a recent bowling
outing. But the seminar remains the core
of the chapter, cherished by its long-timers
and delighting newcomers.
In January, Annapolis tutor David
Townsend led a regular Tuesday seminar
on Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address.
Two weeks later, the group
followed up with an “imbibe
while you opine” discussion of
Barack Obama’s Inaugural
Address, held at a Greek
restaurant.
The weather was nasty that
night, and a couple of people
couldn’t attend. Still, 22
people showed up. It was a
seminar night, after all, and
in D.C. they take their seminars seriously.
To see what the Washington
chapter has been reading for
30 years, visit its website:
www.stjohnscollege.edu; click
on “Alumni” to access the
online community, then the
Washington, D.C., chapter. x
he 17 people exchanged
they’ve been coming for about 17 years.
handshakes, hugs, and a
“It keeps us reading interesting things that
little gossip as they
I for one am not certain I would be reading
wandered into the Cleveland without the seminar,” Carol says.
Park Library meeting room
“I wouldn’t say interesting, I’d say
on a wintry Tuesday
important,” adds Bill. “I’m really grateful
evening. But when John Rees (A74) was
to Ed and Deborah for having the whereready to ask the opening question, they
withal and knowledge to keep a steady flow
were all business. “Is Socrates being fair to
of readings. There’s always intelligent
Ion?” asked Rees. A lively discussion
conversation, and that’s hard to come by.”
ensued as the group tossed around various
According to Papier, who has done two
interpretations of who the rhapsode was
stints as president and plays a key role in
and what truth Socrates wanted him to
assembling the reading list, “Our readings
learn. Was rhapsody an art? Was it merely
have spanned 4,000 years, from the
a techne? Or could it be a divine madness?
Babylonian creation myth called the
Enuma Elish to Barack Obama. We don’t
Greek works are always a draw for the
Washington, D.C., alumni chapter, but the confine ourselves to the Great Books. But
we still look for works that have proved
reading for the February 10 seminar was
their value over time. It’s very hard for a
chosen for a special reason: to mark the
living writer to get onto the schedule.”
30th anniversary of the reading group.
A professional writer and editor, Papier
Plato’s Ion was the subject of the first
seminar on January 24, 1979. Since then,
is also in charge of publicizing the
there have been bi-monthly seminars on
seminars. Eight years ago, she brought
some 600 readings, making this the oldest
the group into the electronic age, with
continuously active chapter of the
the creation of a Yahoo group that generAlumni Association.
ates weekly reminders of chapter activities.
Among the participants in the
Close to 300 people subscribe to the
discussion were three people who had been stjohnsdc list.
present at that first conversation 30 years
Except for the summer break, during
ago: Edward Grandi (A77), Mark Aickelin
which seminar participants tackle a long
(75), and Deborah Papier (A72). Grandi
work, readings are generally short, making
and Aickelin were among the original
it easier for members with busy careers to
organizers of the group, and all three have
participate.
leadership roles in the chapter today.
“For me what’s important is less what we
“A year or so after I graduated, I was nostalgic for
seminar,” says Grandi, a nonprofit executive who currently
serves as the chapter president. “I wanted to have those
conversations again. The
chapter filled the void I was
experiencing.”
The D.C. area was also
experiencing a void. There had
been an alumni-led seminar
group in the fifties and sixties,
but during the seventies there
was were only occasional
discussions organized by the
college. So Grandi got together
with two friends from school—
Aickelin and Ed Kaitz (A76)—
and got the conversation going.
Six hundred readings later, the D.C. alumni chapter is still going
Bill and Carol Tilles (both
strong.
class of 1959) estimate that
T
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 }
�51
{Alumni Association News}
The Silk Road Project
ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE
ALUMNI ASSOCIATION
An Introduction to Eastern Classics
A summer seminar offers a glimpse of
Santa Fe’s Eastern Classics program.
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.
international imperative for citizens of the
world. If successful, the future seminars
will feature comparisons of East and West,
such as Aristotle and Zhu Xi or Aquinas
and Shankara.
Already half-filled, the seminar is now
open to all interested Johnnies. The cost is
$3,600 and a certificate of completion will
be provided for use in obtaining credit
toward the EC master’s degree. The deadline for enrollment is the end of April.
Contact Maggie Magalnick at maggie.
magalnick@sjcsf.edu or 505-984-6199 to
enroll. x
ANNAPOLIS
Beth Martin Gammon,
A94
410-332-1816
emartin@crs.org
AUSTIN/SAN
ANTONIO
Toni Wilkinson, SGI87
512-278-1697
wilkinson_toni
@hotmail.com
BOSTON
Dianne Cowan, A91
617-666-4381
diannecowan@rcn.com
CHICAGO
Rick Lightburn, SF76
847-922-3862
ricklightburn@alumni.
stjohnscollege.edu
PHOENIX
Donna Kurgan, AGI96
623-444-6642
dakurgie@yahoo.com
SEATTLE
James Doherty, SFGI76
206-542-3441
jdoherty@mrsc.org
NEW YORK CITY
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
DALLAS/FORT
WORTH
Paula Fulks, SF76
817-654-2986
puffjd@swbell.net
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
DENVER/BOULDER
Elizabeth Jenny, SF80
303-530-3373
epj727@comcast.net
HOUSTON
Norman Ewart, A85
713-303-3025
norman.ewart@rosetta
resources.com
NORTHERN CALIF.
Reynaldo Miranda, A99
415-333-4452
reynaldo.miranda@
gmail.com
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
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 }
SOUTHERN CALIF.
Jan Conlin, SF85
310-490-2749
conlinjan1@yahoo.com
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Ed Grand,i A77
301-351-8411
egrandi@aol.com
WESTERN NEW
ENGLAND
Peter Weis, SF84
413-367-2174
peter_weis@
nmhschool.org
n
ALBUQUERQUE
Robert Morgan, SF76
505-275-9012
rim2u@comcast.net
ge
MINN./ST. PAUL
Carol Freeman, AGI94
612-822-3216
Freem013@umn.edu
in each area.
’s C
ohn olle
.J
mn
u
SANTA FE
Richard Cowles,
SFGI95
505-986-1814
rcowles2@comcast.net
Al
PHILADELPHIA
Helen Zartarian, AGI86
215-482-5697
helenstevezartarian@
mac.com
MADISON
Consuelo Sañudo,
SGI00
Call the alumni listed below for information about
608-251-6565
chapter, reading group, or other alumni activities sanudoc@tds.net
CHAPTER CONTACTS
io
amy raab
The new Silk Road Project will start this
summer with Confucius’ Analects, translated by Edward Singerland, and selections
from A Sourcebook in Chinese Philosophy,
translated by Wing-Tsit Chan. Tutor
Krishnan Venkatesh will lead the threeweek seminar, which is scheduled for
1:30-3:30 p.m. Monday through Thursday,
August 3 through August 20, 2009, on the
Santa Fe campus. Venkatesh will introduce
components of the Chinese language;
a final paper is optional.
Pam Carter (SFGI08) and Jean
“Puddin” Clarke (SFGI95, Board of
Visitors and Governors member) brainstormed the idea as a prelude to the
Eastern Classics primarily for Johnnies
who do not have the time to start the
EC. However, they envision the seminar
to have additional benefits. It will serve
as a “test-drive” for those who may be
overly concerned about the language
requirements, for those who cannot as
yet afford the yearlong program, and for
those desiring a greater understanding
of the Eastern mind, now an
St
S
t. John’s College will experiment this summer with a new
seminar concept bridging East
and West. The seminar is
designed for Johnnies—undergraduate or GI graduates—
desiring to study powerful Eastern authors
and texts, but unable to fully commit to the
yearlong master’s degree in Eastern
Classics program.
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.
i A s s o cia
t
Providing
opportunities
for more alumni
to connect
more often and
more richly
�52
greenfield library
{St. John’s Forever}
Elliott Carter at 100
R
enowned composer Elliott
Carter recently turned 100,
inspiring concerts, boxed
sets of retrospective CDs,
and a tribute website:
www.carter100.com. His
time at St. John’s was brief, but memorable. According to J. Winfree Smith’s
A Search for the Liberal College, Carter was
one of several faculty members
Stringfellow Barr and Scott Buchanan
brought in as they grappled with finding
the right place for music in the New
Program:
“Herbert Swartz in 1938, Elliott Carter
in 1940, and Nicholas Nabokov in 1941
were all added to the faculty in large part
because of their music knowledge, which,
it was expected, would enable them to
suggest how music as a fine art might fit
into the curriculum and also to sponsor
and supervise music as an extracurricular
activity.” None remained very long, Smith
noted, and “little came of their efforts.”
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 }
Carter and Nabokov offered seminars on
musical composition, but they didn’t gain
much ground here, Smith posited, largely
because of Buchanan, “who thought that
one should study the scores without
listening to and without ever having
listened to the sounds represented by the
staves with their whole notes, half notes,
and quarter-notes, etc., and without even
knowing that those marks might refer to
sounds.” x
�{Alumni Events Calendar}
Alumni Calendar
Piraeus
Milton’s Paradise Lost
Section 1: Led by Eva Brann and David Carl
(FULL)
Section 2: Led by Tom May
June 4-7, 2009
Annapolis
The weekend will begin with a welcome
dinner on Thursday evening followed by the
first of five seminars spread out over the
next three days. Over the weekend, there
will be time to enjoy the treasures of the
Chesapeake Bay, the museums in D.C., or
reading, boating, and eating crabs.
Cost: $400 per person
Includes all seminars, receptions and
Sunday brunch
On campus room and board is $200 per
person for three nights.
Stendhal’s The Red and the Black
Led by Michael Rawn and Ned Walpin
June 14 – 19, 2009
Santa Fe
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, with no scheduled seminars, will be an opportunity to enjoy Santa
Fe and prepare for the final three seminars.
Homecoming
Shakespeare In Performance
King Lear
Led by Louis Petrich and Jon Tuck
Acting Instruction by Shakespeare Theatre
Company’s Academy for Classical Acting
June 18-21, 2009
Harman Center for the Arts
Washington, D.C.
Annapolis
Friday, September 25 - Sunday,
September 27
(please note that Sunday’s events will be
over by 2 p.m. due to the start of Yom
Kippur at sundown that evening)
In collaboration with the Shakespeare
Theatre Company in Washington, D.C.,
this combination seminar/performancebased workshop will feature stimulating
scholarly discussion integrated with an
exploration of the actor’s craft and
approach to classic text. Participants will
engage in seminars, text analysis, stage
combat, and voice and movement workshops. Whether you are a novice actor,
scholar, or student, “Shakespeare in Performance” is a not-to-be missed workshop.
Alumni Association President Jason Walsh
Cost: $990 per person
(A97) presents the Award of Merit to
Includes seminars, ticket to performance of
Peter McGhee (class of 1955).
King Lear, instruction, breakfasts, receptions and tours.
Registration and payment deadline: June 5,
2009
Santa Fe
Friday, October 9 - Sunday, October 11
Cost: $475 per person
Includes all seminars, lunches, and dinner
on Sunday
On campus room and board is $250 per
person for five nights
Registration and payment deadline: May
22, 2009
Jason Bielagus (SF98) enjoys the
Homecoming banquet in Santa Fe.
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2009 }
�NON -P ROFIT ORG .
U.S. POSTAGE
PAID
P UBLISHED BY THE
COMMUNICATIONS OFFICE
P.O. BOX 2800
A NNAPOLIS , MARYLAND 21404
ADDRESS SERVICE REQUESTED
A NNAPOLIS , MD
P ERMIT NO . 120
�
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<em>The College </em>(2001-2017)
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Santa Fe, NM
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Issue of <em>The College</em> Magazine. Published in Spring 2009.
The College
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Text
The
College
St. John’s College • Annapolis • Santa Fe
J.S. Bach
Music and Culture
S p r i n g
2 0 0 7
�On Bach
The College (usps 018-750)
tudying Bach’s St. Matthew Passion is one of the great moments in four
years of St. John’s. Indeed, if the college ever required a theme song, the
Passion would do quite well. What makes it a great work worthy of the
Program? To Eric Stoltzfus, music librarian in Annapolis,“it’s the
combination of a very powerful story, and a sense that there’s a brilliant
mind interpreting that story and adding things to it.” Peter Kalkavage,
who led the Annapolis Community Chorus in its performance of the
opening and closing choruses of the work, says the Passion is an immensely satisfying
culmination of two years of the study of music, a work that holds special meaning for many
alumni years after they leave the college.
Johann Sebastian Bach was born in 1685, a year that saw the birth of two other great
musicians: Georg Friedrich Handel and Domenic Scarlatti. By the time he was 10, both of
Bach’s parents were dead, and Bach came under the wing of his eldest brother, Johann
Christoph, who helped guide his musical education. Bach sang in a boys’ choir, and later
turned to the organ, pursuing his musical education independently. At age 18, he was
appointed organist of the New Church in Arnstadt, where he kept getting into trouble.
(In 1705, he brawled with a student and called him a “nanny-goat bassoonist”; the
following year was reprimanded for staying away too long from his post after he traveled to
another city to hear a great organist.)
In 1707, Bach became organist in Mühlhausen, where he married his cousin, Maria
Barbara Bach, with whom he had seven children. Other posts followed: court organist and
chamber musician, later concert master at Weimar; musical director at Köthen for Prince
Leopold of Anhalt; music director and cantor of the church of St. Thomas, Leipzig. He was
the third choice for the post at St. Thomas, which he took up in 1723, and he so disliked
one of his duties—teaching Latin to the schoolboys—that he paid someone else to do it.
In a span of about five years in Leipzig, Bach gave the first performance of the
St. John Passion and produced the Magnificat and the St. Matthew Passion. After Maria
Barbara’s death, Bach married Anna MagdalenaWülken, a gifted musician, who bore him
13 children.
Bach died in 1750, but four of his sons continued his legacy: Carl Philipp Emanuel,
Johann Christian, Wilhelm Friedemann, and Johann Christoph Friedrich. C.P.E. Bach
co-wrote his father’s obituary, which praised his moral character, piety, and devotion to his
art: “If ever a composer showed polyphony in its greatest strength, it was certainly our late
lamented Bach. If ever a musician employed the most hidden secrets of harmony with the
most skilled artistry, it was certainly our Bach.”
This issue of the magazine considers music’s place in the Program. Not only is it
important in the classroom, but music in all its forms also enlivens the communities on
both campuses, with groups such as Primum Mobile singing sacred music in the Pendulum
Pit in Annapolis, and tutors such as Cary Stickney in Santa Fe sharing their talents and
love for music with all of us.
S
—RH
is published quarterly 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
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
Gail Griffith,
Santa Fe editor
Emily DeBusk,
assistant editor
Jennifer Behrens, art director
Annapolis
410-626-2539
Santa Fe
505-984-6104
Contributors
Elizabeth Burlington (A08)
Caroline Caldwell (SF08)
Nelson Hernandez (A99)
Andrea Lamb
Oliver Lemke (SF08)
Peter Pesic
Jennifer Sprague
Jennifer Wright (A08)
Elliott Zuckerman (HA95)
Magazine design by
Claude Skelton Design
�Spring 2007
Vo l u m e 3 3 , I s s u e 2
The
College
The Magazine for Alumni of St. John’s College
Annapolis
•
Santa Fe
{Contents}
10
“With a Clear and
Single Purpose”
d e p a r t m e n t s
page
2
•
•
•
What the $125 million campaign for
St. John’s College means to the
Santa Fe campus.
•
•
16
“Sing, Goddess”
•
page
•
page 10
As part of the quadrivium, music belongs
in the Program, but where and how?
34
Annapolis treasurer Bronté Jones
A year in Iraq
Green energy for Annapolis
Annapolis student establishes leadership
retreat
Johnnies from foreign lands
Restoring Key’s will
An Annapolis-born novelist had ties
to St. John’s
bibliofile
“How-to” books for people who think
they know how to read.
22
Pop Johnnies
page
39
Can YouTube and American Idol coexist
with the form of the good?
26
Visual Thinkers
from the bell towers
alumni
P RO F I L E S
38 Christian Acemah (SF05) travels,
page
page 16
Three artists working in different media
share their distinctive works and
philosophies.
36
Happy Birthday,
Croquet
page
researches, and writes for African
development.
41 Coming of age in tumultuous times,
the class of 1966 has a distinct character.
42 Manhattan dealmaker Munir Hussein (A90)
discovers cultural understanding in
Maine.
48
50
52
Over 25 years, the St. John’s croquet
tradition has evolved into a
mini-Homecoming.
page 26
on the cover
Johann Sebastian Bach
Illustration by David Johnson
obituaries
alumni association news
st. john’s forever
�2
{From the Bell Towers}
Beyond the Bottom Line
Annapolis Treasurer Bronté Jones
the man in the photo–her
grandfather, Asbury Jones.
“Last fall I drove over to my
grandparents’ home on the
Eastern Shore for my grandfather’s 85th birthday. My
grandfather is my absolute
favorite person in the whole
world. He’s a blue-collar
worker and when he retired,
he made $16,000 dollars, but
he put seven of his kids
through college,” says Jones.
gary pierpoint
A brass-framed photo on
Bronté Jones’ desk tells the
story of how she has become,
at 37, one of the youngest
college treasurers in the
country, and one of the few
African-American women
in this male-dominated
profession. Jones, who joined
St. John’s last summer as
treasurer, says she credits
her parents for what she has
accomplished, but especially
“He walked to work until he
was 45 to save money. He had a
plan–it was about fiscal
management and about the
differences that could make.
I went to college and majored
in finance simply because I
understood the difference that
having strong financial
acumen could make in one’s
life.” Growing up on the
Eastern Shore in a tight-knit
family filled with educators
(her mother is a retired
teacher and three of her
mother’s siblings are also
educators), Jones saw her
grandfather daily and later
took his inspiration, along
with his photo, on her
academic and professional
journey.
As treasurer of the
Annapolis campus, Jones’
position includes fiscal
responsibility for the college’s
operations and she is a
member of the management
committee that oversees
all aspects of the college’s
administration and strategic
planning. Jones brings more to
her new position at St. John’s
than her solid credentials,
which include a summer at
the Harvard Institute for
Educational Leadership,
and a master’s in business
administration from American
University, in addition to her
doctorate from the University
of Texas at Austin. She brings
a passionate sense of purpose
and the exuberance and desire
to help people that mark a
leader.
Besides her grandfather, her
role models for leadership are
trailblazers such as Thurgood
Marshall, Nelson Mandela,
and the Rev. Martin Luther
King, Jr. “I’m drawn to the
people who feel like their lives
are a mission and there is
something they’re supposed to
accomplish with it.” Jones
cites Johnetta Cole, president
of Bennett College, as the kind
of female leader she admires.
“Her book Conversations:
Straight Talk with America’s
Sister President inspired me—
she’s a role model for me.
I like people who made a
difference and understood
their lives’ work to be about
enhancing the lives of others,”
says Jones, who aspires to be a
college president one day.
Jones discovered her
passion for higher education
10 years ago while she was
Bronté Jones discovered her
calling in higher education.
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 }
�{From the Bell Towers}
working at the state auditor’s
office in Austin, Texas.
“Originally I thought I’d be a
financial planner, then I
wanted to be a finance
professor and teach, but when
I found myself auditing federal
financial aid programs on
college campuses I discovered
the world of higher education
administration. When I went
onto college campuses I came
alive; I loved getting to know
the students. It was and still is
about more than making sure
the institution’s bills are paid
and books are balanced, it’s
about relationships and being
a bridge for students who
need advice.” Jones changed
her doctoral focus from
finance to higher education
administration and was
accepted at the University of
Texas, Austin. “After
completing my doctoral
studies in Austin in 2005,
it was my dream to return
to Maryland. This dream
has been fulfilled by having
the opportunity to serve as
“The true sign of
intelligence, per
my grandfather,
is that you can
explain anything
to anybody.”
Bronté Jones, Annapolis treasurer
an officer for a premier
institution such as St. John’s,”
says Jones.
Jones brings her sense of
purpose to everything from
troubleshooting with custodial
staff about new equipment,
to offering astute advice on
financial strategy at investment meetings with other
officers of the college. Yet,
dedicated to a leadership
style that centers on sharing
Rankings Revolt
Christopher Nelson (SF70) and Santa Fe President Michael
Peters are among 12 college presidents leading a revolt
against U.S. News and World Report’s college rankings
system. Along with their colleagues, they signed a letter sent
to college presidents throughout the nation, asking them to
refuse to fill out the magazine’s reputational survey and to
refuse to use the rankings in any promotional efforts. The
letter asks colleges to give the magazine data collected
according to shared professional standards.
For almost a decade, St. John’s has declined to take part in
the U.S. News and World Report survey, maintaining that
rankings don’t help students choose a college that is right
for them. Both presidents have been quoted in the national
press on the college’s opposition to rankings of any kind.
Throughout the spring, college presidents continued to
sign on to the effort, coordinated through the Education
Conservancy, a nonprofit organization that seeks to decommercialize the college selection process. However,
U.S. News Editor Brian Kelly dismissed the presidents
leading the effort as a small group of “the usual suspects.”
“These are the folks making these complaints for years,”
he told the Washington Post. x
knowledge, she remains
accessible, even humble.
“The true sign of intelligence,
per my grandfather, is that you
can explain anything to
anybody. Finance isn’t rocket
science. I want to explain
terms like amortize, life
annuity, and alternate investment, and what’s in our
endowment. I want everyone
to really understand the goals
of the institution, how we
operate and know that the
college and its business office
isn’t a mysterious place.”
Like many of Jones’
colleagues, President Christopher Nelson is eager to learn
from the college’s new treasurer. “We seek Bronté’s advice
on everything from policy
initiatives to administrative
matters. Bronté brings a
certain sophistication to the
business operations and
financial controls that is new
to the college,” says Nelson.
“The role of a treasurer in a
small college is not just a
financial manager. Bronté has
a higher education background so she can serve us
across the whole institution—
admissions, financial aid,
enrollment management,
business, operations, financial
management. She brings a
level of managerial skill to
help all of us to do our work
better.”
Given the $125 million
capital campaign, Jones’
expertise is needed now more
than ever. Not only does she
help the college manage the
funds that are raised through
the campaign, she also works
with staff to develop a
strategic plan that secures
the college’s future. Jones
says the challenges she faces
at St. John’s are unique as
compared, for instance, to
Huston-Tillotson University in
Austin, Texas, where she was
vice president for administration and finance from 2004 to
2006. “The interesting thing
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 }
3
about St. John’s, unlike
anywhere else in America, is
that we’re actually having
discussions about reducing the
size of the student enrollment
to preserve the rich educational experience of the
seminars; this runs contrary to
most institutions,” she says.
One of Jones’ challenges, she
says, is to figure out “how to
thrive with 450 instead of 500
students and still provide the
small classroom experience
that we do.” For Jones this
translates into questions such
as: Where and how does the
college streamline? To what
degree does the endowment
need to grow in order to
sustain the college at 450
students? “There are several
questions that we will need to
answer. It’s not going to be a
tomorrow fix; it’s going to be a
multi-year plan.”
As Jones moves forward in
her new position as treasurer
there is one other person
besides her grandfather to
whom she is especially
grateful: her predecessor,
Bud Billups (HA03), who was
treasurer at the college for
more than a decade. “I have
such respect and admiration
for Bud,” she says. “This is the
most ideal situation. It is like
running a race and somebody
passes you the baton and they
want you to run as quickly as
you can because you’re all in
the race together. That’s how I
feel with Bud–he passed me
the baton and he wants me to
finish the race well.” Jones
says her extended family has
grown since she met Billups
and his wife Bea, an Episcopal
minister. “I’ve adopted them
as family.” x
—Patricia Dempsey
�4
{From the Bell Towers}
ties and meet students, give
lectures, and offer various
social events at universities.”
Unfortunately, classwork has
been severely limited at most of
the country’s universities, and
the state department deems
most universities unsafe to
travel to, though Bayer says the
situation in the north is better.
He plans to travel to universities in Erbil and Fulyamaniyah
later this year.
The war has disrupted everything in the country, so
managing the program presents daily challenges. Bayer
sent out e-mails to about 70
trailer, his office, and the
“DFACS” where he gets his
meals. Little else besides work
occupies his time except for
reading (Thomas Pynchon’s
newest novel, Against the Day;
Santa Fe tutor Greg Bayer
the third-largest in the world in
Nietzsche’s Zarathustra), and
arrived in Baghdad last
terms of the number of
writing (a book project on ArisChristmas to take up a yearmasters’ programs,” Bayer
totle). Traveling to and from
long assignment as director of
says. “It’s not a true exchange
the city—as he did earlier this
the Fulbright program in Iraq.
program: obviously, there
spring to make a trip to D.C.—
After a grueling flight he
aren’t too many students from
is a tense ordeal that starts with
checked out his new home: a
other countries wanting to
donning a helmet and a heavy
small metal trailer with one bed study in Iraq right now. We will
Kevlar vest. “You go out under
and some lockers. Jet-lagged,
probably have 35 to 40 students
the cover of night in a Rhino, a
he sat outside by a pool
going over to American univerhuge vehicle that’s something
formerly owned by Saddam
sities this summer and fall. All
like a super-armored
Hussein, listening to the thud
fields are represented: public
Winnebago, and travel in a
of explosions and watching a
health, public affairs, English,
convoy,” he explains.
thick plume of black
Bayer tries not to
smoke rise from
dwell on the risk
outside the walls
involved in his job.
surrounding the
“There are rockets
Green Zone. “There’s
that come in and
a surreal quality of
mortars every once in
life here in Baghdad,”
a while, and someBayer says.
times you have to
Former Santa Fe
duck into these little
President John
pillboxes,” he says.
Agresto, who for nine
“You’re on your way
months served as the
to work in a suit and
senior adviser to the
tie, you’re thinking
Iraqi Higher Educaabout a visa interview
tion Ministry, alerted
or an ad you have to
Bayer to the Fulbright
get in the newspaper,
opportunity. Bayer
and you hear the
applied for the posithuds of car bombs
tion and for a year’s
going off not too far
leave from the
away.”
college. “John talked
The Fulbright
a few times at the
program, he says,
college about his
provides an oasis of
work in Iraq, and he
normalcy among the
got me interested in
Santa Fe tutor Greg Bayer was fitted for his Kevlar vest and helmet—requisite
chaos; in desperate
the whole situation,”
equipment in Baghdad—on his first day in the Green Zone last December.
times, it offers hope
says Bayer. “I had
for a bright future for
served on our
some talented young
Fulbright committee
Iraqis. “So much is made, and
university contacts and
various forms of linguistics,
in Santa Fe, and I thought I
rightfully so, of all the terrible
received just a handful of
journalism.”
might be able to do some good
things that are happening in
replies. After they’re awarded
This spring, Bayer has been
during my sabbatical.”
Baghdad,” he says. “It’s dirty,
the Fulbright, Iraqi students
working to promote the
Bayer has an office in the
it’s rundown, it’s falling apart,
must then get the “right” Iraqi
program and solicit applicants
Chancery. He works six to
but it is still a pretty lively city.
passport, go through the visa
for fall 2008. He’s organized
seven days a week and puts in
People are going about their
process, and undergo a backnews conferences, given radio
10-hour days, processing applidaily lives, despite everything.
ground check by Homeland
and television interviews, and
cations, interviewing appliThe Iraqis are amazingly
Security. Bayer helps usher
placed advertising in media
cants, helping students negoresilient people.” x
them through the process.
throughout the country. “The
tiate the visa process, and
Bayer would enjoy hearing
Bayer spends most of his
normal way to publicize somepromoting the program
thing like the Fulbright,” Bayer time in the Green Zone, and his from members of the St. John’s
throughout the country. “Our
community: gbayer@sjcsf.edu.
daily life restricts him to his
explains, “is to go to universiFulbright program in Iraq is
Finding Fulbright
Scholars in a War Zone
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 }
�{From the Bell Towers}
Green Power
While it can’t install wind
turbines on back campus to
power the college, St. John’s in
Annapolis is nevertheless doing
its part for green energy. The
college has purchased renewable
energy credits (RECs) to cover
100 percent of its energy
consumption. Renewable energy
credits are created for every
1,000 kilo-watt hours produced
by a renewable energy generator.
Power plants that use alternative
sources, such as the sun, wind,
methane from a landfill or wastewater treatment, geothermal
energy, and the ocean, garner
additional revenue from the sale
of RECs so that they become
increasingly economical to build
and maintain.
“We can’t buy wind directly,
because there are no turbines in
our region or in our grid,”
explains Don Jackson, director of
operations in Annapolis. “So the
energy industry sells credits for
electricity produced by wind or
photovoltaic sources that say
we’ve paid a premium for its
product at another location.”
By purchasing the credits, the
college supports the production
of energy through renewable
resources.
The state requires that about
3.5 percent of all energy
purchases be covered by renewable energy credits. Currently,
100 percent of St. John’s energy
is covered by renewable energy
credits. St. John’s purchased
enough to cover 10 mega-watt
hours; the college uses 6 megawatt hours per year. “St. John’s
will be the first college in Maryland to engage in a green energy
commitment beyond current
state requirements,” says Skip
Trimble, an energy consultant
who helped the college evaluate
energy options. Green energy,
Trimble says, is more than
helping the environment.
“It establishes alternative energy
sources that also make a more
secure nation by limiting our
reliance on oil and provides a
more reliable energy grid by
introducing prudent energy
diversity,” he says.
Although green energy is
more expensive than traditional
energy sources, Jackson says the
college made the purchase of
energy credits a spending
priority. “It was the right thing
to do,” he says. x
Inspiring
Future
Leaders
For one week in August, the
pristine Limberlost Forest in
northern Ontario will be a
rendezvous for 12 student
activists from around the world.
The students will meet under the
auspices of International Partnerships through Education and
Collaboration
(IPEC), a youth
conference founded
by St. John’s sophomore Malcolm
Cecil-Cockwell.
Malcolm CecilCockwell (A10),
cleaning the
shoreline of
College Creek,
wants IPEC to
encourage others
to be activists in
their community.
Cecil-Cockwell was recently
awarded a $10,000 grant by the
Kathryn Wasserman Davis
Foundation to put his proposal
for a youth-oriented leadership
and education retreat into
practice. His idea is to support
“personal development through
conversation and study, for the
sake of leading social change.”
Before they meet in Canada, the
students, traveling from Canada,
India, Mexico, Tanzania, and the
U.S., will research their own
locality and develop a project to
improve their environment and
society. While in the Limberlost,
“The students will spend time
reading and discussing issues
related to their projects, as well
as participating in workshops led
by qualified guest-mentors,”
he explains. Cecil-Cockwell has
recruited professional volunteers, government lobbyists, and
experts on social thought to lead
workshops on topics ranging
from current news stories to how
to collaborate with the media.
The big picture, Cecil-Cockwell writes in his proposal, is to
make efficient use of youthful
motivation by giving it support,
direction, and practical skills
through dialogue. “In that way,
it is very like St. John’s,” he says.
Long after the participants leave
Canada, Cecil-Cockwell hopes
IPEC will be a source of mutual
support as these potential
leaders return to their countries
with new ideas and plans for the
future. x
From
Sanskrit to
Skype
The Eastern Classics program in
Santa Fe immerses graduate
students in ancient languages—
Sanskrit or Classical Chinese—
and texts such as the Tao Te
Ching, written by Lao Tzu in
about 600 BCE. Jason Litton,
who will finish the program this
August, took a detour from his
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 }
5
study of ancient works to
consider how 21st-century
technology is playing a role in
shaping societies and creating
conversations across cultural and
geographical barriers.
Last March, Litton presented
a paper, “On the Potential for
Communications Technology to
Cause a Fundamental Shift in the
Way People Form Societies,”
at the New Directions in Critical
Theory Conference, an interdisciplinary graduate student
forum. Graduate students from
all disciplines were invited to
present papers on “negotiating
and constructing identities” at
the University of Arizona conference, and Litton chose to explore
how technology facilitates crosscultural communication and the
formation of entirely new social
groups drawn together by
common interests and ideas.
Litton taught English for
several years in Seoul, South
Korea, and used Voice Over
Internet Protocol, which allows
for phone-like conversations
via the Internet, to stay in
touch with friends and family.
He observed how “in Korea,
the most wired country in the
world,” virtual communication
created a shift from “parlor”
conversations to virtual
dialogues open to many participants. Advances in translation
technology offer the promise
of creating communities by
overcoming linguistic barriers,
he adds.
There is a potential downside
to virtual interaction, Litton
acknowledges: those who replace
person-to-person encounters
with strictly online interaction
can experience isolation, rather
than the sense of community. Yet
Litton still see great potential for
the use of communications technology in education. “You don’t
need to be physically present for
a conversation,” he says. “Online
seminar discussions, conducted
across cultural boundaries, could
be richly diverse.” x
—Oliver Lemke (SF08)
�6
{From the Bell Towers}
Worlds Away
Each year, at least half a dozen foreign students enroll in St. John’s.
The College visited with two “F-1” students, an Annapolis Johnnie
halfway through the Program and another in Santa Fe, just
graduating from St. John’s. Interviews are by Elizabeth Burlington
(A08) and Caroline Caldwell (SF08).
Yuhai Zhou (A09)
Lanzhou, China
Distance from Annapolis:
6,258 miles
Legendary City
“Lanzhou is my birthplace, and
I lived there for 15 years until
my family moved to Guangzhou
in 2002, one of the three
biggest cities in China (Beijing
and Shanghai are the other
two). The other name for
Guangzhou is “The City of Five
Goats.” It is said when there
was famine, five gods on five
goats came, each with wheat in
its mouth. People accepted the
wheat and they finally got a big
harvest. Then Guangzhou
became the wealthy city in the
south. The interesting thing is,
before I came to St. John’s, I
met four alumni of St. John’s
who were teaching in the same
college in Guangzhou.”
On Dante
“So far my favorite book is
Dante’s Divine Comedy.
Originally, I wanted to write
on the Divine Comedy for my
sophomore essay, but, because
I feel that it is so beautiful, I am
afraid of destroying the beauty
in that book by writing about it.
So I decided to destroy the
beauty in another book.
I ended up writing on Job.”
Alarming Moment
“I really like cooking and I
have become very famous
around campus for my cooking.
One day [in Gilliam Hall], the
fire engines came and all the
alarms went off. Chinese
people are famous for their
cooking-oil smoke. My father,
was living in England in 1995,
and he was cooking in the
apartment and he caused a lot
of oil smoke. So finally he was
kicked out by the landlord.”
Plans after St. John’s
“My plan after St. John’s is to
continue to study. When I first
left China, I thought that I
would like to be a teacher in the
countryside. The countryside
of China is 70 percent of the
population. My father says that
if you do not understand the
countryside then you don’t
understand the whole condition of China. So I decided to
go teach in the countryside, but
I am not sure if that plan will
change after a couple years
here. Both of my parents are
teaching at the University of
China. My mother teaches
economy, my father teaches
geography.”
Felicitas Steinhoff (SF07)
Stanhope, Germany
Distance from Santa Fe:
4,613 miles
Cultural Highlight
“Well, in the town I grew up in
mostly, in the north, there was
this old monastery and there
was a rose bush that apparently
was over 1,000 years old. That
was it. That was the cultural
highlight. So basically there
was nothing special; lots of
towns in Germany have these
odd little cultural artifacts that
are famous. Usually they will
build a church around it. I’ve
noticed in America that people
will proudly put up signs for a
street that’s like 250 years old
or a settlement that’s been
there since the Founding
Fathers. The little town close
to where I lived, where my
mother lives now in Stuttgart,
is originally from 1250 or
left: A cooking oil incident made Miss Zhou briefly famous in
Annapolis. Right: Even with years of English practice,
Miss Steinhoff struggles with idioms.
something like the Middle
Ages, but there’s no sign or
anything proclaiming that
loudly.”
Biggest Headache
“I had been speaking English
in school and lived with
international students for
three years in boarding school.
We would basically mix and
match English and German
phrases all the time. It was still
odd to come [to Santa Fe] and
all of a sudden there was no
German, and not the slightest
possibility to speak German, so
for the first three days I had the
biggest headache ever. I think
in English now. I dream in
English. The only thing that is
still a bit problematic are little
idioms and figures of speech
that I usually butcher in
hilarious ways. I had big issues
with the word ‘pneumonia.’ ”
On Kant
“Kant made up a lot of his own
words to describe the things he
was talking about. It was easier
to read [an English] translation
of that because in order to
translate you have to interpret
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 }
it in a certain way that makes
sense to you. So the translation
itself is almost already an interpretation in itself, which helps,
whereas the original is stranger
in German. I started reading it
in German then I picked up the
English one along the way and I
thought the English one made
much more sense.”
Plans after St. John’s
“I am right now waiting to get
my work permit approved.
I don’t really want to go back to
Germany yet. I was planning to
go to grad school but my senior
essay got a little bit in the way
of my application process.
So I’m going to stay in Santa Fe
simply because I have no
relatives in the states, but a
couple of my friends will be
staying too. We’ll all be
working full time, saving up
money, and then I will apply
to grad school in October. I
want to get my master’s in
counseling psychology.” x
�7
{From the Bell Towers}
Good Will Preservation
The last will and testament of
Francis Scott Key, class of
1796, came to the college in
1993 when a descendant of
Key thought the college
was the rightful place for a
document of such historic
importance. The author of the
“Star-Spangled Banner” was
also founder of the college’s
Alumni Association and is
considered its most famous
alumnus.
Earlier this spring, the will
was transported to the
Conservation Center for Arts
and Historic Artifacts in
Philadelphia for an overhaul.
The Conservation Center
will clean and flatten the
document (it was folded in
thirds for many years), and
will repair a slight tear to one
of the pages. The document
will be returned to the college
next spring in a special box
that will preserve it for
another two centuries or so.
The center will also provide a
facsimile of the will that
St. John’s will enclose in a
glass case and make available
for public display.
James M. Cain Was Here
roy hoopes, roy hoopes collections
The words film noir evoke
images of a fedora-wearing,
wise-cracking private eye, a
curvaceous and ultimately
treacherous femme fatale, and
stark, smoky cinematography.
Who would have thought that
such scenes, deeply engrained
in the American pop consciousness, were straight from the
novels of an author who spent
his childhood on the sunny
campus of St. John’s College?
Born in 1892, the son of a
St. John’s professor, James
Mallahan Cain grew up in the
Paca-Carroll dormitory, which
was then faculty housing.
His father eventually became
the vice president of St. John’s
before moving the family to
Chestertown, Maryland, to
become the president of
Washington College, from
which Cain graduated in 1910.
After some time in the army,
Grants from the Anne
Arundel County Trust for
Preservation; Four Rivers: the
Heritage Area of Annapolis,
London Town and South
County; the Maryland Bar
Association Foundation; and
the Nielsen Bainbridge
Company provided funding
for the project.
Distinguished by bold,
elegant script that may or may
not be Key’s, the will was first
penned in 1837 and amended
several times. It arranges for
the distribution of Key’s
assets to various relatives.
Alas, no bequest was made to
the college. x
Cain became a reporter for the
Baltimore Sun, where he met
and was influenced by the
famous journalist and satirist
H.L. Mencken. In 1923, he
returned to St. John’s as a
professor of journalism.
He stayed in Annapolis for
just a year before moving to
New York to become an editor
and writer for various publications, including The New
Yorker. With the onset of the
Depression, Cain moved to
Hollywood where the pay for
screenwriters was generous,
although his best-known
works are novels that
became screenplays.
As Cain’s novels hit the
silver screen during the
1940s, some of the
brightest movie stars in
Hollywood brought his
stories to life: Double
Indemnity starred Fred
MacMurray and Barbara
Stanwyck; Joan Crawford
was Mildred Pierce; and
The Postman Always
Rings Twice featured
Lana Turner. “Hardboiled” is a term that is
James M. Cain penned
19 novels in addition to
his short stories and
screenplays.
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 }
Key’s will will be preserved
for future generations.
often applied to Cain’s writing
style and, consequently, to the
entire genre of classic cinema.
(As an example of hard-boiledness, the protagonist in The
Postman Always Rings Twice
says, “Then I saw her…she
really wasn’t a raving beauty,
but she had a sulky look to her,
and her lips stuck out in a way
that made me want to mash
them in for her.”) Cain’s works
were important contributions to
what later became known as the
hard-boiled school of American
detective and crime fiction, a
genre that included another
Maryland-born author, Dashiell
Hammett (The Maltese Falcon),
and Raymond Chandler, who
wrote the screenplay for
Double Indemnity.
Though some may dismiss
Cain’s work as pulp fiction, he
claimed a loyalty to what he
called in the preface of Double
Indemnity, “the logos of the
American countryside,” saying
that “the average man, from the
fields, the streets, the bars, the
offices, and even the gutters of
this country, has acquired a
vividness of speech that goes
beyond anything I could
invent.” x
—Emily DeBusk (A06)
�8
{From the Bell Towers}
Guggenheim Winner
Santa Fe tutor and musician-inresidence Peter Pesic has been
awarded the prestigious
Guggenheim Fellowship Award
for his investigations into the
connections between music and
natural philosophy. Guggenheim Fellowships recognize
“distinguished achievement in
the past and exceptional promise
for future accomplishment.”
Pesic plans to examine music in
relation to parallel developments in science, philosophy,
politics, and art.
In Pesic’s view, music and
natural philosophy have long
and deep connections. “With
this award, I hope to explore the
dialogue between ‘ancient’
music, or music modeled on the
dispassionate beauty of the
‘music of spheres,’ and ‘modern’
music–music devoted to moving
human passions,” he says.
In February, he was elected a
Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of
Science.
Glitch Silences Bell on
Essay Night
It’s a wonderful tradition at
St. John’s for seniors to ring the
bell, signifying the completion
of their senior essay. But this
February in Annapolis, about
50 seniors were robbed of their
celebratory peal when the
button that students press in the
McDowell Hall bell tower
stopped working. “The switch
got stuck because it’s not made
to ring a 100 times in a row,”
suggested Sid Phipps, director of
buildings and grounds in
Annapolis.
The college applied to the
city of Annapolis for a second
exemption to the noise
ordinance, and arranged for
the seniors who missed the
chance in February to have their
moment of glory on March 31.
chelsea stiegman
News & Announcements
Board of Visitors and
Governors
Anna Greenberg (HA96) with Chris Nelson (SF70), left, and
Michael Peters, right, has served the Annapolis community well
for more than 40 years.
Anna E. Greenberg (HA96)
and M. Brownell “Brownie”
Anderson (HSF98) have been
named honorary members
of the college’s Board of Visitors
and Governors. The designation
recognizes individuals who
are stepping down from the
college’s governing board
for their commitment and
contributions to St. John’s.
An Annapolis native,
Mrs. Greenberg has served for
more than four decades as a
volunteer leader with civic,
educational, social service
and religious groups in the
community. Ms. Anderson is
Senior Associate Vice President
of the Association of American
Medical Colleges’ Division of
Medical Education, where she
also serves as the division’s
deputy director and executive
secretary for the association’s
Group on Educational Affairs.
The college’s board also
welcomes several new members:
Sheila Bobbs Armstrong
(SF70, EC92, SFGI95) has been
involved with the college for
more than 40 years. Brad
Davidson (A77) is president of
SPARDATA. He is a captain in
the United States Army Reserve
and served on the Annapolis
City Council. Until he retired
last year, Austin Ligon was
the first president and chief
executive officer of CarMax,
Inc., the nation’s largest retailer
of used cars. Mark Lindley
(A67) is a retired America
Online executive and volunteers
for Touchstones, Inc. Ford
Rowan (AGI06), a former NBC
correspondent, is now a national
security consultant. Dolores E.
Wolf of Washington, D.C.,
served for 18 years as vice president of Personnel Resources for
American Airlines. Roxanna
Zirakzadeh (SFGI04, EC05)
owns a bookstore, Symposium,
in San Francisco.
Staff
Earlier this spring, the Santa Fe
community said farewell to a
long-time and much-valued staff
member. Lawrence Martinez,
head custodian, retired in
March after 31 years of service.
Emily Mawhinney (AGI07)
joins the Advancement office in
Annapolis, where she will
manage the Fielding Challenge,
part of the college’s $125
million capital campaign. x
{Letters}
Natural Consequences
I am writing to thank you for,
and to comment upon, the article
entitled “Good Design Starts
with Good Questions” (Winter
2007), which features architect
David Schwarz (A72). The
article’s title is an apt summary
of a fascinating conversation.
On the other hand, Mr.
Schwarz says that “[St. John’s]
gives you three things, and only
three things: it teaches you how
to think, how to read, and how to
speak. If you’re lucky, it will also
teach you how to write…” I beg to
differ on two counts, although I
stand in The Great Outside, as a
mere Johnnie-parent.
My first difference with
Mr. Schwarz’s statement is
that the word “all” implicitly
denigrates skills—thinking,
reading and speaking—that are
both crucial to our ability to
function socially, and so rare as
to be remarkable, based on my
experience of nearly a quartercentury of teaching graduate
students. Even if these comprised
the “all” that St. John’s College
offered its students, they would
be an “all” difficult to improve
upon; schools, employers, and
organizations—including, I am
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 }
sure, Mr. Schwarz’s firm—would
be ecstatic if they could find a
sure source of students, teachers,
employees, and workers who
could in fact think, read, and
speak well. . .
My second objection to
Mr. Schwarz’s statement,
however, is more substantive—
it concerns his omission of the
natural consequence of the
pedagogy of St. John’s College.
�9
{Letters}
The pedagogy fosters in students
the skill of listening—of hearing
what is being said by someone
else, whether that someone is an
ancient Greek philosopher,
medieval Christian theologian,
or the person sitting across the
table. The ability to hear another
does not mean merely to keep
one’s mouth shut, but to actively
listen to what they are trying to
say—to seek clarity, or (in a word),
understanding. The ability to
hear is rare. . .in part because
hearing (understanding) requires
patience: waiting to hear everything that the other person has to
say, waiting a bit more to be sure
that they have finished and to
consider what they have said,
and then responding in such a
way that our reply implicitly
reverberates with their question,
suggestion, insight, or concern. . .
I write this letter because I am
very happy to say that I have seen
this ability to listen develop in my
daughter (A08) during her time
at St. John’s, and in other Johnnies whom I know. . . I have been
struck repeatedly by their attitude—a kind of quiet intensity—
that focuses their attention on
the speaker’s words and ideas, so
that their comments and questions in turn further our conversation.
I also write because this ability
to hear, to understand (a text,
another person, or ourselves)
underlies our ability to be and
increasingly to become fully
human, to allow our lives to be
examined by others, living and
dead, and ourselves. It is a great
gift offered by the pedagogy of
St. John’s, and one that ought not
to be overlooked or assumed.
Frederic Clarke Putnam
Admiring Jane
I am writing belatedly to thank
you for the excellent Fall 2006
issue of The College. Life is busy
and sometimes we don’t get all
our assigned readings done, but I
held onto this magazine through
the winter. Being a descendant of
Jane Austen’s mother’s family
(the Leighs of Stoneleigh
Abbey), I knew I wanted to give
this issue more than a cursory
reading. I was delighted to find
appreciations of Grand-Aunt
Jane’s work in so many different
voices. I really do think that
women of today appreciate Jane
Austen much more than earlier
generations. These articles
demonstrate that her social
analysis was deep, insightful, and
abiding in value, yet always
tender and sympathetic. Sometimes I myself feel that I am just
now catching up to her in my
understanding of the war
between the sexes (as another
favorite author, James Thurber,
used to call it). Congratulations
on a wonderful issue that I will
save on my bookshelf alongside
my own favorite Austen work,
Sense and Sensibility.
Christel Stevens (A72)
Constructive Criticism
Reading Mrs. Maschler’s
“A Life” in the Winter 2007
issue, I was reminded of a stillvivid comment that she wrote on
an assignment submission of
mine during our freshman
science [laboratory], 1986-1987.
The assignment, allowing now
for my failures of memory,
consisted of observing for a time
an animal, any animal, and
reporting in writing on its
actions. I picked a turtle,
because there was already at least
one in captivity at the college.
I observed this turtle, which to
my knowledge was unnamed,
for approximately one hour.
Using the notes I compiled,
I prepared a more formal essay
for submission. My only concrete
recall of my submission was that
I likely anthropomorphosized
the turtle’s actions to a degree
(e.g., its banging its body into
the glass walls of its tank indicated a desire to exit the tank,
etc.). While I didn’t quite “get”
the assignment, I thought that
my submission was well-written
and satisfied the assignment’s
objectives. When the assignments were returned to the class,
the following, solitary comment
was written on my submission,
verbatim: “Nothing much came
of this.” I’m relatively sure that
whatever measure of success I’ve
achieved since that day has been
due, in some small part, to overcoming that pithy dismissal.
Sandro Battaglia (A90)
Du Bois and McCarthy
I can’t help (1) congratulating
you on that wonderful story
about Martin Dyer and “Web”
Du Bois and (2) telling you my
own story . . . It happened the
same year, 1952. I was a senior at
Yale Law School and chairman of
the Yale Student Guild Chapter.
We had invited Dr. Du Bois to
give a lecture at the law school.
The day before the event there
was a knock at my dormitory
door which, when opened,
revealed—I am not making this
up—two gentlemen in trench
coats and Fedoras, flashing FBI
badges at me. “Oh boy,” I said to
myself, “there goes my legal
career.” (The McCarthy witchhunt was in full swing in those
days, which entitles President
Weigle to a posthumous
commendation for inviting
Dr. Du Bois to the college).
As it turned out, my two
visitors wanted to interview me
about Peter Davies (class of
1948), who had applied for
conscientious objector status in
the draft. I waxed as eloquent as
I could about Peter’s patriotism,
high moral standards and
sterling character and the fact
that, since he was doing God’s
work on earth, he must,
according to St. Thomas,
believe in God even though he
refused to admit to such belief.
(To merit CO status at the time
you had to have a credible belief
in some kind of divinity.)
I also mentioned in passing
that Peter and I had spent the
previous summer in Israel on a
project sponsored by the Foundation for World Government,
headed by Stringfellow Barr and
Scott Buchanan, to wit, several
weeks of research on whether
the kibbutz was a workable
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 }
model for use in underdeveloped countries. The two
gentlemen … listened attentively
and took copious notes. At the
end, one of them asked if he
could read his notes back to me
for verification. When he got to
the part of the previous summer,
said, “In 1951, subject and
interviewee went to Israel to
study underdeveloped Jews.”
The fact that I was able to
make the appropriate correction
without cracking up was one of
the proudest achievements of my
senior year . The St. Thomas
gambit did not get Peter out of
the draft, but it may have helped
him get into the Merchant
Marines as alternate service.
We have remained good friends
ever since. The Du Bois lecture
the next day was a great success.
Peter Weiss, class of 1946
Corrections: An article on
W.E.B. Du Bois in the winter
2007 edition misidentified the
late husband of Priscilla BenderShore; his name was Merle
Shore.
A profile of Richard Field
(SFGI98) in the fall 2006 issue of
The College incorrectly reported
his doctoral degree; he holds a
PhD in exercise physiology.
Santa Fe tutor James Carey
was misquoted in the same
issue; instead of being “faithfully impressed with the cadets,”
during his time as a visiting
professor at the Air Force
Academy, Mr. Carey was
actually “favorably impressed.”
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, or
e-mail to: rosemary.harty@
sjca.edu.
�10
{Capital Campaign}
“WITH A CLEAR AND
SINGLE PURPOSE”
How the Campaign for St. John’s College is
Making a Difference in Santa Fe
by Gail Griffith
t. John’s College Santa Fe
President Michael Peters
had been on the job barely a
month when one of the first
major events of the Capital
Campaign was held in
Boston. “The Board of Visitors and
Governors made a decision to launch the
campaign at the same time they made the
decision to launch me,” he says.
The magnitude of a campaign to raise
$125 million—more than triple the
amount raised by the previous campaign—
might have been daunting to a new college
president. But because so much of the
S
groundwork had been well-established,
Mr. Peters says he “just stepped into the
job.” Although his presidency began at
one of the most critical times in the
college’s history and required him to
get up to speed quickly, it also gave him
an opportunity to get to know the community. Working with Annapolis president
Chris Nelson, he has met board members,
alumni, parents, and other college
supporters at campaign events across the
country. He discovered how strongly
Johnnies feel about their alma mater, and
saw that non-alumni share the same fierce
loyalty to St. John’s.
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 }
�11
{Capital Campaign}
anthony russo
Much has transpired on the
Santa Fe campus since Mr.
Peters’ inauguration in
October 2005, and the
success of the campaign thus
far gives him reason to feel
confident that some of the
goals he articulated early on
are coming to fruition and
others are within reach. “I
believe it is important to
establish and maintain a
campus community that is
worthy of the program of
instruction,” Mr. Peters says.
“That means having the
resources to make classrooms as productive as
possible and to provide the
kinds of services and
resources both inside and
outside the classroom that
enhance the learning experience for our students. It is
critical that we have not just adequate, but modern,
facilities that provide the infrastructure to make
this possible.”
Of the $125 million campaign goal, $49.5 million has
been earmarked for capital projects on the two campuses.
The building projects included the renovation of Mellon
Hall and the construction of
two new dormitories in
Annapolis; these have been
funded and completed,
thanks to gifts of $23.5
million from alumni, parents,
friends, and foundations.
In Santa Fe, campaign
priorities include a new
Graduate Institute building,
a new residential center, a set
of campus improvement
projects, and renovations
and an addition to Evans
Science Laboratory.
Fundraising for the Santa
Fe projects is progressing
nicely, says Mr. Peters. Last
summer, Dr. Norman Levan
(SFGI74), gave the college a
$5 million gift for construction of a Graduate Institute
center. An architect has been
hired, and the college has
engaged a local firm to help negotiate the complicated
process of securing required permits from the city of
Santa Fe. The building, to be situated between Weigle
Hall and the Fine Arts Building, will offer graduate
students “a welcoming place to congregate in the center
of campus,” says Mr. Peters.
The college’s capital campaign
seeks to address priorities that
will sustain the Program and
student instructional material
(manuals and workbooks);
and ensure small class sizes and
strengthen the college.
Funding these priorities will
require $125 million. To date,
1:8 tutor-to-student ratio.
$107 million has been raised.
FINANCIAL AID: $33 million for
need-based aid.
FACULTY AND ACADEMIC SUPPORT:
$34 million to increase faculty
salaries to the median of peer
institutions; provide faculty
development opportunities;
develop Program-related
Technology infrastructure;
staff professional development
and compensation.
BUILDING PROJECTS ON THE
STUDENT SERVICES: $3.5 million
TWO CAMPUSES: $49.5 million for
to improve services to students,
fund internship opportunities,
and provide grants so that
elementary and secondary
teachers can attend the
Graduate Institute.
building projects, including a
Santa Fe dormitory, a Graduate
Institute Center in Santa Fe
(funded), and the addition to
and renovation of Evans
Science Laboratory. The renovation of Mellon Hall and the
addition of two new dormitories in Annapolis are completed
and fully funded.
ST. JOHN’S IMPROVEMENT FUND:
$5 million for library collections and laboratory equipment; improving Information
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 }
�12
{Capital Campaign}
“It is critical that we have not just adequate, but modern, facilities.”
Michael Peters, Santa Fe President
and with the launch of the
Eastern Classics program in
1994, it was clear that the
original footprint mapped out
for the Santa Fe campus
was inadequate. “Having a
structure dedicated to the
Graduate Institute programs
on campus physically demonstrates the importance and
centrality of these programs,”
says Mr. Peters.
The new center, Levan Hall,
will hold classrooms, offices,
and common rooms for graduate students. The building is
being designed so that in the
future, it will be possible to add
an auditorium that can accommodate the entire campus
community.
The Evans Science Laboratory renovation and addition is
the most pressing unfunded
capital need for the campus,
says Mr. Peters. The current
Ronald Fielding (A70) has pledged $2.5 million in a
labs are 30 years old, and there
challenge grant for Santa Fe’s new residence hall.
are not enough of them to
An Evolving Campus
accommodate the number of
The bold move to establish a second campus of St. John’s
laboratory classes that need to be scheduled. Expansion of
College in 1964 presented challenges that the founders of
the laboratory building calls for the addition of four new
the Santa Fe campus could not have imagined. The
state-of-the-art labs with adjoining prep areas and four
program of instruction remained constant, but the
seminar rooms. Renovations will include installation of
demands of adapting to both the distinctive physical
new multi-purpose workstations, safety equipment,
surroundings and the needs of the growing student popuchemical storage facilities, and improvements and repairs
lation have meant ongoing challenges. When, in 1967, the
to the laboratory ventilation systems.
Graduate Institute was established in Santa Fe, the size
and scope of the college’s educational mission expanded,
The Santa Fe Initiative, a
group of smaller-scale campus
improvement projects, has
been completed. The purpose
of the initiative was to make
the kind of improvements that
would affect the first impression appearance of the
campus. The Campus Core
Renovation
project,
for
example, transformed the
upper campus by replacing
chipped and patched concrete
with 105,000 bricks and renovating the koi pond.
In addition, the college now
has pledges in hand to build a
new residence hall, allowing
the campus to house 80
percent of its students on
campus. Campaign Chairman
Ronald Fielding (A70) has
pledged $2.5 million toward
the construction of the dormitories, and the college received
pledges and gifts of $7 million
from several other donors.
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 }
�{Capital Campaign}
A Community of Learners
At 30,000 square feet, and with 60 beds, the new residential complex in Santa Fe will allow the college to house
about 80 percent of its undergraduate students on
campus. The new project will provide a more affordable
and convenient housing option for students and support
the college’s student recruitment efforts while providing
more opportunities for learning outside the classroom.
As is the case in Annapolis, some students will still
choose to live off campus, even with additional housing.
For Will Hollingsworth (SF08), moving off campus for his
sophomore and junior years had some advantages, such as
the convenience of a kitchen. But it also removed him
from the community in more than a physical way.
“Moving off campus really severed my ties with a lot
of friends—the dynamic shifts so much from year to year,”
he says.
Because she found herself in a double room in a
“gregarious dorm” for her first year, Betsy Hardin (SF08)
sometimes found it hard to go about her work without
13
The Santa Fe Initiative, paid for in part by gifts to the capital
campaign, included the transformation of the central campus
area. Still to come: The Norman and Betty Levan Hall, a center
for the Graduate Institute; major renovations in Evans Science
Laboratory; and a new residence hall for Santa Fe.
being distracted. On the other hand, being in a friendly
environment eased the social pressure of making friends
and adjusting to the campus and the Program. “I made
great friends from that dorm,” she says. Living off campus
during her sophomore year was more challenging than
Hardin expected. But a Johnnie life doesn’t leave a lot of
time for chores like grocery shopping.
Ensconced in a suite on campus this past year, Hardin
found a happy medium. She enjoyed the conveniences of
the dorm without the distractions of a double, along with
the conveniences of a kitchen. “I often make breakfast for
myself and it’s a nice way to start the day,” she says.
When the new dorm is open and ready for students,
more Johnnies will find that balance of community and
independence. x
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 }
�14
{Capital Campaign}
New Program, New Collection
by Jennifer Sprague
Meem Library Director
“Without knowing the force of words, it is impossible to know
men.” Confucian Analects, 20:3.iii
W
hen a pilot program of the Institute for
the Study of Eastern Classics began in the
fall of 1992, Meem Library accordingly
started to develop a collection to support
these studies. At that time the library had
just a few copies of the primary texts.
The librarians thus had the joy of building essentially a brand
new collection. Thankfully, the Lounsbery Foundation and the
Bradley Foundation provided generous grants to fund the
institute that also provided for enhancing the library’s collection.
The tutors involved with the pilot program gave Inga Waite,
then library director, lists of book recommendations, and the
library staff went to work ordering and processing the texts.
The initial inventory of texts included just one copy each of
130 recommended readings. In 1994, the college enrolled its
first students in the Eastern Classics master’s program. The
library now needed to support a new curriculum—without an
adequate budget increase. Book donations and gifts made the
growth of the collection possible. In 1998 the William H. &
Mattie Wattis Harris Foundation gave the college a $10,000
grant for Eastern Classics acquisitions, allowing the college to
purchase multiple copies of program readings and alleviating
some financial burden for students. The library also acquired
translation tools such as grammars and dictionaries as well as
significant secondary materials.
The library continues to depend on gifts to fund Eastern Classics collection development. The Harris Foundation gave the
library two more
grants in 2004 and
2006. Eastern Classics
alumni have been
generous donors, too.
Recently, one alumnus
who wishes to remain
anonymous gave the
library a gift of
$20,000. A tutor
committee identified
authors and texts to
focus development
efforts on, including
Chuang Tzu,
Confucius, Dogen,
Nagarjuna, Shankara,
Sima Qian, The
Mahabharata, The
Pali Sutras, The Tale
of Genji, and the
Upanishads. The goal is to create a broad, more comprehensive
collection to support the study of these primary readings.
Increasing the depth of the collection will provide tutors
with resources for their own inquiry, says Graduate Institute
Director Krishnan Venkatesh. “The library collection is
essential for faculty development,” he says. Having effective
language learning tools is important as well because both
students and tutors depend on library resources to enhance
their study of either Sanskrit or classical Chinese. The language
requirement for the Eastern Classics degree sets St. John’s apart
from other Eastern studies programs, and Meem Library has
specialized tools such as the Sanskrit Atlas, Ralph Swentzell’s
classical Chinese program, and other language software.
In addition to focusing on program-related materials,
Meem Library plans to supplement its book collection with
movies and music that can offer a historical setting to the
readings. Mr. Venkatesh suggests that such materials “can
provide a cultural context for places that can be quite foreign for
some of our students.” These resources will likewise serve as
another avenue for introducing the Eastern Classics program to
undergraduates and Santa Fe residents who use the library.
As Meem Library expands its collection, it continues to face
the challenge of maintaining the physical condition of its print
materials. Most of the books that come from India have poor
bindings and acidic paper. The library often sends these books
to a professional bindery to be rebound. Many classic Indian
texts are now available in beautiful editions as part of the Clay
Sanskrit Library, a bilingual series co-published by New York
University Press and the JJC Foundation. Another challenge
in maintaining the collection is the regular wear on books in
circulation, requiring
the frequent purchase
of replacement copies.
Collection development is truly a dynamic
process, and the library
is deeply grateful for
those donors who have
supported this ongoing
endeavor. x
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 }
The Meem Library’s
collection expanded
with the launch of
the Eastern Classics
master’s program
in 1994.
�{Capital Campaign}
15
Great Books, Rare Books
by Andrea Lamb
Greenfield Library Director
A
victoria smith
reputable
Dragon in St.Paul’s Church-yard.
academic library,
Its publication history reveals
regardless of its
that there are three Leviathan
editions bearing this same
size or age, must
imprint. These editions are
convey upon
generally known as the “head,”
scrutiny an
“bear,” and “ornament,” named
informed and knowledgeable
for the ornaments that appear on
oversight of its collection. The
the title pages. The “head” is the
legacy of the college librarians on
first edition, and this is our copy.
the Annapolis campus reveal an
Our copy of the Leviathan is
informed, thoughtful pattern of
extremely valuable from a
decisions over time that have
printing history perspective; it is
shaped the collection of today’s
also in disrepair. Its ailments
Greenfield Library.
include a previously leather
The selection, care, and
reback of only modest quality,
preservation of a unique
pervasive red rot, and damage
collection depends on adequate
from rodents. The frontispiece is
funding and a sustainable,
detached, along with several
long-range acquisitions budget.
leaves. The paper is soiled. It is
Every year 75 to 150 titles are lost
an excellent candidate for
or damaged irreparably. Book
restoration by a professional
replacement costs are absorbed
conservator.
into a general books budget, and
Acquiring such funds for this
most years we exhaust the
book, and for the 100 or so
library’s funds in acquiring
notable other titles in our rare
multiple copies for replacements.
book collection is a worthy goal
Our paper-based periodicals
for additional library funds.
increase in price 7 to 20 percent
The restoration of these titles,
every year. Yet our needs extend
estimated at up to $10,000 per
beyond the quid pro quo replacement of books that circulate, or
book, should be a priority for the
the acquisition of the periodicals
library over the next decade.
that our community loves to read A 17th-century copy of LEVIATHAN is among the Greenfield
These rare books are directly
library’s treasures.
in the library’s hidden nooks.
related to the circulating collecThe age of the Annapolis
tion in that they represent the
campus’ collection mandates that we acquire conservation funds
first appearance of a Program work, the first in the line of
for the rarer books that represent a real treasure for our campus
continuity. The Leviathan’s imprint history includes the
modern editions by Oakeshott, Lindsay, Waller, and Curley.
and our college. We need to turn our attention to the urgent care
We have these editions in our circulating collection.
and feeding of the older collection.
Another book that is a prime candidate for conservation
The library’s primary collection remains, of course, the
treatment is an incubula title of St. Augustine, a 1486 Venice
Program title works. We also acquire other works written by
imprint of De Civitate Dei. Only three other identical works are
Program authors. We carefully select the original texts of
contemporary authors of the canon authors. This historical
known to exist in the world.
continuity in our collection development contributes to the
At St. John’s College, “the books are the teachers,” and the
intrinsic value of our collection overall and defines the unique
heart of the Greenfield Library’s collection will always be the
character of the library. Another of our legacies is a small but
circulating collection. Books are the constant companions of
impressive collection of rare books, many of which have direct
our students and tutors, the friends of all friends. We who
ties to Program readings.
advocate for the library appreciate the continuing and valuable
For example, we are fortunate to have in our rare books
investment that alumni and friends of the college continue to
collection a first edition of Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan, printed
make to the Greenfield Library. x
in 1651 in London by the Printer for Andrew Crooke at the Green
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 }
�16
{The Program}
“SING, GODDESS”
Music and the Program
by Rosemary Harty
s they have for many years on the
Annapolis campus, the freshman class
gathered in the Great Hall for its spring
choral performance. The last notes of
Sicut locutus est from Bach’s Magnificat
hung in the air as the upperclassmen
and tutors in the balcony sounded their
approval. This year’s performance—by
an unusually large freshman class
crowded into the hall—was outstanding, many told tutor Peter
Kalkavage as he gathered up his scores. “They were very good,
weren’t they?” he agreed.
J.P. Snyder (A10), who doesn’t enjoy singing, was just relieved
it was over. “I’m very flat, I’m just good at hiding it,” he
confessed. Freshman chorus and sophomore music are parts of
the Program he’ll have to endure; laboratory and math have his
passion. “Honestly? If I could avoid music, I would,” he
confesses.
Music wasn’t part of Barr and Buchanan’s original plan when
they came to St. John’s in 1937; it first appeared in the 1949-50
academic year. Dynamic personalities such as Victor Zuckerkandl and tutor Douglas Allanbrook shaped the development
of music in the early years in Annapolis, and the college’s
approach to music has been fine-tuned many times on both
campuses. Music is an integral part of the Program, an essential
liberal art, says Santa Fe Dean Victoria Mora. “Music is part of
our humanity,” she says. “Our reason and our passions come
together in the study of music. Fundamental questions about
A
this relationship between reason and the passions arise and are
addressed.”
Both campuses are focusing their efforts on the music
program this coming year. In the fall, Santa Fe will make
changes in its approach to teaching music in freshman year. This
summer, Santa Fe faculty will meet in a study group to refine and
develop materials for sophomore music, with a goal of making
them more broadly accessible and less reliant on individuals’
expertise. “I don’t think there is a big debate here in Santa Fe
about trying to get more tutors to teach the music program,”
says tutor John Cornell. “Our purpose is going to be to improve
the access even further.”
In Annapolis, where there are no changes planned to
freshman chorus, faculty will meet in a study group designed to
better prepare tutors for teaching sophomore music for the first
time. Proposed by Dean Michael Dink (A75) to address his
concern that more faculty need to be involved in sophomore
music, the study groups will be paired with released time to
allow faculty to audit the second half of sophomore music. Plans
call for an inter-campus exchange of faculty to learn from the
innovations in place on each campus, and the college’s joint
Instruction Committee will review the results.
A New Approach in Santa Fe
Cornell and tutor Ned Walpin in Santa Fe will lead the campus’
revamped freshman music program, carrying out an idea developed by Peter Pesic, tutor and musician-in-residence. “We were
at an impasse over what to do,” says Santa Fe tutor John Cornell
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 }
�17
{The Program}
“Other tutors have said that chorus is often the place
where the freshman class becomes a class.”
peter howard
Tom May, tutor
says. “We could see our management of 110 freshman in chorus
was not worthy of St. John’s students. Peter had the brainstorm.
It’s somewhat daring, but at the same time, it’s totally in
keeping with the St. John’s program of instruction: to sit at that
common table.”
Freshman music (its provisional name) will depart from the
exclusively choral approach and will be organized as tutorials
focusing on Gregorian chant and ancient music theory. The
material in the first five weeks of sophomore music will move
into the freshman year, but students will still sing, and often in
combined groups. “Those five weeks are focused on the Gregorian chant, and a significant portion of the time is spent
singing,” says Walpin. “We’ll have about six sections of
freshman music and each tutorial will meet as the same time as
another, so that there will be two tutorials meeting at the same
time. Those tutorials will get together regularly to sing so that at
least 30 people will be singing together at all times. Then, there
will be all-college events where all freshmen will get together to
sing as a whole chorus, and they will be singing the pieces that
they have been studying and singing in their tutorials.”
Music is included on the St. John’s Program because the
ancients accorded music a place among the liberal arts; they
understood it as one of the essential functions of the mind,
associated with the power to grasp number and measure.
Walpin expects that the tutorial approach will give students
the fundamentals they need to get more out of singing, paving
the way for an even more productive sophomore music tutorial.
“With this new structure, we are giving them reasons to sing
because they’ve been learning how to interpret a melody, what
makes a piece have a beginning, middle, and end. When they
understand what they’re hearing, the singing will become
crucially fulfilling for them.”
A required freshman chorus, Pesic believes, is antithetical to
the ideals of the Program. “Students come to St. John’s to talk to
each other,” he says.
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 }
continued on p. 19
�18
{The Program}
On the Double Origin of the Music Tutorial
By Elliott Zuckerman (HA95)
tutor emeritus
T
he three musical works that have been perennial
in our seminar list are a passion, an opera, and a
music-drama. They are all settings of narratives
that can sustain a discussion apart from the
music. But in the late 1950s the seminar list
included quite a few works of music that were
wordless, such as the Goldberg Variations, the Rite of Spring,
and (along with the Ninth, that does blossom into verse) the
Fifth and Eighth Symphonies of Beethoven. These works of socalled “pure” music were among the losses when (in the early
’60s) the list was decimated in order to make room for the
preceptorials. As with some of the scientific readings, and the
plays of Molière and Racine, we had the excuse that the works
were already being discussed at length in the tutorials. But the
lost music seminars were scarcely regretted, for it was widely
thought that it required a particular talent to lead a seminar on
a musical work that had no plot or poem to fall back on.
Yet Victor Zuckerkandl, who designed the music tutorial,
said to me more than once that if we eliminated the music seminars from the program, the music tutorial should go, too. It
was well known that Zuckerkandl himself could get any group
of people to talk about music, as well as about almost anything
else. But I gathered that for him the chief aim of the tutorial
was to provide the students with the wherewithal for talking
about music in the seminar, even when they didn’t have an
inspiring conductor.
Zuckerkandl’s successor as leader of the music tutorial was
Douglas Allanbrook, who disliked music seminars, and did
nothing to defend them. At the same time, despite his fondness
for Zuckerkandl and their friendship, he had an aversion to
Zuckerkandl’s view of music, which Allanbrook characterized
as Ton-Wille—the tones somehow had a will of their own–and
attributed it to windy philosophical music-lovers such as
Schopenhauer. Zuckerkandl’s notion of music as a message
from another world was as remote as possible from Allanbrook’s down-to-earth New England view that composers put
tones together to delight us, and possibly move us, with imitations of our own motions.
The music tutorial had to be justified as worth doing apart
from music seminars. From the beginning, the most venerable
justification lay easily at hand. Music, after all, had been part of
the traditional liberal arts, and the music tutorial rounded out
our study of the quadrivium. As in the laboratory and the mathematics tutorial (and, less systematically, in the language tutorial) we are invited to learn and think about the elements of a
subject. The compounding of intervals gives us an audible
example of the compounding of ratios in Book Five of Euclid.
And there is a unique correspondence between the two-to-one
ratio of pitches in the physical world, and the universal human
response to that simplicity when we recognize the sameness as
an octave.
Annapolis photographer Dimitri Fotos captures this portrait
of Elliot Zuckerman (HA95) for Fotos’ “Facing the Music”
series.
It is worth studying the first chapter of Zuckerkandl’s textbook—let alone his remarkable theoretical works—with a view to
how little he accounts for the power of music by adducing the
arithmetic correspondences that elated the Pythagoreans. I
think I can safely assert that for him the Miracle of the Octave is
something other than our response to the simple ratio.
We are fortunate to have a music tutorial with this double
origin. We ought to become more aware of what it means to
hold the Grand View or the Practical View, and embrace the
argument between them as our domestic dialectic. x
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 }
�{The Program}
“You were either
daring enough to
jump into music or
your weren’t.”
19
However, the music tutorial needs true
amateurs, Pastille says. “When I’m teaching
He believes the changes help make music a
something I’m not an expert in—say freshman
more integral part of freshman year. “This will
lab–I can enter into class discussions on a level
happen just when students are discovering
much closer to the students. It’s almost imposPeter Kalkavage, Tutor
ancient mathematics and ancient philosophy,
sible for me to do that in music,” he says.
which I think is ideal in that way,” he says. “It
“When you’re too inclined to see things that the
also allows the students to learn the elements of
students probably can’t see, you can let a lot of
music as they’re discussing what the elements really mean, as
fundamental questions go unasked.”
they do with Euclid and everything else.”
Beginning this summer, Annapolis will have in place a system
Mora likes Pesic’s approach and suggests that it more fully
for bringing more faculty into the tutorial. Seven tutors have
integrate music into the rest of the Program, particularly in
signed up for an eight-week study group to be led by tutor Peter
freshman year. “Just as students come to understand the
Kalkavage. In each of the 2007-08 and 2008-09 academic years,
elements of mathematics by discussing them as well as by
two tutors who have participated in the study group and who are
demonstrating them on the board, so too will they learn the
teaching the tutorial in the first semester will gain a station of
elements of music by discussing them as well as practicing them
released time in the second semester in order to audit another
by singing,” she says.
music tutorial. “The college hasn’t had something like this
in place before,” he says. “You were either daring enough to
A Study Group for Sophomore Music
jump in to music, or you weren’t,” he says, acknowledging that
While Annapolis plans to continue freshman chorus as it is, this
“it can be scary. If you haven’t had music training or you feel you
summer it will take the first step toward making more tutors
don’t have a taste for it, it can look like the most difficult part of
comfortable leading sophomore music. Dink understands why
the Program.”
some tutors on his campus are intimidated. In his 26 years at
Chorus Goes On
St. John’s, he has yet to lead sophomore music, although he
audited it during one of his sabbaticals. As do many tutors, Dink
Freshman chorus will continue as before in Annapolis; indeed,
worries his lack of musical training will hamper his effectiveness
Tom May can’t imagine the college without the freshman
in class. “I may be at the extreme end of the spectrum in terms
chorus. “I find it absolutely exhilarating,” he says. May has
of lack of preparation, but there are people who have played
spent much of his life immersed in music; as a seminarian, he
an instrument who still feel sophomore music would be a chalwas a choir director, and he later found a job singing sacred
lenge,” he says.
music in an Episcopal church. He has always been impressed by
Throughout the years in Annapolis, musical tutors have
the place music held in the Program, and he believes that it is
applied their expertise to reshaping sophomore music to make
especially important now, at a time when public and private
it more accessible for their nonmusical colleagues. When Bill
schools invest fewer resources in music.
Pastille came to St. John’s in 1986 (with a PhD in music from
Preparing students with different backgrounds to tackle
Cornell), only about a dozen tutors were willing to teach music.
sophomore music together remains the prime focus of freshman
When he revamped the curriculum in Annapolis in 1989,
music. Some students are experienced musicians; others can’t
Pastille built the tutorial around Zuckerkandl’s The Sense of
read a note of music when they come to St. John’s. “How are
Music and created a supplementary series of tapes for tutors and
people with that wide a range going to be able to talk to each
students. “We made the tutorial more accessible, and we did
other? We have students who’ve had a great deal of technical
manage to sign up a whole bunch of new people,” he says.
training but they’ve never sung. Freshman chorus performs a
That curriculum lasted a decade in Annapolis, before it was
similar role in the music program to that of the practica in
changed again. Today, in addition to Zuckerkandl’s text, the
the laboratory program, in giving a class a common experience
campus uses a manual called “Materials for Sophomore Music,”
of the phenomena—it’s for this reason as much as any other that
an ordered sequence of readings and musical examples.
I believechorus is such a vital part of the way we learn here,”
Although it was designed to make the tutorial more accessible to
May says.
more tutors, many are still reluctant to volunteer.
continued
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 }
�20
{The Program}
A Dialogue between Ancients and Moderns
by Peter Pesic
A
of beauty and cosmic order. Only a
mong the diverse
few fragments remain of ancient
projects underGreek music, but Gregorian chant
taken at St. John’s
represents this first practice.
College, none is
Chant is essentially monophonic,
more remarkable
a single beautiful melodic line
than our music
that generally does not aim for
program. Beside music conservaemotional expressivity. For
tories, I know very few other
example, the same chant melody
colleges where all students study
could be used to set “sad” as well
music. Moreover, our study of
as “happy” texts.
music is unique in its approach
Our sophomores begin with a
and scope, not simply “music
month of singing various chants
appreciation,” music history, or
and reading Boethius (who transtheory. I would like to describe
mitted ancient musical theory
how this approach has developed
to the West), each student
here in Santa Fe, where I have
composing a chant to a given text,
had the privilege of being
which the class then sings and
involved with this program over
discusses. Beginning with a kind
the past 25 years.
of music unfamiliar to almost
Before then, our music
everyone (whether musically
program had been led by such
trained or not) allows fresh considdistinguished and talented tutors
eration of the elements of music.
as the late Michael Ossorgin and
We then consider the momentous
Sam Brown, accomplished
and mysterious transition to
musicians who emphasized
polyphony, the interweaving of
certain masterworks that remain
several independent voices so
fixtures of our music tutorials:
characteristic of Western musical
Bach’s St. Matthew Passion,
Mozart’s Don Giovanni,
art, so strikingly absent from
Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde—that Music is an integral part of the “great adventure” that ancient practice (or from world
unique trilogy about passion.
music in general). This leads to a
is St. John’s, says Tutor Peter Pesic.
About 1980, Dean Robert Bart
month devoted to the polyphonic
asked Ralph Swentzell to rethink
art as developed by such masters as
the music tutorial so that it would
Palestrina and taught by Fux’s
be more open to tutors who did not feel they had a specialized
celebrated dialogue Gradus ad Parnassum, which taught Bach,
background in music. In his unforgettable way, Ralph took
Mozart, and Beethoven the art of counterpoint and whose
this project to heart and produced an amazing historical
exercises we also do. Our touchstone is Palestrina’s motet “Sicut
compendium of music and theoretical writings, the basis of the
cervus,” a theme-song on both campuses, its haunting beauty a
program we still do in Santa Fe, which remains indebted to
fitting epitome of music’s first practice.
Ralph’s foundational vision, even as it has been shaped and
The crucial transition between ancient and modern music
refined by many colleagues since then.
may have begun even before the parallel, momentous
In my view, the heart of our music program is a dialogue
transitions in mathematics, philosophy, and natural science that
between ancients and moderns. For music is not simply the
we study in other parts of our Program. Their seminal works
expressive art it became over the past centuries, but needs
date from around 1600; our music tutorials treat Claudio
to be understood in reference to two parallel traditions,
Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo (1607) as the pivotal work. In it, La
both extending back to antiquity. For clarity, let me use the
Musica herself steps forward and announces that she can
terminology introduced by a crucial figure in the story,
inflame the iciest heart, “now with noble anger, now with love.”
Vincenzo Galilei, Galileo’s father, who distinguished two
Monteverdi here puts into action the aspirations of Vincenzo
“practices” in ancient and modern music. His “first practice”
Galilei and others who wanted to revive the Greek drama and its
(prima prattica) is exemplified by the ancient “music of the
incomparable emotional power, which they thought the first
spheres,” which is essentially passionless and eternal, a paragon practice had wrongly ignored.
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 }
�{The Program}
21
“Our reason and
our passions
come together in
the study of
music.”
There’s another benefit as well, one important
being in the presence of music in a way that is
to the shaping of community. “It’s amazing that
ultimately unforgettable. At the end, they know
we ask all of our students to sing together,” he
if it’s going to work, we have to work hard—and
says. “Other tutors have said that chorus is often
they do, year after year.”
the place where the freshman class becomes a
Kalkavage, who has shared chorus duties with
class.” During spring performances of the
May for many years, believes freshman chorus is
Victoria Mora, Santa Fe Dean
chorus, upperclassmen on the balcony will often
not only a tradition in Annapolis, but an excellent
chime in on some of the songs. During the Senior
way to introduce students to “making music.”
Dinner each spring, students join their tutors in singing
Certainly some students never take to music, yet he observed
favorite selections from freshman chorus, and alumni at
that year after year, many Johnnies develop confidence in their
Homecoming speak fondly of their freshman chorus memories,
singing and discover a great love for great music. “It’s a thrill to
he says.
get students together and watch them discover their musicality,”
Students of lesser ability would be unlikely to have this expehe says. x
rience to stretch themselves, he says. “The whole is greater
than the sum of its parts,” says May. “Students get a sense of
Their “second practice” (secunda prattica) was explicitly
designed to seize power over human passions, as La Musica had
proclaimed, as Orfeo fatefully enacts. This new Orpheus is the
master of a reborn art—opera— that can move mute stones and
even infernal powers, but in the end Orfeo is mastered by his own
passions, loosing Eurydice to a second death after having won
her back from her first. Thus Monteverdi, crafting the first
masterwork of the second practice, also foresaw its tragic
dilemma, incarnate in Orfeo himself; near the same time,
Francis Bacon’s mythical retellings also foresaw the powers and
tragic possibilities of the new science he envisioned.
Thus emerged a deep dialogue between
beauty (the ideal of the first practice) and
power (the goal of the second), a dialogue
that continues to this day and had in fact
already begun in ancient times, for Plato
described both the music of the spheres and
earthly modes capable of ruining the soul
through sensuous indulgence or firing it to
courage. Our music tutorials explore the
harmonic art that Monteverdi pioneered,
an art that went on to empower the great
masterworks of Bach, Mozart, and Wagner
mentioned above. For them, the controlled
use of ever-stronger and more unstable
dissonances is crucial, reminding us of the
transition from the fixed Aristotelian earth
to the mysteriously movable condition of
Newtonian planets or from unalterable chemical elements to
radioactive instability.
As we explore these works of musical and scientific
imagination, we draw close to the sources of their immense
powers and also confront the attendant questions those powers
imply. In the story of Orpheus, the project of power reacts on
itself; our music program concludes by considering modern
masterworks that turn from ever-intensified expressivity to
reconsider the first practice and its austere ecstasies, works by
Debussy, Stravinsky, Webern, Messiaen, Arvo Pärt. Thus the
opening question posed by the two practices—by beauty and
power—resounds from past to future.
Throughout, we aspire to a complete
musical experience, encompassing
listening, singing, reading, discussing,
composing, analyzing, playing. Next year,
we will experiment in Santa Fe with a new
format for freshman music as normal
tutorials, rather than a single large chorus,
so as to encourage the discussions that are
the lifeblood of St. John’s classes.
As with so much of St. John’s Program, our
study of music is rightly a work in progress,
always trying to improve, grow, and deepen.
This great adventure, artistic and philosophical, has opened new vistas for me, in my own
education, as I hope it will continue to do for
many others, now and in the future. x
“Throughout, we
aspire to a complete
musical experience,
encompassing
listening, singing,
reading, discussing,
composing,
analyzing, playing.”
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 }
�22
{Pop Culture}
POP JOHNNIES
In the examined life, is there room for Shakespeare and Shakira?
by Emily DeBusk (A06)
op culture is easy, fun, prevalent, comforting,
and of-the-moment. The great books are
dense, rigorous, distant, provocative, and
old. Can they coexist without mocking each
other? The question has implications beyond
the movies Johnnies choose to see or music
they download to their iPods. It touches on
some deeply felt beliefs about a St. John’s
education and Johnnies in the wider world. Is
it odd to finish up a seminar reading on, say, the gospel of John, and
then settle down for a good listen to the new wave of Swedish death
metal? Is it snobbish to think one shouldn’t spend time on fleeting
fads with so much rich material in the canon?
Consider the (apparent) tension between pop culture and the
St. John’s culture. In one corner, there is a peculiar St. John’s
culture where, according to the college’s creeds, dialogue is king.
The campus is characterized by the reading of great books, earnest
conversations, tweedy traditions involving waltzing and pipesmoking, and all-around bookishness. In the other corner, there is
pop culture. A broad definition begins with media—music, TV
shows, movies, and the pervasive buzz that the Internet and
advertising emit—and its fundamental connection with certain key
ingredients: mass appeal, commercialism, consumerism, and
transience. In short, the St. John’s culture is anchored where pop
floats; limited, where pop is universal; and for the inner, where
pop concerns itself with the outward. Nothing about what is done
at St. John’s is “quick!,” “e-z!,” or “for a limited time only!”
Pop culture is entertainment, not education. So why make the
comparison? In 1937 Scott Buchanan, the first dean of St. John’s
under the new Program, wrote in the Bulletin of St. John’s College:
“Ultimately the ends of liberal education are the intellectual
P
virtues, the development of the capacities from which they come,
and the integration of the characters to which they contribute.”
That is, the intellectual virtues should not be left at the door as
students exit the classroom. Stringfellow Barr (who published a
novel and a cookbook along with academic works) said that while
immersion in the Program will foster a taste for higher things, the
St. John’s alumnus can still find riches in the culture of his times:
“From his constant association with the first-rate, he will have
acquired a distaste for the second-rate, the intellectually cheap and
tawdry; but he will have learned to discover meaning in things that
most people write off as vulgar,” he wrote in a 1939 report.
The St. John’s education seems to have the power to elevate
higher pursuits over popular ones, but should it?
Three Views
As pop culture and the St. John’s culture contend for attention,
some tension arises. In a college-wide survey asking current
students for their opinion about the relationship of pop culture and
the St. John’s culture, at least three differing viewpoints surfaced.
Many students saw no connection at all between what they do as
students and what they do as pop culture consumers. These
students turn to pop simply for relaxation and entertainment. “Pop
culture functions like Reality,” says Kayla Gamin (A08). “It
provides emotional release, social lubrication, and a way to group
people into social sets distinguished by their tastes in music and
entertainment.” There are many college-wide symptoms of pop
culture, such as film clubs, video games, and dance parties. The
relatively few TVs on campus (rapidly becoming obsolete thanks
to laptops with streaming video and DVD players) have some
faithful watchers. One group of students gathered every Tuesday
night to follow the sensational life of the misanthropic House of the
{ T h e C o l l e g e • John’s College • Spring 2007 }
�{Pop Culture}
“Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artist’s
metaphysical value judgments. An artist recreates those aspects of
reality which represent his fundamental view of man’s nature.”
raphael’s
SCHOOL OF ATHENS
digitally adapted by lord thomas burbridge
Marcel Proust
“I want to be an artist that everyone can relate to,
that’s young, happy and fun.”
Britney Spears, singer
{ T h e C o l l e g e • John’s College • Spring 2007 }
23
�24
{Pop Culture}
“Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.”
Albert Einstein
“For me, just being on the cover of a magazine wasn’t enough. I began to think,
what value is there in doing something in which you have no creative input?”
Elle Macpherson, model
eponymous Fox TV show. (Again, the intertwining of pop and the
Program was startling; one Johnnie read his lab manual during
commercial breaks.)
Pop culture is also used as a source of information about what’s
going “out there.” Cloistered by size, geography (Santa Fe), and a
relatively closed curriculum, St. John’s can seem to be a world of its
own, and it is a constant struggle to be engaged in the present as
well as the past. “The world is so large,” says Annapolis tutor Eva
Brann, an unapologetic fan of monster truck rallies, Louis L’Amour
novels and Law and Order. “I don’t want to be totally out of it.
Whatever it is they like, I want to know about it. Our students don’t
want to cut themselves off.”
Another group of students views pop culture as a distraction. “I
think the most disturbing part of [pop culture] is how reason just
isn’t there,” says Liz Curry (A07). “There are things about it that
should bother us. Everything is so emotionally driven, and it’s the
very excess of emotion that is praised. I don’t think it should be
studied, but engaged. We won’t always be reading and talking about
these books, so there’s got to be a way for the things we do here to
resonate with people in general. I think Johnnies in particular have
the power to give another perspective from pop culture that’s not
necessarily elitist or bookish. There’s a way that these books live for
us as much as pop culture lives for others.”
Tristan Chambers (SF08) goes beyond wariness to outright
disdain. He sees a connection between the nature of pop culture
and the rhetorician Socrates warns about in his dialogues. “Most of
pop media is morally debasing and it obfuscates the truth on all
levels,” Chambers says. “I feel like pop culture panders to our vices
as Socrates says the rhetorician panders to our vices and more
animalistic urges. Pop media wants your attention, and its main
means is to appeal to basic urges, which are harder to endure or
manage. I think it’s bad for our souls. These media generators are
unconcerned with what’s true or false, but are more interested in
manipulating for effect. Pop reflects that rhetorical attitude in its
sound bytes, one-sided stories, and advertising.”
Still others are simply not attracted to pop. This group chooses
instead to be entertained and inspired by media that is too eclectic,
old-fashioned, or avant-garde to rightly be called pop. Zack Hay
(A08), for example, listens to records of Moondog, a blind musician
who busked on the streets of New York City and made his own
instruments—a far cry from Billboard’s Top 100. “I’ve just always
had an inclination to look for things in obscurity, not things that are
readily available,” Hay explains, “because there is a tendency, I
think, in all cultures, to overlook a lot of things, which do not
deserve to be—if something is just a little bit weird, it just gets
thrown by the wayside. I always take delight in knowing that there’s
always a little pocket of these alternatively-minded people scattered
about the world, now, and historically.”
Fleeting Fads vs. Great Works
In trying to pinpoint the tension between pop culture and the
St. John’s culture, it is tempting to think it is simply a matter of
aesthetic quality. Just compare the newest American Idol’s hit
single to Mozart and voila! the one withers in the shadow of
the other. The music and literature of the Program is mainly
“high” culture (Mozart, Milton) with a bit of counter culture
(Marx, Baudelaire), and nothing that could be classified as modern
pop. Yet it is too simplistic to take the omission as an a priori
condemnation by St. John’s of pop culture. “There are obvious
quality distinctions between the best and the worst forms of
hip-hop, and this is true of classical music as well,” says Santa Fe
tutor David Carl, who is routinely described as a “cool” tutor by
students. “The best hip hop is better than the worst classical music,
so aesthetic value cannot be determined simply based on what part
of culture (popular or ‘high’) something participates in.”
Hollywood produces a few good films each year, the recording
industry manages to produce work by good artists, and some
television shows “are not simply a waste of time,” says Carl. “How
to distinguish between what I would call ‘good’ and ‘bad’ culture
(pop or otherwise) is the challenge,” he maintains.
Annapolis tutor Mera Flaumenhaft posits that the real danger of
pop culture in the St. John’s community is more of a how than a
what. “Everything goes so fast, everything is loud, and many things
happen at once,” she says. “One of the best things we do at
St. John’s is develop the habit of slowing down. This is a place
where people look carefully at something: a tree, a sentence, a
math demonstration, a difficult argument. We look for a long time
and with other people. We ask questions, converse, and look again.
This way of life makes our encounters with everything, including
popular culture, more thoughtful and more interesting.”
Brann submits that these habits are the means to meet the
challenge Carl speaks of: “Going through the Program is the
shaping of taste,” she says. “If you have thought about really good
works, it gives you the tools to think about the difference about the
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 }
�{Pop Culture}
25
“At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet.”
Plato
“We all feel love, and that might sound kind of corny, but I really feel that’s
what joins musicians together around the world.”
Enrique Iglesias, singer
faith—that Johnnies bring to the
seminar table. Carl points out that
Shakespeare and Aristophanes
might be considered the pop
Pop and the Johnnies
culture of their day. Someday,
Pervading the general attitudes of
St. John’s students might be
St. John’s students towards pop on
reading the lyrics of 21st-century
campus, there was a reluctance to
pop songs or movie screenplays,
treat pop culture as a single
but by then these works will have
whole, to be entirely accepted or
outgrown the pop label. Could
rejected. Perhaps this is because
students in some future tutorial
for those who tune into pop
be examining the film Fight Club
culture with their minds as well as
for truths about the human
their headphones (and some
condition in the same way we now
deliberately choose not to engage
consider Fleurs de Mal?
their minds) the movies, TV
St. John’s treasures the old
shows, and commercials born of
because it endures, but it doesn’t
pop are raw source of information
reject all in current times.
about the human condition.
“Pop culture is something like
Kim Paffenroth (A88), an
the Blob in that old Steve
associate professor of Religious
McQueen movie,” observes Carl.
Studies at Iona College, devotee
“It consumes everything in its
of heavy metal and classic TV
path that it thinks it can get somescience fiction, and author of
thing from, and this means that
(most recently) Gospel of the
a few truly good things (maybe
Living Dead: George Romero’s
even great things) will get
Vision of Hell on Earth, has found
consumed along with all the
plenty of material in pop culture Elizabeth Burlington (A08) takes a break from Hobbes to
worthless trash.”
catch up on Slash.
to engage him. “I think St. John’s
The real struggle between pop
teaches you to take ideas and texts
culture and the St. John’s culture
seriously, analyzing them with
seems one of dominance; “The
habits of curiosity and interrogation,” he says. “I apply that to
St. John’s way” has ambitions to be an integral part of a Johnnie’s
current pop culture. There is writing out there that tries to fit pop
life. So does pop culture. The consumer is meant to buy what he
into some post-modern analysis, but I try not to bring any theoretsees, think what she listens to, and not worry about time for
ical baggage. I just give it a close reading. I don’t think all of pop
dialogue or “unplugged” reflection. “Life is too short to listen to
deserves this approach, but some does.” In Paffenroth’s opinion,
bad music and read bad books and watch bad movies,” says Carl.
to reject pop culture “guarantees that you are regarded as irrele“Pop culture offers to do all the choosing for us, but I think we are
vant and disconnected from the larger world that we live in. [At
better off getting out in the world and discovering for ourselves
St. John’s] what one strives for is not so much to refine your taste,
which music, books, television, and movies are worthy of our
but to refine your analytical skills and to analyze what is valuable.”
time.” This is where free people, living examined lives, politely
In other words, within the morass of pop lie shreds of the very
decline pop’s offer. x
same kinds of questions—of philosophy, art, political science,
emily debusk
good and the bad. You ask yourself
‘What about this will pass away?’
What revives?’ ”
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 }
�26
{Visual Think er s}
VISUAL
THINKERS
uestioning is at the heart of discovery for
these artists who move beyond words to
shape clay, carve wood, and paint.
Q
Smart Hands
In 2005, Betsy Williams (SF87) and her partner Mark Saxe, a stone
sculptor, opened Rift Gallery in Rinconada, N.M. Functional
pieces designed for daily use are the foundation of her work,
complemented by objects for contemplation and display.
When I graduated from St. John’s, truth be told, I had no idea
what to do in this world for the next several years. Not that I wasn’t
trying to figure it out. Circumstances eventually had me employed
at a small Japanese regional bank with a branch in New York City,
working as a trader on the money market. Then a co-worker
invited me to an exhibit of 17th-century Korean ceramics at the
Metropolitan Museum. Standing in front of a slightly asymmetrical celadon vase, I had what is perhaps best described simply as
a profound moment, and my life took the direction that it has
today. I scrimped and saved so that I could make a move to Japan
and study pottery seriously. I wanted to learn about traditional
methods, digging clay, making glazes from natural materials
and firing with wood. In 1994, I did make that leap, and managed
to find a teacher, Mr. Yutaka Ohashi, in Karatsu, Japan, with
whom I apprenticed over the next four years. I learned through
observation, imitation, and lots of repetition.
In working at the wheel a surprising kind of knowledge was
revealed to me gradually about just how smart my hands are. I
made thousands and thousands of the same cylindrical cup, over
and over, until after a couple of years I knew all about that cup,
everything that could go wrong, every millimeter of the anatomy
of that cup. With practice, one’s hands and eyes can detect differences of less than a millimeter without conscious discrimination.
Awareness of this physical sensibility helps hold conscious
discrimination and corporeal knowledge in balance, and I believe
the act of creating as a whole can also be described as this kind of
balancing on a larger scale.
In 1999, I “graduated” from my apprenticeship, with the
pronouncement, “Now you have the skills to teach yourself
anything else that you may need to learn.” So I returned to New
Mexico, bought land in a remote mountainous region about an
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 }
�bob eckert
{Visual Think er s}
hour north of Santa Fe, built a house and studio, and then my own
wood-fired kiln. I’ve been working away ever since, trying to bring
my well-trained self and my creative self into a kind of balance,
while making a living doing it.
My work relies heavily, even now, on repetition, but in a new
way: drawing on the visual impact that multiples carry. My wallhung cup grids, which range in size from three cups to 180 cups,
emphasize sameness and difference of their components at once.
The cup becomes visible in its relationship with others in a way
that one cup alone cannot. Currently I am working on a grouping
of 52 teapots, one for every week of the year, for a show entitled
“Imagine” that will open at our gallery in May. (www.riftgallery.com)
St. John’s continues to have a positive influence on my career.
Over the past summer, St. John’s student Carolyn Lobeck (SF07)
was an apprentice in my studio through the Ariel Internship
Program. She was introduced to many of the basics that are
essential to a career in clay, in accordance with what I learned
during my own apprenticeship. This opportunity to pass on to
another young woman some of what I have worked so hard to learn
is really important to me. St. John’s also presents one of my handmade cups to each of the graduates of the Eastern Classics
program every year. That the college recognizes the importance
of the handmade object in today’s society, its importance as a
symbol and as a way of life, is huge.
At left, MATTER AND TIME, wall-mounted cubes. Above, Betsy
Williams apprenticed in Japan for four years before opening
her studio in New Mexico. At right, a 4-inch tea caddy.
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 }
27
�28
{Visual Think er s}
Natural Proofs
Karina Noel Hean (A00) is a painter and teaches drawing,
painting, and design as visiting instructor of art at Fort Lewis
College in Durango, Colorado. She has exhibited in numerous
solo and group shows. In fall 2008, she will complete a twomonth artist fellowship at the Ballinglen Arts Center in Ballycastle, Ireland. Hean grew up near the Annapolis campus,
where her mother, Miriam Callahan-Hean (AGI87), is graduate
admissions officer for the college.
I am a planner. From eighth grade on, I took art-making seriously. As much as public school and free time allowed, that is
what I did, taking every art class I could at my public school,
earning scholarships to classes at the local art center, and,
though it clearly has not improved my social skills, I spent most
of my teen and pre-teen years alone in my room painting or
drawing. While I was very concerned about what would happen
to my “art career” if I did not attend an art school, I knew that
St. John’s would provide me with the intellectual exposure, critical thinking, and verbal skills I would need to be an artist who
was not only technically proficient but thoughtful as well.
When the conditions are right, I work 14-hour days in the
studio. The rhythm of these days is paradise. The places my
mind and hands may take me and the work fluctuate: unpre-
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 }
�{Visual Think er s}
“When the conditions are right,
I work 14-hour days in the studio.
The rhythm of these days
is paradise.”
Karina Noel Hean (A00)
dictable, exciting, reassuringly familiar, ridiculous, calm,
transcendent.
For several years my work was concerned with communicating a sense of reverence for nature and understanding
nature as a source of spirituality. My Pendular Motion Series
monotypes and Emotional Proof Series explore the aesthetic
and intellectual capacity of geometric and dynamics diagrams
and theorems. Studying the history of Western mathematics
and physical sciences at St. John’s exposed me to Euclid’s
Elements and Huygens’ On the Motion of Bodies from Impact
amongst other heavily diagrammed attempts to explain the
nature of our world and how it functions. What initially strikes
me about these proofs is the clear beauty of their lines and
shapes. As a visual communicator, I am intrigued by the quantity and quality of information these images can convey. In
addition to this is a skeptic’s pondering of the kind of knowing
they claim to present.
The Emotional Proof Series are improvisations that riff off of
the Euclidian proofs that I studied at St. John’s. These proofs
are logical and predictable. My version of the proofs is a
humorous comment on the contemporary desire to categorize
and comprehend human emotions. They ask questions such as:
How far can we take the relationship between word and image?
How much distance exists between these two supposedly
distinct forms of communication?
“Learn by doing and making mistakes” has become one of
my pedagogical mottoes that stems from my own experience as
an art student and artist. If you are not frustrated, you are probably not learning anything or challenging yourself.
Karina Noel Hean is drawn to the beauty of mathematical
proofs, as shown in these untitled works.
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 }
29
�30
{Visual Think er s}
Daja Music
Billy Lieb (class of 1945) attended film
school at UCLA after his graduation
from St. John’s. Following graduate
school and teaching film making, Lieb
worked in Los Angeles as a motion
picture cameraman and film editor until
his retirement in 1984, when he began his
career as a sculptor. His artwork
includes two different media: assemblage (making things out of found
objects) and abstract wood sculpture.
I have enjoyed collecting things since
I was a kid. First it was postage stamps,
then shells, rocks and minerals. As an
adult I started to go to flea markets and
swap meets where you could buy interesting things cheap. Gradually, I
learned to put some of these things
together to make constructions of
assemblages.
After I retired from the film industry
in 1984, I moved to the Ocean Park
district—right on the Santa Monica
beach. That summer there were storms
that brought piles of driftwood onto the
beach. I soon discovered that some of it
was very heavy and was carvable. A
surfer classmate of mine (from grad- A surfer told Billy Lieb (class of 1945) where to find the manzanita burl—prized by
sculptors—that washes up on Malibu beach. (UNTITLED)
uate school, UCLA) suggested I drive
20 miles north to the Malibu beaches.
He was right. For the next 10 years, my
I started exhibiting at the factory and local galleries. Meanbest wood came from Malibu, mostly manzanita burls.
while, Sony Music was building its West Coast headquarters on
I had also started collecting art posers. I found out about the
our block. When it was finished, the president of Sony Music
Picture Framers Guild, which would help you learn how to
invited our college, the Santa Monica College of Design, Art,
frame art posters. The next year, I started The Magic Picture
and Architecture, to decorate their new building. They wanted
Gallery, my own framing operation in Malibu.
us to submit art “with a musical theme.” As I started making
Soon I started taking drawing and art history classes at Santa
Silent Musical Instruments they finally accepted 14 of my assemMonica College. There I learned about a new art school being
blages including The Daja Music Machine and The Daja Guitar.
founded at Santa Monica College, using an empty furniture
The word “Daja” became my brand name for my style of assemfactory for its classrooms. All of the faculty were professional
blage, being a sum of “Dada” and “Jazz.” I have entered several
artists, including Laddie Dill and George Herms, who became
wood sculptures and assemblages in the alumni art show at
my favorite teacher.
St. John’s in Santa Fe.
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 }
�{Visual Think er s}
31
Playing in the Mud
by Eleanor Peters
ven as a small child I loved playing in the mud.
My mother is an artist so there were always
opportunities to try out new things at home.
When Mike was in grad school in Seattle and
our children were young there was a great
recreation center program that included
pottery classes—a place where adults were encouraged to play
in the mud! Perfect. I was hooked in no time.
Long before Santa Fe was in the picture for us, I discovered
the work of legendary San Ildefonso potter Maria Martinez
and was intrigued by her work. I haven’t adopted her Native
American techniques but the respect and awe remain. I never
dreamt that one day we would be practically in her neighborhood, surrounded by her legacy.
Imagine my delight when we arrived at St. John’s to find a
wonderful pottery right in the Fine Arts Building. Not only
could one throw pots, but be variously serenaded by
sophomore music, jazz groups, piano, bass, drums or horn
playing. There is a very knowledgeable instructor in the
person of local artist Sadiq Kahn. Our pottery assistant is
Carolyn Lobeck (SF07), who spent last summer as apprentice
to Betsy Williams. A small but dedicated group of students
find their way to the studio. Some become regulars; others
come for a season as their class schedules allow. Some bring
considerable pottery experience, and some are beginners. All
bring enthusiasm. What I really enjoy is that our intersection
in the Pottery Studio gives me an opportunity to get to know
students in a non-academic setting. But, being Johnnies, it
also means there are conversations about what they’re
E
Eleanor Peters, wife of Santa Fe President Michael Peters,
is a regular at the campus pottery studio. She entered these
works in the Santa Fe Community Art Show.
reading in seminar or the topic of their current paper, as well
as how to throw a tall cylinder or make a plate. x
In August 2006, I bought a home in a senior mobile home
park in Poway, California. I did this to be near my daughter Joy
and my two great grandsons Danny and Alex. When my dear
friend Jonnie Zheutlin learned of my move, she sent me funds
to build an art studio as part of my new home. Few artists are
lucky enough to be able to open their front door and enter their
art studio! x
For color images of art by Betsy Dixon, Billy Lieb, and Karina
Hean, visit the St. John’s Web site; click on Publications and on
The College magazine.
An avid collector, Billy Lieb sculpts driftwood and makes
eclectic sculptures from items lost and found.
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 }
�32
{ S t u d e n t Vo i c e s }
I F J O H N N I E S RU L E D
T H E WO R L D
by Jennifer Wright (A08)
chelsea stiegman
W
ith global events
whirling around
us, recently I have
been putting
thought into what
the world would
be like if run by Johnnies.
Initially euphoria overwhelmed me.
The notion of a place run by “philosopher
kings” most obviously points toward The
Republic. I can’t imagine we would strictly
follow Plato’s notions if only because we
might prove woefully disinclined toward
the whole martial aspect of Socrates’
utopia. But we could surely expect a society
in which everyone at least knew of Plato
and, when one exclaims that she loves him
in the course of conversation no one would
reply, “Yeah, I loved Play-doh too, but I
kind of grew out of it.” When I mentioned
this notion of a world run by Johnnies to
other students, almost everyone responded
with wild enthusiasm. “Can you imagine?”
asked one boy. “Everyone everywhere
would be really well read. Also, undeniably
sexy in that way that Johnnies are.”
A freshman remarked, “Think about it—
it would be amazing. We’d just go up to
people in the streets, and instead of saying,
‘How are you?’ we’d say, ‘And how do you
feel about the Cartesian Dichotomy?’ ”
Then I queried one of my best friends
who may have been feeling a tiny bit bitter
about writing her sophomore enabling
essay that day. “Well,” she said, “I think
we’d still be sitting around in caves. I think
that if someone tried to free us from the
cave, we wouldn’t notice, let alone kill him,
After three years’ acquaintance with Program authors, Jennifer Wright (A08) has a few
ideas on how Johnnies would run things.
because we’d end up debating the
definition of light, and whether or not it
was a form. Then we’d debate the
definition of, say, the rocks in front of us.
We’d make some tepid attempt to figure
out whether or not rocks were edible, using
research gleaned from Harvey, which
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 }
would be totally irrelevant. The rocks
wouldn’t be edible, but we’d end up talking
about what it means to be ‘edible.’ Eventually, we’d all starve to death.” She sighed,
and resumed writing about Dante’s
depiction of God’s divine love.
�33
{ S t u d e n t Vo i c e s }
She may well have had a point. But then
can it really be the case that Johnnies are as
wholly impractical as the cloud-dwelling
Laputans of Gulliver’s Travels? Would we
be doomed to perish if left to our own
erudite devices?
We might not starve to death, but in a
world governed by the ideals of the
Program we might have to deal with some
substandard food, if the case of Glaucon
or Cato is anything to go by. Relishes,
we remember, are for the epicurean and
indulgent. So we are going to have to begin
frequenting cafés that make their food
entirely without relishes, which, as
ketchup-wielding modern Americans,
might prove pretty difficult.
However, if we pay attention to the
Program sophomore year, we will happily
realize that wine will be everywhere. Wine
abounds in Shakespeare, it abounds in
The Canterbury Tales, and it abounds
especially in the Bible. To the relief, I’m
certain, of our Reality archons, at no point
in the Program do we come upon characters who don’t love wine; even Socrates,
our paragon of moderation, is particularly
in his element at drinking parties. The
abundance of alcohol in our brave new
world may make us considerably less
concerned—indeed indifferent to—the lack
of relishes in our food.
When Johnnies are in charge:
The Johnnie Beauty Salon: No one
who has ever seen a picture of Immanuel
Kant can possibly think that beauticians
would be frequently patronized by those
who emulate the Program authors. Ultimately, beauticians will fade into obscurity, patronized only by those followers of
Socrates who believe that beautiful
people offer us insight into the good–and
those people will mostly be regarded as
drunken degenerates by anyone following
the ideals of later Program authors. Hairdressers will become obsolete in favor of
brain-dressers who will be capable of
straightening the mess under the head of
hair. They will be known (to those in the
know) as ‘tutors.’ Of course, this may lead
to a slightly less beautiful world.
The Johnnie Department Store:
Despite the proponents of Karl Marx
standing outside the store and adamantly
A nation comprised of very hungry
alcoholics might not seem like the best
setting for, well, anything, but it would
have certain redeeming features. The food
of love, at least, would abound with all its
relishes intact. Music would be everywhere, provided that the philosopher kings
in charge were not paying overly close
attention to St. Augustine. If they were,
music lacking polyphony would be
ubiquitous (but surely Palestrina put an
end to that argument). Of course, it might
not be the music that the vast majority of
the nation listens to. We would relish our
Mozart, our Brahms, our Shostakovich but
whenever “Louie, Louie” came on the
radio people would (and I find this truly
tragic, as I love “Louie, Louie”) sniff
dismissively and remark upon the
simplistic 1-3-5 pattern. “Surely,” people
would exclaim, “this piece is lacking in the
dynamic qualities Zuckerkandl describes in
The Sense of Music!” Classical stations
would quickly become the most popular in
the nation, and listening to “Louie, Louie”
would prove one to be a harmless but
quirky eccentric.
Other forms of entertainment would
undergo drastic alterations as well. Reality
shows and dating games would become
passé in favor of PBS and the BBC, which
would re-create our favorite literary pieces
in loving, eight-hour miniseries. Buddy
protesting that the items within it
shouldn’t exist (and those reading Kant
and Hume declaring that that’s fine,
because they don’t) everything would
probably function as usual until people
realize that mathematics tutorials have
left Johnnie cashiers with an inability to
do simple mathematics. Instead, they will
be left trying to explain to patrons—
eagerly awaiting change from the $20
dollars they gave for a $3 dollar
purchase—what the nature of infinity and
the ultimate actually are.
The Johnnie Music Store: These
would be located in very close proximity
to religious institutions, as sophomore
year has taught us that the two are closely
intertwined. Far from being a carefree
environment, Johnnies would stand
listening to bars of music playing over the
intercom in such stores, and would nervously call out “1-3-5! 1-3-5!” Then they
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 }
comedies would feature a wily, irascible
bloke named Socrates, and his timid pal
Plato. Young women everywhere would
stand in line for hours to see new interpretations of Jane Austen. (Johnnies must
find it nice to note that many young
women already do this, given the success of
Pride and Prejudice, a selection featured
proudly on the Program list, which is to
say, we knew it was cool before the rest of
America did.)
And as for sports? People would sigh and
dismiss the rare sorts who wanted to toss a
football around, but in the croquet players
would reside the hopes and dreams of a
dapperly dressed, hat-wearing nation.
For every Johnnie knows that nothing says
“athletic prowess” and also “hand-eye
coordination” like croquet.
While I will save my notions on Johnnies
in the boardroom and our diplomatic
prowess, at least in the basics of life our
rule will pursue the form of the good.
We might wish that we did not have to
spend another day eating Cato-approved
portions of gruel. But then, we would
realize that we could wear wonderful
outfits and go to our local stadium or park
to watch a rousing game of croquet, with
Haydn blasting in our iPods. And whatever,
the fact would remain that we would stay
sexy in that undeniable way that Johnnies
are sexy. x
would engage in fervent discussion about
whether or not they had gleaned greater
insight into the nature of the divine.
The Johnnie Grocery Store: The
Johnnie grocery store would feature a
fairly ordinary assortment of items save
the fact that no apples would be sold, nor
a variety of other “unclean” items.
Johnnies, after all, have not spent an
entire semester reading the Bible only
to make the same mistake twice. The
enormous supply of wines, however,
would compensate for it.
The Johnnie Bookstore: Bookstores
would immediately establish themselves
as the social hub of the Johnnie society.
The philosophy section in each of them
would expand magnificently, and trashy
paperbacks would be relegated to back
corners, near the restroom. In a tribute to
great writers past, everything would be
categorized by the Greek alphabet. x
�34
Back to Basics
A Summer Crash
Course for Readers
How to Read a Book
Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren,
Simon and Schuster, 1940, revised 1976
How to Read a Page
I. A. Richards, W. W. Norton, 1942
How to Read Two Books
Erasmus G. Addlepate, Frederick Stokes
Company, 1940 (out of print)
by Emily DeBusk (A06)
s long as St. John’s is in
the business of asking
gadfly-ish questions,
here is one to ponder:
do you know how to read?
Paradoxically, you must
read to learn how to read.
It is no coincidence that the philosopher Mortimer Adler (HA86), a selfdescribed “educational evangelist”
and co-author of How to Read a Book,
was instrumental to the shaping of the
Great Books movement in the late 1930s.
An underlying premise of Adler’s book is
A
{Bibliofile}
also the lifeblood of St. John’s; as
Einstein put it, “Information is not
knowledge.” Newspapers, encyclopedias,
and textbooks, while valuable in a
particular way, do not add up to the
kind of knowledge valuable to a Johnnie.
Nor will a single one of our great books
magically radiate knowledge to the
reader as soon as the first page is turned
(with the possible exception of
Lucretius). Ultimately, what is read is
secondary to how it is read.
For Adler and co-author Charles Van
Doren (class of 1946), reading well is
something of a superpower. “With
nothing but the power of your own mind,
you operate on the symbols before you in
such a way that you gradually lift yourself
from a state of understanding less to one
of understanding more.” Skilled reading,
the authors write, is our only defense
against a pre-packaged opinion. How
to Read a Book is an exhaustive
presentation of the four levels of reading:
elementary, inspectional, analytical, and
syntopical. Elementary reading is what a
kindergartener does, or a freshman just
learning to piece together the Greek
alphabet. Inspectional reading, or “timebound, systematic skimming,” is familiar
to the student who procrastinates on a
seminar reading and must try to piece it
together in an impossible amount of
time. (When not forced to take the place
of analytical reading, inspectional
reading is a valuable skill to have.)
Analytical reading is the fount of a
good seminar. This is reading for
understanding, applied to material
that is perhaps slightly out of the reader’s
grasp so that it takes analysis, first to get
through the book and secondly, to talk
about it. Finally, syntopical reading is
analytical reading of multiple books,
synthesizing ideas from various sources,
which ideally leads the reader to a unique
idea from the many.
“The art of reading, in short, includes
all of the same skills that are involved in
the art of unaided discovery: keenness of
observation, readily available memory,
range of imagination, and, of course,
an intellect trained in analysis and
reflection,” the authors write. What is at
stake in the quality of your reading?
If you are reading for more than just
information, the authors posit that it is
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 }
What is at stake in the
quality of your reading?
If you are reading
for more than just
information, the authors
posit that it is the life
of your mind.
the life of your mind. If you ask a
challenging book a question, “it answers
you only to the extent that you do the
work of thinking and analysis yourself.”
It is almost necessary to read How to
Read a Book in order to read How to
Read a Page: A Course in Efficient
Reading with an Introduction to 100
Great Words, written by British literary
critic and semanticist I.A. Richards in
1942. Like Adler and Van Doren,
Richards offers his book as a remedy to
poor reading, poor thinking, and the
consequent downfall of civilization.
“What is the point of toiling through
thousands of pages, if the chief outcome
is an accumulation of misunderstandings?” he asks. How to Read a Page
delves deeply into the theory of language,
uncovering the “systematic ambiguity
�35
{Bibliofile}
(or ‘resourcefulness’) of all our most
important words” in order to read and
think afresh. The book combines reading
exercises with the gradual development
of a doctrine of the fundamentals of
reading. Nevertheless, Richards does not
aim to strictly codify the art of reading.
For Richards, as for Adler and Van Doren,
reading is an almost sacred act of
communion, not with authors, but with
ideas. “There is no such thing as merely
reading words; always through the words
we are trafficking or trying to traffic with
things—things gone by, present, to come,
or eternal. So a person who sets up to
teach reading should recognize that he
may be more ambitious than he seems…”
Once the reading of a page and a book
have been mastered, we may now move
on to Erasmus G. Addlepate’s tongue-incheek parody, How to Read Two Books,
published in 1940. The book aims to
show non-thinkers “how to become
near-thinkers, part-time thinkers, and for
those who wish to follow the Rules, how
to become mental giants.” Although the
author pokes fun at the idea of a “How
To” book that aspires to true education
(and although he would call I.A. Richards
a practitioner of that “technique of
thought
What Tutors are Reading
We asked tutors from Santa Fe and
Annapolis what non-Program books they
were making time for: a few novels, many
nonfiction works, and a book about a
teddy bear made the list.
Basia Miller: “Céline’s Mort à Crédit is a
long term project.” Also, W. Somerset
Maugham’s The Painted Veil. “After
seeing the movie version, I found the
plot-lines simpler and more delicately
woven [in the book].”
Emily Langston: Obasan, by Joy
Kogawa, about Japanese Canadians
interned during WWII. Also, The Custom
of the Country, by Edith Wharton.
Jon Tuck: Plowing the Dark, by Richard
Powers, The Road by Cormac McCarthy,
Pillar of Fire by Taylor Branch, The Last
Samaurai by Helen DeWitt, and Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem.
Henry Higuera: The Wild Ass’s Skin, by
Honoré de Balzac and The Sot-Weed
Factor by John Barth. “As to why I read
them: both were just to keep sane.”
Sherry Martin: Winkie, by Clifford
Chase, “in which Meletus testifies at a
trial of a teddy bear. Yes, really. On a
recent road trip, I listened to the new Le
Carré novel, The Mission Song. I like to
read novels during the holidays to decompress.”
Joseph Macfarland (A87): Before
France and Germany: The Creation and
Transformation of the Merovingian World
and The Myth of Nations: The Medieval
Origins of Europe, both by Patrick J.
Geary.
Jacques Duvoisin: The Ancient City, by
Fustel de Coulanges, “a classic study of
the religious foundations of Ancient
Greek and Roman cities. It is a real eyeopener. I heartily recommend it.”
Susan Stickney: One Good Turn: A
Natural History of the Screwdriver and
the Screw, by Witold Rybczynski; The
Omnivore’s Dilemma, by Michael Pollan;
and Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the
Lost Techniques of the Old Masters, by
David Hockney.
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 }
Greg Schneider: “Since I took a small
group of Santa Fe campus folks on an
alternative spring break experience in
Haiti, I have been reading about the
country. In particular, I recently read
Breath, Eyes, Memory, by Edwidge
Danticat, is a Haitian-American, and
Mountains Beyond Mountains, by Tracy
Kidder, a nonfiction book about
improving health care in Haiti.”
David Starr: is doing some syntopical
reading: Eusebius, The Ecclesiastical
History; Margaret Barker, The Great High
Priest; Robin Fox, Pagans and Christians;
and Jean Danielou, The Christian
Centuries, vol. I: The First Six Hundred
Years.
“I am reading most of them because I
am interested in the question, why the
early Christians were willing to risk their
lives for their faith. This, of course,
presupposes the question, what was their
faith (or Gospel)? I do not think it is very
well understood by most modern and
post-modern scholars—Christian or not.”
�36
{Croquet}
H A P P Y B I RT H DAY,
C RO Q U E T
by Emily DeBusk (A06)
N
eed there be more reasons for
merry-making on croquet
day? In addition to the muchanticipated victory of the
Johnnies over the Mids (5-0),
the reunion of dear friends,
delectable picnic spreads, flowing champagne, and springtime on the Annapolis
campus, Johnnies had five more reasons to
be of good cheer. The first is that it has been
a quarter of a century since the fateful wager
between St. John’s student Kevin Heyburn
(A86) and a Naval Academy officer that
sparked the good-natured rivalry. Both
Heyburn and the first Imperial Wicket for
St. John’s, John Ertle (A84) attended the
25th croquet match, along with Ertle’s wife,
Kathy, who goes by “First Lady Wicket.”
That first year, the Mids were clearly
outmatched, Imperial Wicket Ertle recalls
with pride. “I did a chop shot and the Mid
turned to his buddy and said, ‘I think we’re
in trouble.’” Ertle points to a snapshot of the
1982 mallet-wielding teams on the steps on
Barr Buchanan, which is eerily similar to the
present day, complete with boater hats and
the trophy securely held in a Johnnie’s
hands. Instead of trophies and mallets, this
year Ertle and Heyburn held champagne
flutes. The commemorative glasses were a
gift to St. John’s alumni in honor of croquet’s
25th birthday.
Old Roots, New Tree
The Liberty Tree that once stood on the front
campus of St. John’s was a piece of American
history in our midst; each of the 13 colonies
had a Liberty Tree, which patriots used as a
meeting place as well as a symbol of their
revolutionary ideals. The 400-year-old
Annapolis Liberty Tree, the last surviving
tree, had to be taken down after it was
critically damaged by Hurricane Floyd.
This year croquet spectators celebrated
the dedication of a new Liberty Tree, a gift
from the 2007 senior class. The senior class
voted to purchase the tulip poplar, located
between the Barr Buchanan Center and
McDowell Hall, as a perennial gift to both
St. John’s and the Annapolis community.
Before the start of the croquet match George
Zahringer (A07), president of the Senior
Class Gift Committee, spoke briefly on the
seniors’ choice. “Of all places, no ground is
more receptive to this symbol of liberty;
here, where the ideal of liberty in thought is
so strong,” he said. “It makes me proud as an
American and as a member of this Polity to
offer this tree on behalf of my class, to reinforce the ideal of liberty.” President Nelson
accepted the gift on behalf of the college,
and the ceremony was made complete when
an ensemble of Johnnies offered their
rendition of “Liberty Tree,” a poem by the
famous revolutionary Thomas Paine.
gary pierpoint
A Gift from the Croquet Gods
In 2005, the unthinkable happened: the
St. John’s croquet team lost the Annapolis
Cup to the Mids. The match was two for two
on that drizzly day, and victory in the fifth
game depended on partners Christopher
Mules and Tristan Evans-Wilent, both
juniors at the time. They lost. “We were so
distraught when we lost, we took a year off
from school,” Evans-Wilent says. Two years
later, Mules and Evans-Wilent were back on
the team, sporting Springsteen-inspired
“Born in the USA” attire, determined to
make this match a victory for St. John’s. The
croquet gods smiled upon them. “I went
rover, then Tristan played a great turn,”
an ecstatic Mules says after their triumph.
Christopher Mules (A07) demonstrates
the “whack-n-watch” pose adopted by many
players after a tense shot.
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 }
�{Croquet}
“We [lost] the decisive game five two years
ago, so this is retribution. I feel amazing!”
Love is in the Air
While the croquet teams might have had the
jitters about the day’s competition, no one was
as nervous as G. August Deimel (A04). Deimel
had been planning for weeks to propose to his
girlfriend of two years, Sara Wagner (A08). He
and some friends tricked her into looking for
stereo speakers in Barr Buchanan while
Deimel and Wagner’s families, both from Pittsburgh, were brought out from hiding. When
she emerged from the building, Wagner was
puzzled to see her family. “Then August got on
one knee and asked me and I said yes, of
course,” she recounts. After a champagne
toast, the couple—planning to marry next
summer—danced in front of Barr Buchanan.
People Watching, Balzac Style
Nostalgia, the Annapolis Cup, champagne
glasses, Liberty Trees, divine justice and
romance—what more? Croquet 2007 also had its
usual fantastic parade of characters. “I love the
endless variety of people,” said Bryan Smith
(A08) as he surveyed the teeming assembly of
Johnnies, Mids, alumni from both institutions,
and Annapolitans. “It’s like entering a Balzac
novel; you get a whole social scene with all their
foibles and eccentricities, ” he said. x
Clockwise: Souvenir glasses celebrate a silver anniversary; The
original Imperial Wicket John Ertle (A84); George Zaringer (A07),
Eric Honor (A10), Sara Luell (A09), Lindsay Wyett, Rachel Bartgis
(A09); Lining up the shot; The prized cup; Young boy; A Springsteeninspired team; the original 1982 croquet team.
photos by gary pierpoint
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 }
37
�38
{Alumni Profile}
A Humanitarian Calling
Christian Acemah (SF05)
by Rosemary Harty
united nations/mark gasten
T
hat he would pursue a career
in the field of international
development was essentially a
foregone conclusion for
Christian Acemah (SF05), a
native of Uganda. His father
was a deputy ambassador for his country; his
mother had worked as an attaché to the
U.N. Security Council.
That he was able to land his first professional job based in Geneva, Switzerland,
with an international nonprofit was beyond
expectation. His studies at Georgetown’s
School of Foreign Service played a role in
that good fortune, he says. But as a foreign
student who suffered several personal
tragedies, he wouldn’t have gotten to
Georgetown or Geneva without the support
and encouragement he found at St. John’s.
Acemah won two merit-based scholarships to attend Georgetown University’s
highly regarded Walsh School of Foreign
Service. Being at Georgetown was a
wonderful experience, if a little intimidating, he says. His fellow students were
serious, ambitious, and already quite
accomplished. “I was the youngest one
there,” he says. “I entered my first class
and the professor started to talk about
Thucydides—everyone else in the class had
no idea what she was talking about. I could
at least relate to what she was saying, and
that was great.”
As a graduate student, Acemah
conducted research and worked as a
teaching assistant in the African Studies
Program. In the summer of 2006, he served
an internship with the Lutheran World
Federation in the Uganda/Sudan Country
Office. He analyzed the federation’s health
policy in the context of Uganda’s national
policy and helped provide health workshops. Through Georgetown, he heard
about a job with a division within UNICEF
that worked to get vaccines and immunizations to children in developing countries.
After he put in his application, he heard
nothing for months, and he braced himself
for disappointment. Finally, a call came for
an interview, and Acemah eventually landed
the job, which was based in Geneva and
would start in a matter of weeks. Because it
Christian Acemah (SF01) greets former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan
during an event Acemah organized at Georgetown. The event celebrated Annan’s
lasting legacy to Africa.
would mean interrupting his studies, he
consulted his graduate adviser, who urged
him to accept the job. “It would have taken
me eight years to get to this level, and even
to get into the UN system is so difficult.
Most people give up along the way,” he says.
Acemah’s official title is Executive
Officer, Policy and Research, for the GAVI
Alliance Secretariat. The GAVI alliance is a
public-private partnership focused on
increasing children’s access to vaccines in
poor countries. GAVI unites UNICEF, the
World Bank, and major international foundations in setting mutual goals, sharing
strategies, and coordinating efforts. “We
bring principles from the private sector and
apply them to the public sector,” he says.
One of the agency’s goals is to improve
the mechanisms involved with getting new
vaccines out on the market as soon as they
are ready. It also seeks to create sustainable,
long-term financing for immunization
programs in the countries in which it works.
“Being in such an intense environment is
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 }
quite interesting for me. We work from
8 a.m. to 7 p.m. on almost any given working
day,” he says. “There are constant briefings
and writing pieces to compose. Travel is also
a huge part of this office. I cannot believe
the amount of responsibility I have been
given.” Most recently, Acemah is working
on HPV vaccine advocacy and leads GAVI’s
relationships with African initiatives.
Though he grew up with privileges,
Acemah was raised to be aware of responsibilities and obligations to others. He
undertook his education with those goals in
mind. In Uganda, aptitude tests identified
him as gifted in science and mathematics,
but Acemah wanted to study literature and
was stubborn about it. “My mother came to
the school and told them, ‘he knows what he
wants to do, and it’s going to be difficult to
change his mind,’ ” Acemah recalls. The
school wouldn’t budge, so Acemah found
himself at Olney Friends School in Ohio,
where he learned about St. John’s.
He had already accepted a full scholarship
�39
{Alumni Notes}
1944
CARL S. HAMMEN, a Maryland
scholarship student at St. John’s
College, married Deborah Reinhold-Kazor on March 31, 2007,
in St. Petersburg, Fla. Since
retirement from the University of
Rhode Island, he has served as a
tax-return preparer, census
enumerator, and adjunct
professor at several Florida
colleges. Carl likes to run, and
in 2006 was ranked second in
the state, in the men’s 80 age
division in the 10K and third in
the 15K. Deborah won the
1500-m run in December 2004
at the state senior games, where
they met. She is an equestrienne,
and her quadrille team was
second in the nation in 2001.
Surrounded by Mountains
A
fter 15 years as head of school at Friends School
of Minnesota, MARK NIEDERMIER (A84) has
moved on. He is now head of school at Pacific
Northern Academy in Anchorage, Alaska. His
8-year-old daughter, Sophie, is a second-grader
at the school, and his 3-year-old son, Caleb, will
soon enroll as well. Mark’s wife, Karen, is a nurse practitioner
at Anchorage Midwifery and Women’s Health, and they all enjoy
an active lifestyle, surrounded by mountains and wildlife. x
Carl is the father of five children,
four living, all highly successful,
and the grandfather of seven, all
of whom he dearly loves. Deborah
and Carl, when he completes his
duties as teacher of “creative
geometry” at Ringling School of
Art & Design in Sarasota, will
travel to Portugal, Spain, France,
and England.
to Earlham College, but St. John’s intrigued
him. He called the Santa Fe Admissions
office, rushed to get his material in, and was
offered admission. Acemah says he was
drawn to St. John’s primarily because he
could pursue all his varied interests. “The
place spoke to me from the first moment I
learned of it,” says Acemah, though it took
some time for him to feel confident in the
Program. “I was very scared at first, reading
Euclid. David Carl was my math tutor,
and by the time he called on me to do a
proposition, I did it my own way, and it
worked. From that moment, I just
enjoyed everything.”
Acemah experienced two great losses
during his St. John’s years. His mother,
Monique Kwagala, died when he was a
sophomore. As a foreign services officer in
Uganda, she had helped people escape the
regime of Idi Amin. “She had always been
the anchor of my life,” he explains. “The
day she died, I got up and went to class, and
I got called to do a very long proposition of
Apollonius. Continuing at St. John’s was
important to me. I think that strength came
from her, saying I have to go on.”
A year later, Acemah lost his grandfather,
Nicholas Magoola. Acemah had spent
several years living and working with his
grandfather on his farm, and he learned how
to observe and respect the natural world
through him. “He was one of those people
1960
MARY CAMPBELL GALLAGHER
presented “Easier than IRAC:
The Under-Here-Therefore Legal
Writing System” at the Rocky
Mountain Legal Writing Conference at the University of Nevada
Las Vegas on March 10. Mary first
who can just see right through you, see the
things you can do, and try to encourage you
to look fear in the face,” says Acemah.
“Now, my second anchor was gone.”
His tutors and friends saw through his
stoic demeanor, Acemah says. “They would
always check in with me, and that was a
good thing,” he says. When it seemed
finances would force him to drop out,
his tutors went to the administration
on his behalf, and then-president John
Balkcom (SFGI00) found money for
Acemah to continue.
Career Services Director Margaret O’Dell
watched Acemah evolve from a “quiet,
polite freshman into a mischievous, determined, self-assured senior who would not let
any obstacles stand in his path to Georgetown University and graduate school. He
needed to take two economics classes as
prerequisites before entering Georgetown,”
she explains. “Most students would have
taken a year off and finished those classes in
a leisurely fashion, but not Christian.
He found the classes he needed at the
University of New Mexico, figured out how
to manage the tuition, found a way to
commute to Albuquerque, convinced the
professors to let him enroll for the summer
session, and passed both classes with flying
colors in the space of eight weeks.”
Odell is not surprised Acemah is already
serving a humanitarian cause; she has
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 }
described her writing system,
which is based on Aristotelian
logic, in the first edition of her
book Scoring High on Bar Exam
Essays, published by ARCO in
1991. BarWrite Press brought out
the third edition in 2006.
1967
LARRY (A) and HAZEL
SCHLUETER (A69) report from
New Orleans: “Hazel has an oldtime country and bluegrass music
show every Sunday morning,
10 a.m. to noon at www.wwoz.org
on the Web for her style of what is
happening in New Orleans postKatrina. We are restoring the
house and enjoying having all the
family here.”
always felt that Acemah’s drive stemmed
from his desire to return to Uganda and
work to improve the lives of others. “This
inner drive could have made him dour or
overly intense but in reality the intensity you
felt from Christian was his love for learning
and for his friends,” she says.
At St. John’s, Acemah met his fiancée,
Marie Craig (SF05), who now teaches at
Olney Friends School and will begin graduate studies at Columbia University in the
fall. They will marry this July at a lodge on
Murchison Falls in northwest Uganda. Many
of his classmates and tutors are planning to
attend, he says.
In the meantime, Acemah is adjusting to
life in Geneva, where finding affordable
housing is a challenge. “The city is very
beautiful, very clean, so many gardens, and
it has a multicultural feel to it because the
UN is here. I can eat the food that I would
eat in Uganda! My favorite is green bananas
with chicken—I can buy it at the grocery
store, go home and prepare it for myself.”
Living closer to his father, Harold
Acemah, ambassador to the European
Union in Brussels, is another plus to
his location.
In the long run, Acemah wants to find a
happy medium between conducting field
work and policymaking. “I don’t know yet
what that blend will look like,” he says. “I
hope it will be exciting and challenging.” x
�40
{Alumni Notes}
on. Daughter HANNA (A96,
Georgetown Law ’01) had a
beautiful wedding on Tilghman
Island to Stephen Goldstein in
November 2005, in which I
participated in Highland dress
plus yarmulke; they live on
Capitol Hill, and it’s great to
be nearby. Catch us at the
New Orleans Jazzfest!”
1968
A good long classnote from
JOSHUA GILLELAN (A) covers a
lot of ground: “I finally made my
escape from the Office of the
Solicitor of Labor in June 2004,
to start my own practice, the
grandiosely entitled Longshore
Claimants’ National Law Center,
practicing primarily before the
federal courts of appeals and the
Supreme Court. I can’t imagine
why I waited so long (except, of
course, that the new practice,
though busy from the start,
produced almost no cash flow for
the first two years). My wife,
writer Allison Blake (be sure to
get the current edition of her
widely available Chesapeake Bay
Book: A Complete Guide before
your next trip to the area), and I
have a second home in New
Orleans (bought four months
before Katrina—great timing—but
in the ‘sliver by the river’ that
didn’t flood, though it was an
anxious two and a half weeks
before we could make sure it was
still there and not pancaked by
the water oak in the back yard or
the live oak in the neighbor yard),
and intend to spend half the year
there (appellate practice is
wonderfully portable) from now
1975
Publishing news from ERIC
SCIGLIANO (SF): “Been
grounded in Seattle, helping start
a magazine (Seattle Metropolitan,
nominal position ‘news editor’).
Article “The Mind of an
Octopus” picked for Best American Science Writing anthology.
Last book, Michaelangelo’s
Mountain, was finalist for
Washington State Book Award.
Lost to Tim Egan’s The Worst
Hard Time, which went on to win
the National Book Award.”
C
(SANDERS) SOKOLOV (SF02) and her
husband, Christopher, welcomed their second
son, Gregory, on November 22, 2006. He joins
his brother, Nicholas, in contemplating the two
greatest inventions of the Western world: fire
trucks and helicopters. x
RYSTAL
Institute of St. Louis
(www.kabbalahmadeeasy.com),
along with publishing poetry:
“In 2005, my poem was featured
alongside Maya Angelou’s in a
poetry anthology called, Cosmic
Brownies—Poems about Lessons
Learned in Life. In 2006, I was
the original winner of the only
scholarship (based solely on
merit) given by the Washington
University Summer Writer’s
Institute, which I turned down
because it wasn’t a full scholarship and due to health reasons at
the time. I also help one of my
friends with her matchmaking
business.”
1976
ALICE JOY BROWN (A) works as
an office assistant while doing
promotions for the Kabbalah
Another Croquet Fan
alex fotos
T
heodore
Gammon (A28
or A30 if he is
slow like his
father; SF28 if
contrary like his
mother) reports that his
parents, ALEX and BETH (both
A94), are doing well in Baltimore. Other places, too. He is
trying to teach them that as
long as you sit under the maple
once a day, get dirty once a day,
eat some currants and dance a
little, you should smile more
than frown. x
Fire trucks and
Helicopters
1988
For the last year and a half,
JULIET BURCH (A) has been
working at the National Center
for Jewish Film, an archive
located at Brandeis University
and dedicated to the preservation
and restoration of Jewish-themed
films. “I feel as though I’ve really
found my niche in this interesting
and quirky collection,” she
writes. “It’s great to have a job
I love!”
ERIN MILNES (A) writes that she
was married in June 2006 to
Chuck Guest, a writer and musician, in Oakland, Calif.: “We had
more fun than anyone should all
weekend, with family and great
friends, including half a dozen
Johnnies from the infamous class
of A88.”
In March, KIM PAFFENROTH (A)
was named a recipient of the
Bram Stoker Award for his
nonfiction work, Gospel of the
Living Dead: George Romero’s
Visions of Hell on Earth (Baylor,
2006). His book tied with Final
Exits: The Illustrated Encyclopedia of How We Die, by Michael
Largo. The award is bestowed in
recognition of “superior achievement” by the Horror Writers
Association. Winning the award
puts Paffenroth in the company
of writer Stephen King, and he
takes home an award that is an
eight-inch replica of a haunted
house with a door that opens to
reveal a brass plaque engraved
with the name of the winning
work and its author. Gospel of the
Living Dead is a non-fiction book
connecting social and religious
views with the classic American
zombie and horror genre; it has
attracted much critical acclaim.
1991
JONARNO LAWSON (A) has
received the 2007 The Lion and
the Unicorn Award for excellence
in North American poetry for his
book Black Stars in a White
Night Sky.
continued on p. 43
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 }
�41
{Alumni Profile}
What was so special about the Class of ’66?
by Emily DeBusk (A06)
e came to St. John’s
from having marched
with Martin Luther
King on a hot day,
holding hands,
singing ‘We Shall
Overcome.’ Kennedy was President. Bras
were to be burned. We had come to St. John’s
as prospectives, gone to seminar, become
converts. We came to the college, the
Program, with something resembling
religious reverence. I can’t speak for my
classmates, but my guess is that it was more
the rule than the exception.
We read seminar with Jacob Klein,
complete with pipe and joyous love of Plato;
sang in freshman chorus for/with Victor
Zuckerkandl, who had but to lift his hand for
us all to feel held by angels; studied the Bible
in small groups with Mr. Kaplan, whose
humanity almost eclipsed his brilliance; read
Greek with John Kieffer, whose cadence still
echoes. Elliott Zuckerman, Joe Cohen, and
John Sarkissian were the ‘young ones.’ Al
Main was in charge of the laboratory. Bob
Bart, Charles Bell, Paul Scofield, were our
guides, with Winfree Smith, and Sam Kutler,
Beate Ruhm van Oppen, Douglas Allanbrook, Tom MacDonald. Life with them was
totally engrossing. We were obsessed with
books, dialogue, discovery.
Annapolis was tacky and rundown, not at
all its up-market today self. McDonald’s was
new and had just sold a million burgers. The
night the Cuban missile crisis threatened,
there was silence around the seminar table
until Mr. Klein broke in with the opening
question and we were off, again, in the
traditional search. Afterwards, we sat in a
dormitory room, listening to the radio.
The Russian fleet turned back. And later,
W
Kennedy was shot. The only television on
campus was turned on, day and night. I
didn’t watch, but that was a choice I’m not
sure I don’t regret. Anyway, in 1963, or
maybe it was 1964, we heard the first Beatles
recording wafting out from Humphrey.
We sat and watched the sunsets over
College Creek, and fell asleep reading Aristotle or Kant or Cervantes or Tolstoy (all four
just the right size for a pillow), drank coffee
in the eponymous shop, and partied as soon
as lecture—or sometimes the question
period—was over, making good use of the Sin
Bins in Campbell, and walked down to the
shabby dock dubbed ‘Piraeus.’ I guess sometime in there, we grew up–sort of–and then,
of course, we left.
Where did the class of 1966 go and what
did they do? Like every graduating class,
the diverse career paths taken by alumni
reflect the versatility of their education: a
news executive, several clergy members,
an internationally acclaimed playwright,
doctors, lawyers, artists, and even a
lighting technician for Grateful Dead
concerts.
bruce preston (A65)
Constance (Bell) Lindgreen (A66) and her
classmates came of age during an extraordinary time of metamorphosis in America.
Growing up in tumultuous times, and
immersed in the great books as they were,
they were bound for great things. Connie
retired as a vice president in IBM’s European
operation and took on the role of “class
leader” for her reunion last year. Collecting
news of her classmates inspired her to reflect.
She writes:
For Lindgreen’s classmate Mel Kline, it
was sophomore seminar on the Bible that
was an especially formative experience.
“Sophomore seminar, when you face the
Bible and religious questions, had a strong
effect on me and my Jewish roots,” Kline
says. Soon after graduation, he moved to
Israel, where he lives today. “St. John’s really
helped me find my life’s work. About 25 years
ago I began a research project dealing with
Jewish texts without commentaries, which is
unheard of in Jewish studies. I made a
number of discoveries utilizing the tools of
inquiry I developed at St. John’s.”
Theodora Carlile echoes Lindgreen’s
memories of cultural change: “When I
entered in 1962, Beatnik folk was the cutting
edge of music. By the time I left, it was The
Stones, Dylan, The Beatles. As far as the
Program goes, it was a charmed experience
for me. I was thrilled with the conversations.” So much so that Carlile went on to
become a professor in the liberal arts
program at Saint Mary’s College in
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 }
Irene (Lindermayer) Dortch and Connie
(Bell) Lindgreen, both class of 1966.
California, a position recommended to her
by Brother Robert Smith. “I get to go
through the Program over and over again,”
she says. “I never really left in a way. I also
remember that my class was known as “the
Matriarchy” because of the many wonderful
and strong-minded women in the class.”
Margaret Winter was one of them. “In
late ’66 there was beginning to be a lot of
political ferment,” Winter recalls. “I wanted
to work for social justice. I decided the best
thing to do after St. John’s was to go to law
school and use that as a tool for political
activism.” Today, as the associate director of
the National Prison Project of the ACLU,
she works to protect the constitutional rights
of prisoners. x
To exchange memories, post pictures, and
help tell the story of your class, visit and
join the online community of alumni.
http://alumni.stjohnscollege.edu
/?AlumniAssociation
�42
{Alumni Profile}
Planting Seeds of Peace
Munir Hussein (A90)
by Patricia Dempsey
D
and expose young people to their ‘enemies’
at a time in their life when they’re forming
their opinions and perceptions. Hopefully
this will help create a new generation of
leaders who will be wiser and perhaps less
judgmental of someone’s looks or beliefs.”
He discovered the organization while
studying for his MBA at Columbia University, through a Jewish colleague who was
serving on the Seeds of Peace board.
“He came to me and said, ‘I think you will
really appreciate what this organization is
doing,’ ” Hussein says. Observing the camp
in action inspired Hussein to offer his
considerable management skills to Seeds
of Peace. He volunteered on the Young
Leadership Committee, managing fundraisers in Manhattan and mentors former
“Seeds” with career advice. Last year,
Hussein joined the organization’s board
of directors and is currently its only
Palestinian American member.
As a board member, Hussein hopes to
provide a leadership model for teenagers
who come from Palestine. “I want to set a
good example and use my Palestinian
heritage as a positive thing,” he says.
“There are many occasions—business
meetings, parties—when I’ll hear comments
christopher huston
ressed in khaki shorts and
sneakers, he could easily
have passed as one of the
camp counselors. But
Munir Hussein (A90) a
real estate dealmaker, had
come to this peaceful spread of tall pines
and clear lakes near Lewiston, Maine, to
observe. As a guest of Seeds of Peace
summer camp, he quietly listened to a
tense dialogue between Israeli and
Palestinian teenagers.
“The professional facilitator opened with
a question: ‘What do you think about the
wall between Israel and the West Bank?’
There were 14 teenagers from Israel and
about 10 from Palestine,” recalls Hussein, a
Palestinian American. “They were probably
on their best behavior because there were
visitors in the room, but it was a very open,
candid dialogue. They bunk together, sail,
do the ropes course, and have discussions
that remind me in some ways of a St. John’s
seminar-starting off with a question.”
As a managing director in real estate
acquisition and development for a private
equity firm in Manhattan, Hussein skillfully
arranges financing and structures lucrative
real estate deals. Yet for all the delicate
negotiations he has
managed, nothing
prepared him for this
first visit to Seeds of
Peace in 2003. The
camp brings together
teenagers from both
sides of a conflict
area, such as
Palestine and Israel,
India and Pakistan,
the United States
and Iraq, and the
Balkans, in order
to foster mutual
understanding.“I was
dazzled,” Hussein
says. “Here’s an
organization that is
really doing something about the
problems in the
world. They’re
seeking to educate
or someone will ask ‘where are you from?’
I say, ‘Rye, New York’ and they say, ‘No,
where are you really from?’ It depends how
diplomatic people are, but in this climate of
fear the tiniest little difference stands out.
I want people to see that I’m not just like an
American, I am an American.”
Last summer Seeds of Peace touched
Hussein personally when his then 13-year
old cousin Dana attended the camp in
Maine. “She lives in a small village in
Palestine, Zeita, near Nablus, of about
2,100 people,” says Hussein who has
numerous relatives on his father’s side who
live on the West Bank. Hussein has visited
Palestine several times, and when he
traveled there in 2000 with his parents he
spent time with Dana, whom he describes
as “exceptionally bright.” Yet the opportunities for a young woman like Dana in her
village were, and still are, limited. “The tiny
village where Dana was growing up has dirt
roads, stone houses, olive trees, and
chicken farmers,” Hussein says. “The
women are raised in a totally traditional
Middle Eastern culture and handle the
children and household chores. Although
they are given the opportunity to go to
college, they typically do not have the same
choices that men do.”
Hussein’s father, a
Palestinian immigrant
who spent his career
with large consumer
product companies,
and his mother, a
classics professor at
Montclair State
University in New
Jersey and an advocate
for woman’s rights,
later returned to
Palestine to convince
Dana’s parents to let
her attend the
program. “Her father
was cautious,” says
his corporate life is
about deal making,
but with Seeds of
Peace, Hussein builds
bridges.
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 }
�43
{Alumni Notes}
continued from p. 40
1993
RACHEL BLISTEIN (A) is in
Michigan: “I completed my
master’s degree in Landscape
Architecture at Morgan State
University in Baltimore,
graduating in 2003. After
working in Baltimore for several
years, I met my future husband,
Paul Alexander, and decided to
re-locate to Ann Arbor, Mich.,
where he was completing his PhD
in Mechanical Engineering. We
were married in October of 2004
and, one and a half years later,
bought our first house in nearby
Ypsilanti. My husband works for
General Motors as a research
engineer and I recently began my
own residential design firm, Veris
Landscape Design, L.L.C. We
love Michigan, despite the cold
winters and troubled economy.
The surroundings are beautiful,
the people are friendly, there’s a
funky local music scene and lots
of great food (it goes with the
cold winters). Anyone who
wants to get in touch is
welcome to reach me at
rblistein@yahoo.com.”
OMAR S. MANEJWALA, M.D.,
(A) writes: “Over the last six years
(since finishing up as Chief
Resident in psychiatry at Duke)
I’ve become very interested in the
treatment of addicted healthcare
professionals. In July 2006,
I moved to Virginia to become
the Associate Medical Director
of the William J. Farley center,
a program for chemically
dependent professionals. I also
spend a few days a month
lecturing across the country on
various topics in addiction
medicine. This is exciting and
rewarding work, as about half of
my patients are addicted medical
professionals including
physicians, pharmacists,
veterinarians, dentists, etc.
It’s really been an honor and a
privilege to participate in their
recovery. When I’m not working
I’m still traveling like crazy. Last
year I climbed Kilimanjaro and
hiked the overland track in
Tasmania. Last month I returned
from my fourth trip to India, this
time to attend my brother’s
marriage at the Taj Mahal.”
1998
1997
DOMINIC CRAPUCHETTES (A) has
been encountering great success
in the board game business: “Our
latest party game, “Wits &
Getting the Word Out
K
EVIN BROCK (SF96) and KHIN KHIN GUYOT
BROCK (SF88) hope to add a new member to
their family soon: “We married in 2004, after
meeting in a summer alumni seminar on Jane
Austen in 2000 and in several more over the
following years. For our honeymoon we did the
Coast-to-Coast walk in England, a 200-mile hike from the
North Sea to the Irish Sea through Yorkshire and the Lake
Country. We live in Mountain View, Calif.” Kevin is a software
engineer with a networking start-up in Santa Cruz and Khin
Khin teaches first grade in a local public school.
“We are currently trying to adopt an infant through domestic
open adoption,” he adds. “Open adoption is very different from
international adoption, because the birth mother and the adoptive parents know more about each other, and there is usually
some degree of continuing contact after the baby is born. The
birth mother chooses the adoptive parents who she wants to
raise her child, so there’s a lot of uncertainty involved while
waiting for a match. The biggest challenge is getting the word
out, so if you know someone who is pregnant and considering
adoption, please feel free to give them our contact information:
408-806-9190; brock@kevin.com.” x
Hussein. “She’d never been out of the
village and it’s a big leap to go from this
tiny village in the Palestinian countryside—
not only to go to the United States, but to a
camp where she would be bunking with
roommates from Israel.” By June 2006
Dana joined fellow Palestinian “Seeds” at
an orientation session before they took a
plane from Tel Aviv to the United States
with the teenage Israeli “Seeds.”
Hussein, his parents, and his uncle from
Boston visited Dana on her second day of
camp in Maine in part to reassure her
parents that she was thriving. “She was
wearing her headscarf and she was a little
nervous, but she got out and was playing
soccer with the kids. She’d never been
swimming before; she played all kinds of
sports and went boating and did crafts, and
of course they do a ropes course, where
you’re learning to spot one another and
build trust.”
Hussein says Dana’s English, along with
her confidence and world outlook, reached
new heights. “Now she’s back in her village
and she’s started a Seeds of Peace type
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 }
Wages,” won 11 industry awards
last year including Games
magazine’s ‘Party Game of the
Year,’ ” he writes. “It will be
carried nationwide at Target
starting in August! I am very
excited.”
JEAN (TULLY) FLAHERTY (A) and
her husband, Seamus, joyfully
announce the births of their three
children, Aoife Marie, born
December 1, 2003; George
Anthony, born March 26, 2005;
and Saoirse Anne, born October
7, 2006. They live in Plantation,
Fla., and will move to South
Bend, Ind., this autumn.
DAWN (SHUMAN) BORCHELT
(A), Matthew, and Wolfgang
welcomed their new son and
brother, Robin Wylde Borchelt to
the world in their new home on
May 2, 2006. He was 7 lbs.
9 ounces and 20 inches long.
2000
ALEXIS BROWN (SF, EC03)
recently joined the Board of
Directors of Creative Santa Fe.
She has added this to her list of
other volunteer efforts at the
Santa Fe Rape Crisis and Trauma
Treatment Center, Santa Fe
Cares and AIDS Walk, and High
program there,” he says. “It’s had a
tremendous impact on her life and
broadening her horizons.”
“It’s funny,” Hussein adds, “back when I
was at St. John’s, I was never aware of being
that different in college. People were just
people. This is the way I was brought up, a
face is a face, a mind is a mind, an idea is an
idea, you don’t look at a person’s culture or
ethnicity–you look at who they are as a
human being.” x
�44
{Alumni Notes}
A Journey to China
B
TURNER (EC03) has been accepted to CIEE’s
Teach in China program. He will teach Oral English
and American Literature classes at Jiaxing University
in the city of Jiaxing, Zhejiang Province. “Beginning
this August, this appointment will last an entire
academic year (10 months), and I couldn’t be more
excited,” he writes. “I took classical Chinese courses under the
eminent Mike Bybee at the Santa Fe campus, and his classes were
the initial impetus for this journey of mine. Apart from my teaching
load, I intend to diligently study Mandarin with a private tutor,
thereby returning to the States slightly more fluent than I am now.
“Not only did I want to share my good fortune with the Johnnie
community, but I also wanted to invite others to offer their advice
and suggestions. If any others have embarked on similar experiences, I would love to glean some sage advice with regard to living
conditions, textbook choices, etc.: bennett.turner@gmail.com.” x
ENNETT
Mayhem Emerging Arts Studio.
She is excited to work on
promoting the prosperity of
Santa Fe’s creative industries
and their economic potential.
If you want more information on
Creative Santa Fe, please feel
free to contact Alexis at:
alexis_i_brown@yahoo.com.
2001
“I’d like to give an update on my
whereabouts to my fellow
alumni,” writes WILL BONNER
(SF). “In February 2007 my wife
and I moved to Buenos Aires,
Argentina. We keep a daily blog
about the experience at
www.willbonner.com.”
“This is just a shameless note to
let you all in on some personal
news,” writes NATHAN WILSON
(AGI). “I recently signed a fourbook deal with Random House
for young adult novels, the first of
which (Leepike Ridge) will release
May 22. I shamelessly rip-off
some of the greats in service of
my plot (Twain and Homer
mainly). In a very different
market, I also have a piece of
short fiction in the February issue
of Esquire. It’s sort of mixed-
media, I guess—typed on pieces of
a cocktail napkin (their idea, not
mine). Another short story was
just nominated for the Pushcart
Prize. I feel a bit cheesy telling
you all, but is the phrase alma
mater meaningless? Can’t I brag
to my mater?”
2002
STEVE ROSE (AGI) sent in a note
for himself and MAILI SHAFFER
(AGI), who look forward to
traveling together in Europe
this summer: “Ms. Shaffer, after
teaching first grade since
graduation in May 2000 is
about to finish her first year of law
school at the University of
Michigan in Ann Arbor. Her firstyear summer law position will be
in Baltimore, and she is looking
forward to beautiful evenings in
Annapolis. Maili would be
delighted to hear from classmates
or Johnnies interested in UM Law
School. For myself, I have been
teaching in Annapolis since May
2000, with two lengthy interruptions for visits to Iraq with
B Company, 4th Light Armored
Recon Battalion. Our most recent
vacation was to keep the rivers
and lakes safe for fishermen and
farmers, and we received many
thanks from the Iraqis for
providing some small measure
of security. I’m delighted to
be home and look forward not
only to hearing from former
classmates, but most of all to
backpacking through Europe
with Maili in August.”
SHELLEY (WALKER) SAXEN
(SFGI, EC03) writes: “Doug
Saxen and I are now married and
enjoying all the skiing and hiking
we can get while in Montana for
another year. While I finish up my
doctorate in Natural Resources
Management, Doug is in the
throes of writing a children’s
book series. There’s always room
for SFGI alumni at our place if
you happen to be in western
Montana and we would love to
hear from you.”
Since last spring MICHAEL
SULLIVAN (A) has been trying to
teach Plato, Aristotle, Boethius,
Aquinas, Descartes, Hume, Kant,
and Nietzsche to semi-grateful
freshmen at Marymount University in Arlington, Va., and and
The Catholic University of
America in Washington, D.C.
He is also working on his doctoral
dissertation, on the debate over
universal hylomorphism in
13th-century metaphysics, for
Catholic University.
RACHEL ROCCIA SULLIVAN (A)
is nearing the end of her third
year of medical school at
Uniformed Services University of
the Health Sciences (USUHS) in
Bethesda, Md. Options for
specialization remain open, but
she is strongly considering a
future in psychiatry.
Their younger daughter, Grace,
has had two eye surgeries and a
heart surgery since her birth last
July, but she’s doing very well;
their older daughter, Clare, is,
hopefully, coming out of her
terrible twos as her third birthday
approaches.
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 }
2004
GIDEON CULMAN (SFGI, EC05)
is living in the District of
Columbia and organizing alumni
gatherings every week; alumni in
the D.C. area should look him up
to get on his e-mail list. The
group provides networking
opportunities, camaraderie,
and fun get-togethers with other
Johnnies.
2005
CHARLES CLAUNCH (SFGI), now
in the master’s program in politics at the University of Dallas,
has been accepted to that school’s
PhD program for the fall term in
2007. If anyone has any interest
in this program, please direct
questions to him at
cclaunch@alumni.stjohnscollege.edu.
JOHN PETERSON (A) and
CAROLYN ANN STRIPLING (SF07)
were married in July 2006. x
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
section is August 10.
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
�{Alumni Notes}
45
A Greek Adventure Runs Aground
ack Ladd Carr, class of 1950, and his
wife, Lois, had been looking forward
to a stimulating trip to the “Greek
Islands and Beyond,” as the tour
operator billed it. But on the day that
their cruise ship, the Sea Diamond,
was scheduled to make an afternoon
trip to Santorini, the excursion provided a
bit more excitement than they had
bargained for. Just a few days into their twoweek trip, the couple had already visited
several Aegean islands and made stops in
Patmos and Crete. “We were to sail into the
harbor at Santorini,” Carr recalls. “The
island is spectacularly beautiful; there are
these very unusual cliffs, and they go
straight down into this deep caldera. We
were preparing to disembark for a brief run
to the island when for some reason the ship
struck a rock ledge.”
While the crew prepared to evacuate
passengers, the ship began listing to starboard. “Everybody was calm,” he says.
“The crew managed to calm every one
down. There were some youngsters,
teenagers from a school in North Carolina,
and they were in good spirits, clowning
around, snapping each other’s pictures.”
Carr and his wife are both in their 80s,
and another passenger, a young French
woman took notice of them, got them life
jackets, and made sure the couple were
safe. “She made certain that in the crush of
people that we were not pushed down, and
J
she took her own
life jacket off and
put it on Lois,”
Carr says. “She
spoke no English,
and we speak no
French, but we
managed to
communicate our
gratitude to her.”
While many
passengers
climbed down
ropes to rescue
vessels, the Carrs
were evacuated to
a waiting ferry by
means of a
makeshift chute,
assembled of
mattresses, which
linked the
automobile ramps
of both ships.
Jack and Lois Carr on dry ground after the disaster, and below,
“Thank God I
Lois, after sliding to safety.
didn’t have to
climb down a
ladder,” says Carr.
woman named Rea, and Rea arranged for
“The last time I climbed down a ladder into
our group to go to a very nice, new hotel in
the boat was during the second World War
the village,” says Carr.
when I climbed down cargo nets into
“We got there by going up the cliff in a
landing boats, which I did several times.
sort of funicular, and after a short walk
It was scary when I was 19, and it would be a through the village, caught a bus that took
lot scarier at 82.”
us to the hotel. They gave us dinner, a
Carr has read many reports
room, and breakfast the next morning. And
that people panicked, that
at breakfast, I found out the ship had sunk.
there was chaos, and that the
That was the only time we sensed any fear.”
crew wasn’t helpful, but their
Carr had a shoulder bag with some euros,
experience was much better.
credit cards, and glasses. The couple’s
They saw no panic and
clothing and everything else in their
thought the crew acted professuitcase, including souvenirs, were lost.
sionally. “We decided to keep
The group’s passports were also safe and
calm and observed everything
returned to them on the next leg of their
with great interest,” he recalls. trip. Each passenger was provided with
“We were separated—they did
200 euros to pick up some clothing and
the women-and-children
other items in Athens. Then they continued
thing. That’s when I began to
their trip for another 11 days. “We lost only
feel that I was on the Titanic.
one day of the tour,” Carr says.
By this time, the ship was
The accident won’t stop the Carrs
listing at 15 degrees.”
from traveling, says Carr. “I’m not
Lois was rescued first; Jack a superstitious,” he says. “But I could do
little while later, and their tour with less adventure.” x
group of 39 was brought
—rosemary harty
ashore together. “Our tour
guide was a wonderful Greek
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 }
�46
{Obituaries}
LILLIAN VANOUS NUTT
FRIEND OF THE COLLEGE
“Of course, Lillian also loved to paint, and
exhibited in juried shows all over the area. I
Lillian Vanous Nutt, who died earlier this spring at
imagine that I have seen thousands of her waterage 99, was a generous and dedicated supporter of
colors, mostly on note cards, pieces of paper
St. John’s College in Annapolis. Her gifts
not-to-be-thrown-away. And in the last 10 years,
supported scholarships for St. John’s students,
I’ve been pleased to gaze upon hundreds of painted
helped establish the Mitchell Gallery, and under“jolins”, flowers designed by Lillian as a gift in
wrote the renovation of a room in the Greenfield
honor of my wife, Joyce Olin . . . four years ago, we
Library to serve as the Nutt Room, a second
added to our personal collection of framed “jolins”
exhibition space for art on the Annapolis campus
and other “still-lifes,” a bell pull, hand-painted by
which also serves as an elegant reading room.
Lillian with beautiful roses. I still pull on the darn
The following excerpt, from a eulogy given at
thing, but nobody comes a-running. I suspect
her memorial service by Annapolis President
Lillian knew that too. ‘Each of us was meant to
Christopher Nelson, celebrates Mrs. Nutt’s
attend to his own needs,’ I can hear her say.
many contributions:
“I have loved Lillian’s colorful and vivid
“Lillian was born four weeks shy of 100 years ago
imagination . . . In 1964, Lillian wrote a brief poem
in a small wooden house on the corner of Taylor
about herself. I think it captured her rather well.
Lillian Vanous Nutt
Avenue and Annapolis Street. She grew up in a
It was titled, “Me” and opened as follows: ‘If I am
home her parents soon thereafter built on Revell
anything/ I certainly am prolific/ No matter what
Street. Lillian remembered it for its central heating
the merit/ My output is terrific!’
with gold radiators and two bathrooms, but also for its large fishpond
“Indeed, it was. How many of us in this room have received
with a fountain in the middle. She recalls the parties at the outdoor
envelopes stuffed with hand-painted note cards (on recycled paper)
fireplace, and the use of red-checked tablecloths and cloth napkins,
to be used for friendly “thank yous” or just to lift the spirit. She was
not the paper products of today which she shuddered to call “throwgenerous but tough and always faced down the advance of age. . .
aways.” No one who knew Lillian could forget her abhorrence of
She befriended St. John’s College many years ago and generously
throwaways: Everything to its purpose, at least twice over . . .
provided student scholarships for those with need. She also
“Lillian remained at home until 1943 when she was married to Hi,
underwrote the renovation of the Lillian Vanous Nutt Room in
a marriage that lasted for her remaining 64 years. She attended the
the Greenfield Library, where regular shows of local artists are
Peabody Institute for her music lessons, traveling back and forth to
exhibited through the year. Her gifts are put to use over and over
Baltimore on the old B&A Railway. She even remembered giving a
and for multiple purposes . . .
recital at age 13 in McDowell Hall at St. John’s College. She also
“A small group of us gathered in Lillian’s and Hi’s home last May
remembered her youthful parties at St. John’s and the Naval
for her 99th birthday. Anna Greenberg (HA96) asked her what she
Academy. By the time she was 20, she had her own car and began
considered was the most important thing she had accomplished in
teaching piano, something she did for three generations of
her lifetime. She answered quickly, ‘without a doubt, it was my
Annapolitans . . .
teaching children to play the piano and appreciate art!’ ”
DR. PETER HAMILL
CLASS OF 1949
Dr. Peter VanVechten Hamill,
class of 1949, died on March 10,
2007, at the age of 80. He had
forged a remarkable life and
career as a scholar and scientist,
an avid sportsman, accomplished sailor, and collector of
fine wines.
Dr. Hamill was born in Baltimore in 1926, and grew up in
Detroit. He earned a bachelor’s
in philosophy from the
University of Michigan in Ann
Arbor and medical degrees from
Michigan and Johns Hopkins
University. He served in the
Navy during World War II and
had a career as a commissioned
officer in the United States
Dr. Peter Hamill
Public Health Service. He was
the scientific director of the
Surgeon General’s Study on
Smoking and Health and also
designed the Growth and
Development charts for use
in charting the growth of
juveniles.
Eva Brann, who spoke at
Dr. Hamill’s memorial service,
described him as “first and last”
a Johnnie, with an “acute,
detailed and wickedly judgmental memory.”
In 2002, Dr. Hamill sent
Miss Brann an oral history of his
role in the 1962-64 study on
smoking, which is now in the
JFK Library in Boston. The
study was the first declaration
from the government that
smoking causes cancer, as
the Senior Surgeon in the
Commissioned Officer Corps of
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 }
the Public Health Service,
Dr. Hamill played a key role in
establishing the criteria for the
study and assembling the staff
and professional personnel for
the committee, but the oral
history also demonstrates
qualities far beyond professional ability:
“He was passionately engaged
as Peter the man and desperately objective as Peter the
scientist. He was impatiently
temperamental as a man with a
mission and generously understanding as a man with an
administrative charge. He was
naively forthright and dutifully
cunning, fascinated and
repelled by personal and
bureaucratic obstructionism. . .
�47
{Obituaries}
“But besides personalities
there was Peter’s main
principle, which, I imagine,
made everything work. He was
a believer in dialogue. ‘When
I say dialogue,’ he told his
recorder, ‘remember I’m a
St. Johnnie and the dialectic
process of antithesis and
eventually synthesis is part of
my whole being.’ And this was a
true self description: Peter was
passion tempered by appreciation, prejudgment mitigated
by receptivity, spiritedness
leavened by self-doubt.”
Dr. Hamill is survived by his
wife of 54 years, Margot Henry
Hamill; four children, and 11
grandchildren.
successive “most powerful”
computers in their time.
He was also the first corporate
technical director at Computer
Usage Company, the world’s
first software company. He
was system engineer on the
first large electronic publishing
system.
His experience spanned the
full spectrum of systems software and support packages and
included a tremendous variety
of disciplines, including
system programming, data
communications, publishing,
command and control systems,
scientific/engineering
applications, statistics, and
operations research.
GEORGE TRIMBLE
CLASS OF 1948
KENNETH KRONBERG (SF68)
George R. Trimble, a pioneer in
computer development, died
March 13, 2007, at the age of 77.
He made many original contributions to both the design and
application of data processing
equipment in a career that
spanned the computer industry
from ENIAC in 1949 to the most
advanced large-scale computer
systems. After graduating from
St. John’s he studied numerical
methods at the University of
Delaware and in 1951 earned
a master’s degree in
mathematics.
Mr. Trimble developed
mathematical analyses and
machine applications for a
variety of the earliest electronic
computers, including ENIAC,
EDVAC, and ORDVAC, to
minimize data reduction errors
in rocket trajectory calculations
for captured German V-2
rockets. As a senior staff
member in IBM’s Applied
Science Division, 1952-1956,
Mr. Trimble was involved in the
logical design and application
requirements of virtually every
computer made by IBM in the
early 1950s. Between 1955 and
1966, he was involved in the
development of numerous
Kenneth Kronberg, a member
of the first graduating class of
St. John’s College in Santa Fe,
died April 11, 2007, at the age
of 58. He was the husband of
Marielle (Molly) Hammett
Kronberg (A70) of Leesburg
and the father of Max
Kronberg, a 2006 Annapolis
graduate.
After graduating from
St. John’s, Mr. Kronberg spent a
year as a junior fellow at the
Center for the Study of
Democratic Institutions in
Santa Barbara, Calif., and later
did graduate work at the New
School for Social Research in
New York.
He was an editor for the
American Institute of Physics
and for John Wiley & Sons
before founding WorldComp in
1978. He had been a member of
the National Caucus of Labor
Committees since 1974.
He directed amateur theater,
and taught poetry and drama
classes to children and adults
for many years. He edited
The Campaigner, a cultural
magazine, for a number of
years. In 1992 he co-founded
Fidelio, a quarterly journal of
poetry, science and statecraft,
which he edited until 2006.
Kenneth Kronberg
At his memorial service on
April 19, his wife, Molly,
described him as “a man of
character, honor, and
integrity—old-fashioned virtues.
He was a man of his word.
“He weighed words carefully,
always trying to say precisely
what he meant, because he
understood the connection
between morality and right use
of language, and on the other
hand, the enormous damage
done to truth and therefore
people by perversion of
language. His love of language
reached back to his earliest
childhood—for example, his
discovery at the age of eight of
the poems of Emily Dickinson
and Christina Rossetti. By the
time that, barely 16, he went off
to college, he was a practicing
poet himself, a calling he
followed for many years
thereafter.
“Ken’s poetic instinct could
be found in everything he did:
his efforts to make every
publication on which he worked
a harmonious composition; his
efforts to bring beauty in visual
form to the printed page; in
written form to the articles he
wrote or edited; in aural form to
the audiences of the dramas
he directed.
“The same beauty could
be found in his gentleness,
his abhorrence of brutality,
his kindness to all who
encountered him (kindness
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 }
mixed with the sardonic
brusqueness he deployed as an
educational device), and his
truthfulness. His enthusiasm
for learning and teaching, for
new ideas and for the more
precise expression and rigorous
examination of venerable ones,
was the content of the Socratic
art of midwifery he practiced in
directing plays or in editing.
He was like the Clerk of Oxford
of whom Chaucer writes,
‘And gladly wolde he lerne and
gladly teche.’
ALSO NOTED
REV. DUNCAN BROCKWAY (CLASS
OF 1953), JANUARY 23, 2007
JEREMY DAWES (SF01),
JANUARY 15, 2007
NANCY FARIDANY (CLASS OF 1962),
SEPTEMBER 23, 2005
ROBERT GOLDBERG (CLASS OF
1950), SEPTEMBER 3, 2006
JOHN GORECKI (CLASS OF 1960),
DECEMBER 12, 2006
JOSEPH HOFMANN (CLASS OF 1942),
APRIL 2, 2007
MARION JENKINS (SFGI89),
JANUARY 13, 2007
ANDREW KLIPPER (A80),
JANUARY 22, 2007
JOSEPH LEGUM (CLASS OF 1933),
JULY 26, 2006
SUSAN LEUBUSCHER (A68),
FEBRUARY 28, 2007
DOROTHY LUTTRELL (CLASS OF
1960), MARCH 26, 2007
VICTOR PERRETTA (CLASS OF
1932), APRIL 13, 2007
ALBERT POPPITI (CLASS OF 1942),
FEBRUARY 9, 2007
RAY SMITH (A94),
MARCH 1, 2003
DOLORES STRICKLAND (SF71),
MARCH 16, 2007
�48
{ A l u m n i Vo i c e s }
Even the Dead Know No End of War
A Reporter in Iraq
Nelson Hernandez (A99), a reporter on the
Washington Post’s Metro desk, covered the
war in Iraq from late December 2005 to
February 2006, and again from mid-April
to mid-June 2006. The Post has assigned
some Metro reporters to two-month rotations in Iraq; Hernandez was the first to
volunteer. He agreed to a second rotation
because his younger brother, Thomas, a
Marine reservist, would be serving at the
same time. “I wanted to relate to him when
he got back,” Hernandez says.
Hernandez interned for the newspaper
while at St. John’s and joined the Post staff
after graduation; he took a year of leave in
2004-05 to earn a master’s degree in history
at Yale. He now covers education in Prince
George’s County, Maryland. The events
described in his essay took place on
May 9-10, 2006.
inutes after leaving the
port of Umm Qasr at the
southeastern tip of Iraq,
the land turned to
desert. The convoy sped
north to Baghdad.
Outside the window of a pickup truck, the
earth, flat and pale and lifeless, met a dull
gray-blue sky. It could be Mars.
In this wasteland the road was like a
river. Food and money flowed up and
down it, allowing life to cling to its edges.
Sometimes this took the form of thin,
yellow grass that grew like peach fuzz, or
mud huts with thatched roofs. Weathered
men in red-checked kaffiyehs tended
sheep and camels; they were as hungry
and filthy as their animals. Barefoot boys
ran out to the side of the road as we flew
past, waving. The guards riding in the
beds of the trucks, helmeted men cradling
machine guns, flung ration packs to them
without slowing down.
That was the closest connection they
had with the people of Iraq. For the
private security contractor in the front
passenger seat, a Welshman named Mark,
every sign of life by the road was a
potential threat. The mujaheddin stalk
these lands. Every parked car could be a
M
Nelson Hernandez volunteered to cover the war in Iraq.
bomb, every highway overpass an ambush
and every man, woman and child a killer.
The insurgents have sometimes hidden
bombs in the carcasses of animals lying by
the roadside. In Iraq, even the dead do not
know the end of war.
They made a brief stop. I walked a few
yards off the road, out into a desert barren
as far as the eye could see. Mark urinated
on the tire of his pickup truck.
“Don’t get too far away,” he warned.
“We don’t know what’s out there.”
The convoy was on a mission of peace.
Mark and his group of British and Iraqi
contractors were escorting a convoy of
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 }
about a dozen water trucks. The trucks
were made in Texas and cost over
$120,000 apiece. They were a gift from
you, the American taxpayer, to the people
of Iraq. Such convoys are not shepherded
on their way by the military, but by an
invisible army of private contractors:
drivers, engineers, logistics specialists,
stevedores and security men, usually
former soldiers. This convoy had a
journalist attached. That was me.
As the sun set, we arrived at an oasis
called Camp Scania. It is the major
refueling stop in southern Iraq, a massive
gas station run by the U.S. military. Here,
�{ A l u m n i Vo i c e s }
in the middle of the desert, are parked
hundreds of trucks that carry supplies of
every kind up and down the road. The cost
of creating and maintaining this piece of
America on a patch of sand across the
globe is stupefying. Sophocles had a point:
Many are the wonders, but none is more
wondrous than man.
The Iraqi drivers and guards, who made
up the majority of the convoy’s crew, slept
outside the base. They settled down to
meals of rice and chicken, sleeping in the
cabs of their trucks. The four British
security men, all ex-soldiers, went inside
the base and ate what was, by Iraqi standards, a delicious repast: Cornish hen,
potatoes, fruit smoothies, ice cream—
the base’s cafeteria was well stocked.
Mark ran into another team returning
from a delivery. On their way home a
bomb exploded in the road, destroying
one of the heavily armored pickups.
The bomb was four artillery shells tied
together, enough to obliterate the front
half of the truck. Everyone in the truck
survived unhurt—a miracle—and they
showed off a picture of a man standing in
the waist-deep crater left by the bomb.
Hours passed in a large tent filled with
cheap bunk beds. Mark watched a movie,
Big Momma’s House, while another man
in his team, Leon, played a video game.
In the back of the tent, the other team was
still talking about their close call.
“You used up one of your nine lives
today, lads,” one of the men said quietly.
For the first time I felt a quiver of fear.
I imagined what it would be like to be
driving along the road one moment, and
in an instant be torn apart by flying shards
of jagged steel. Would it hurt? Would I
have time to give a noble soliloquy or
expire with an undignified groan?
The feeling was fleeting. I wish I could
say for you that having read the Great
Books gave me some preternatural calm.
It would make for a better story. War is
full of such concessions to romantic
imagination. But in war, the physical
trumps the philosophical. So it was with
me: I was too dirty and tired by that point
to care about something so totally beyond
my control, and so I went to sleep.
At midnight, the tent began flapping
madly. The air tasted like dust. Then
water began flying in horizontally.
Outside, a massive storm was bearing
down on the camp. The tent shook
savagely as the desert tried to scrub itself
clean of us. Half-awake men grunted at
the tent entrance, trying to seal it shut.
Outside, sentries scurried for cover.
Eventually they gave up and moved beds
farther away from the entrance. And in
half an hour, the storm blew itself out.
In the morning we rode for Baghdad.
The country was no longer desert. The
convoy had entered the verdant valley
between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers—
the cradle of civilization, and a place more
dangerous for being more habitable.
The journey was tense but uneventful.
When the convoy rolled into the water
directorate, a large, walled compound
“I imagined what it
would be like to be
driving along the road
one moment, and in an
instant be torn apart by
flying shards of jagged
steel. Would it hurt?
Would I have time to
give a noble soliloquy or
expire with an
undignified groan?”
Nelson Hernandez (A99)
with a heavy iron gate, Mark arranged the
trucks in a defensive perimeter. The gate
was closed, the better to protect against
car bombers, and the Iraqis began slowly
unloading the trucks.
Mark gave the director an envelope
carrying the keys to the trucks. The
unsmiling director, a corpulent man with
an arm in a sling, counted the keys twice,
seemingly suspicious of being cheated. He
refused to say anything to me. A boy
walking by greeted my wave with a blank
stare. We soon discovered the reason for
the chilly reception. Our hosts were
planning to kill us.
Some time later, a rocket-propelled
grenade exploded nearby.
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 }
49
“Get in the truck!” Leon screamed.
The contractors fired back at unseen
enemies as the civilians scattered,
running for cover. I crawled over a pile of
lunches and body armor in the truck’s
back seat, lunging at the doors to close
them. By the time I turned on my video
camera, the shooting had reached a
crescendo of long machine gun bursts and
cracking rifle shots. An Iraqi guard
standing in front of my truck fired his rifle
wildly, clearly terrified and having no idea
what to do.
After this spasm of violence, the firing
died down. Only the frenzied gunner atop
our truck kept shooting, ripping chunks
of concrete out of a nearby building.
“Tell him to stop firing!” Leon yelled at
the Iraqi driver. Mark ran at our car,
raised his hand, and cried “Stop!”
The gunner stopped shooting.
Leon shouted at the frightened Iraqi
contractor. “You!” He hit the truck’s horn
twice to get his attention. “Get in here!”
The young man did, breathing heavily and
shaking as he sat next to me. As he
slammed the door shut, the shooting
started again.
The next few minutes were a babble of
urgent commands, shouting in Arabic,
scratchy radio chatter, gunfire, confusion,
confusion. Why were the guards shooting
it out with them? Why weren’t we moving?
What was going on?
“Mark, are we gonna get out of here or
what?” a voice over the radio pleaded.
They were trapped because the gate to
the complex was closed, though I did not
understand that until later. Under fire,
one of the British guards ran out to the
gate to open it. This act of heroism
allowed them to escape. The gunfire
continued on the way out and down the
highway. The whole engagement had
lasted about five minutes.
“Is everybody okay?” Mark asked over
the radio.
Yes. They raced past election posters
and checkpoints to safety. Behind us they
left two dead insurgents. Behind us they
left the Iraqi truck drivers they were
escorting; three or four did not make it
back. Behind us they left the water trucks.
All we were left with was our lives, and
this memory I have related to you.
Every day, as it reels past in my mind,
I give thanks that the desert was so
generous. x
�{Alumni Association News}
CHAPTER CONTACTS
ALBUQUERQUE
alumni@sjca.edu
BALTIMORE
Deborah Cohen, A77
410-472-9158
deborahwcohen@
comcast.net
DALLAS/FORT
WORTH
Paula Fulks, SF76
817-654-2986
puffjd@swbell.net
DENVER/BOULDER
Tom Byrnes, SF74
720-344-6947
tbyr@pair.com
MINN./ST. PAUL
Carol Freeman, AGI94
612-822-3216
Freem013@umn.edu
SALT LAKE CITY
Erin Hanlon, SF03
916-967-2194
PHILADELPHIA
Helen Zartarian, AGI86 erin_hanlon@juno.com
215-482-5697
SANTA FE
helenstevezartarian@
Richard Cowles,
mac.com
SFGI95
505-986-1814
PHOENIX
rcowles2@comcast.net
Donna Kurgan, AGI96
623-444-6642
SEATTLE
dakurgie@yahoo.com
James Doherty, SFGI76
206-542-3441
PITTSBURGH
jdoherty@mrsc.org
Joanne Murray, A70
724-325-4151
SOUTH FLORIDA
Joanne.Murray@
Peter Lamar, AGI95
basicisp.net
305-666-9277
cplamar@yahoo.com
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 }
Jason Walsh (A85)
Alumni Association President
SOUTHERN CALIF.
Elizabeth Eastman,
SFGI84
562-426-1934
e.eastman@verizon.net
TRIANGLE CIRCLE,
NORTH CAROLINA
Elizabeth (A92) &
Rick Ross (A82)
919-319-1881
Elizabeth@
activated.com
’s C
ohn olle
.J
mn
u
AUSTIN
Joe Reynolds, SF69
512-280-5928
jpreynolds@
austin.rr.com
CHICAGO
Rick Lightburn, SF76
847-922-3862
rlightburn@gmail.com
SAN DIEGO
Stephanie Rico, A86
619-429-1565
srico@sandi.net
two-thirds of the funds are from alumni,
and the percentage of alumni giving has
grown remarkably. These funds will
support the institution through capital
improvement projects (including new
dormitories, a Graduate Institute center,
and much-needed enhancements to buildings and grounds, especially in Santa Fe);
increased endowment to support financial
aid, and additional support for increases to
faculty salaries.
With the conclusion of the campaign
approaching, the college has embarked on
a broad strategic planning process. The
Alumni Association, along with the
Alumni Relations committee of the Board
of Visitors and Governors, will be actively
involved in this process to articulate the
specific programs that can better support
our alumni throughout their lives.
These are all part of the Alumni
Association’s mission to foster
opportunities for more Alumni to
connect more often and more richly. x
Al
ANNAPOLIS
Beth Martin Gammon,
A94
410-332-1816
emartin@crs.org
NORTHERN CALIF.
BOSTON
Reynaldo Miranda, A99
Dianne Cowan, A91
415-333-4452
617-666-4381
reynaldo.miranda@
diannecowan@rcn.com
gmail.com
PORTLAND
Jennifer Rychlik, SF93
503-547-0241
jlr43@coho.net
Jason Walsh (A85)
ge
Call the alumni listed below for information
about chapter, reading group, or other alumni
activities in each area.
NEW YORK CITY
Daniel Van Doren, A81
914-949-6811
dvandoren@
optonline.net
“We are working to
expand our outreach
to recent graduates...”
n
I
n January in Santa Fe and April in
Annapolis, the Alumni Association
hosted our annual senior dinners
with the senior class. These events
offer a chance for 15-25 alumni to
toast and celebrate the upcoming
graduations, when students become
“permanent members” of the college as
alumni. We also now provide the students
with brief bios of the hosting alumni. In
Annapolis, a senior I spoke with was
thrilled to find that she was not alone in
her interest in neuroscience; she had an
opportunity to meet an alumna and speak
at length about her career path.
This is a key first step the Association
takes to help Johnnies in the transition
from the warm confines of the campuses to
the seemingly daunting world. We are
working to expand our outreach to recent
graduates (more than 50 percent of our
alumni have graduated in the last two
decades), through programs tailored to
appeal to Johnnies beginning their lives
and careers, and who often want to take a
break from seminar readings. In New York
for many years we’ve had a recent
graduates’ reception each fall, where newly
arrived alumni can reconnect with
classmates and meet alumni established in
the region. This year in Portland, Oregon,
and New York City, we’ve begun chapter
“bar nights,” open to all but sponsored by
the Recent Graduates group leaders and
at very casual locations that help build
a community of younger alums in
these cities.
On the campuses, we’ve been working to
enhance the events welcoming alumni
back, for both intellectual and social
pursuits. This spring we introduced the
“Piraeus” program, several long-weekends
of alumni seminars. Within two months
after announcing the program, the first
April weekend was a terrific success and
the June and January 2008 weekends had
filled to capacity. A waitlist has begun with
the possibility of opening a second set of
seminars to satisfy alumni demand for
those weekends.
In addition, we are working as advocates
for the alumni community as the college
develops its strategic plan. In 2008, the
college will conclude its most successful
capital campaign in St. John’s history. The
tremendous success is overwhelmingly
due to the contributions of alumni. About
WASHINGTON, DC
Deborah Papier, A72
202-387-4520
dpapier@verizon.net
WESTERN NEW
ENGLAND
Peter Weis, SF84
413-367-2174
peter_weis@
nmhschool.org
io
From the Alumni
Association
President
St
50
i A s s o cia
t
Providing
opportunities
for more alumni
to connect
more often and
more richly
�{Alumni Association News}
Celebrating Chicago
In a Cultural Mecca, a Chapter Thrives
by Patricia Dempsey
In his rare free time when he isn’t providing
video and editorial content from the
Midwest for ABC news, including shows
such as “Good Morning America” and
“World News,” television producer Kevin
Kraus (A82) reads reams of newspapers,
periodicals, and online reports. Yet Kraus,
one of five Chicago chapter officers, says,
“It’s a different experience to read Plato or
Thomas Mann. The news-related material
isn’t truly thought-provoking.” Kraus,
who moved to Chicago six years ago from
southern Florida, where at that time there
was no alumni chapter, says he was “starved
for substantial reading and conversation.”
The long-established (since 1982) Chicago
chapter offered him both – and a chance
to share his love of architecture with
fellow Johnnies who live in this urban
cultural Mecca.
In 2005 Kraus helped organize a
well-attended chapter visit to his “favorite
building in America,” the Farnsworth
House by architect Mies van der Rohe.
For another event, the group visited the late
19th-century Auditorium Building, which
houses a National Historic Landmark, the
Auditorium Theater. While the chapter
members do not usually have a formal
seminar on the architectural sites they visit,
they do typically “duck into a restaurant
afterwards to talk about it,” says Kraus.
“We’re all architecture junkies,” says Rick
Lightburn (SF76), current Chicago chapter
president and a self-employed marketing
strategist for consumer groups. “In August,
we have an annual potluck picnic and
business meeting. We have it with the
Grant Park Music Festival held downtown
in Millennium Park, beneath a fabulous
trellis designed by Frank Gehry.”
These architectural jaunts complement
the traditional seminars that focus on
readings as diverse as the city itself.
“This fall we’re hoping to start the year
with a children’s literature piece. We also
try to relate to events in this fabulous city,”
says Lightburn. “For instance we had a
science reading on Mendel’s paper and tied
this to a visit to an exhibit on Mendel’s
research at the Field Museum.” Along with
Kraus and Lightburn, readings are
suggested by chapter officers Elizabeth
Long (A86), a University of Chicago
librarian and an artist; Barbara Schmittel
(A76), a librarian for the city of Chicago;
and Paul Frank (SF82), an editor at the
American Medical Association.
The chapter hosts
most of its monthly
seminars on Sunday
afternoons at The
Great Books
Foundation, where
Don Whitfield (SF68,
SFGI84) is the
director of college
programs. “Don was
one of the rugged
pioneers who
attended Santa Fe in
the early years and he
very kindly allows us
to use rooms at the
foundation,” says
Lightburn. Typically,
about a dozen Johnnies attend the seminars. “We always have
more, of course, when
Class of 2007 members, now alumni: from left, Eric Torgerson, a tutor is here to lead
Christopher Bea, Andrew Romiti, John Dodge, Lee Branner.
it,” says Lightburn.
Senior Dinners
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 }
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.
President – Jason Walsh (A85)
Vice President – Steve Thomas (SF74)
Secretary – Joanne Murray (SFGI95)
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.
In April the chapter hosted a seminar on
Plato’s Phaedo, led by Annapolis tutor
Robert Druecker. Lightburn says Druecker
first led the chapter in a seminar two years
ago in a reading from Thomas Mann’s
Magic Mountain, and they were delighted
to have him back. The seminar on Plato’s
Phaedo used the translation by Eva Brann,
Peter Kalkavage, and Eric Salem. Among
those who attended are younger members
including Stassia Sullivan (SF06), Grae
Drake (SF05) and Tom Hammerman
(A93). The Chicago chapter officers seek to
attract more young members, but they
realize young alumni don’t have the time
to commit; they’re busy establishing
careers and raising families.
Lightburn, who is self-employed and has
a more flexible schedule than his fellow
officers, serves as the chapter’s de facto
president. “We have a revolving group of
officers,” he explains. “We shared the
responsibility of president except for Paul
[Frank], who was doing such a good job as
treasurer it made sense for him to
continue. None of us really wanted to be
chapter president because we didn’t have
the time. I became de facto president, but
how would we like our future president to
be chosen? That’s been established in our
bylaws. Those are online on the Alumni
Web site, for everyone to see and use for
other chapters.” x
�52
greenfield library
{St. John’s Forever}
Seventy Years of Genuine Conversation
I
n the summer of 1937, Stringfellow
Barr and Scott Buchanan arrived in
Annapolis, preparing to launch a
“radical” new academic program at
a small college that had lost its
accreditation and teetered on the
brink of bankruptcy.
Neither of the two men, according to
various reports, wished to be president.
However, Barr proved very good at it:
telling the St. John’s story to outside audiences and to the media, wooing prospective donors and foundation executives, and
working with Maryland’s legislature and
the college’s Board of Visitors and Governors to set the college on firm ground.
Far from a figurehead, Barr always made
time to be part of the community of
learners, as Charles Nelson (class of 1944)
writes in Stringfellow Barr: A Centennial
Appreciation of His Life and Work:
“…Barr, despite the heavy travel and
speaking schedule, regularly led seminars,
tutored in Greek and French, and could
often be found in the coffee shop to
converse with students and tutors about
the coming war, the relevance to the European crisis of the Melian Conference in
Thucydides’ account of the Peloponnesian
War, or perhaps the meaning of the allegory of the cave in Plato’s Republic.”
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 }
After leaving St. John’s in 1946,
following a successful fight to protect the
college from annexation by the Navy, Barr
joined Buchanan in attempting to establish
another college based on the St. John’s
model; however, their efforts did not come
to fruition. Barr later served as president of
the Foundation for World Government,
taught at the University of Virginia and at
Rutgers, and later was a fellow at the
Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions in California. He died 25 years ago, in
Alexandria, Virginia. x
�{Alumni Events Calendar}
Alumni Calendar
Santa Fe Homecoming 2007
September 14-16
Annapolis Homecoming 2007
September 28-October 1
Friday, September 14
9 a.m. Dixon Studio and Winery tour
Friday, September 28
1 to 6 p.m. Water activities (sailing,
boating)
3 p.m. Registration
12 p.m.Lunch
12 p.m. Classes of the ’30s and ’40s
luncheon
1 to 5 p.m. Activities for children
2 p.m. Freshman chorus, Revisited
Wine and cheese reception for alumni,
tutors, GIs, and undergraduate upperclassmen to celebrate the 40th anniversary
of the Graduate Institute
4 to 8 p.m. Registration
3 p.m. Mitchell Gallery tour
5 p.m.Barbecue for the Class of 1982
4 p.m. Alumni booksigning
5 p.m. Dinner for the classes of the ’30s
and ’40s
4 p.m. Soccer Classic
5:30 p.m. 40th Anniversary Celebration
for the Graduate Institute
5:45 p.m. Fiftieth Reunion Dinner for
the Class of 1957
8 p.m. Homecoming lecture
6 p.m. Welcome reception for Graduate
Institute
7:30 p.m. Alumni Association Banquet
Evening Waltz/Swing Party and Rock
Party
10 p.m. Coffee Cabaret & open mic
8:15 p.m. Homecoming Lecture
Saturday, September 15
8 a.m. Yoga
8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Registration
6 p.m. Cocktail party
Sunday, October 1
11 a.m. President’s brunch
Rock Party
1 to 5 p.m. Water activities
10:30 a.m. Seminars
Saturday, September 29
8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Registration
12 p.m. Fiesta Picnic
9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Water activities
1 p.m. Search and Rescue Team open
house
9:30 to 10:15 a.m. Breakfast and AllAlumni Meeting
1:30 p.m. Family nature hike around
Monte Sol or a hike to Atalaya Mountain
Peak
10:30 a.m. Seminars
Questions
For more information about Homecoming
logistics, details, and events, contact the
alumni office at 410-626-2531 or
alumni@sjca.edu.
2 p.m. Family Fun afternoon
5 p.m. “Speaking Volumes” lecture
6 p.m. Seventh Annual All-Alumni Art
Show and Reception
7 p.m. Homecoming dinner dance
Sunday, September 16
8 a.m. Yoga
11 a.m. President’s Brunch
Joanna Stone (A07), her husband Donald Stone (A06), and Travis Price (A71) at the
Washington, D.C., campaign event in April.
Back cover photo by Chelsea Stiegman
{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 }
�P ERIODICALS
P OSTAGE PAID
P UBLISHED BY THE
COMMUNICATIONS OFFICE
P.O. BOX 2800
A NNAPOLIS , MARYLAND 21404
ADDRESS SERVICE REQUESTED
�
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The
College
S p r i n g
St. John’s College • Annapolis • Santa Fe
Newton
And Motion
2 0 0 6
�On Newton
arlier this spring, the BBC launched an international poll to find the
world’s favorite quotation. Lao Tzu’s “A journey of a thousand
miles . . .” came in first, but a contender was this famous line by
Sir Isaac Newton: “If I have seen further, it is by standing upon the
shoulders of Giants.” The quote can be found in a 1675 letter by
Newton to Robert Hooke, a talented physicist and one of the original
fellows in the Royal Society. Interpreted by many as a modest
acknowledgment of the contributions of others (Kepler and Galileo among them),
Newton’s comment might also have been a sarcastic barb aimed at Hooke—a short
man—who took issue with many of Newton’s findings. Several biographers suggest
Hooke and Newton peppered their correspondence with subtle insults.
Hooke would later accuse Newton of plagiarizing his ideas when the latter published
the first volume of Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica in 1686. Newton was
so incensed by Hooke’s charges that he threatened to withhold publication of the two
remaining books. The astronomer Edmund Halley, a man of great means, eventually
funded the printing and distribution of the Principia. The Royal Society claimed to be
low on funds, though some say Hooke had something to do with that.
The father of modern science was the son of an illiterate farmer who died three
months before Isaac was born in Woolsthorpe in Lincolnshire in 1643 (on Christmas
Day according to the Julian calendar). Born premature and not expected to live, Isaac
suffered a difficult childhood. He was taken from school and set to farming and, being
unable to put his books away to watch the sheep, he failed miserably. He was released
from farming to attend Cambridge, where he helped pay his way by cleaning the rooms
of professors and fellow students. His brilliance noted, Newton later won a fellowship
that provided financial support. But when the plague struck the city in 1665, the
university was closed. Newton went back to the farm, where he immersed himself in
mathematics and contemplation. Not long after his return to the university, he was
named Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, a professorship currently held by
Stephen Hawking.
Newton was said to get so caught up in his work that he would neglect practical
matters such as grooming and eating. He never married and had few friends.
His personal behavior was so odd that in recent years two British researchers proposed
that Newton (along with Einstein) may have had Asperger’s Syndrome, a form of autism
characterized by obsessive dedication to a particular task.
Newton left Cambridge in 1696 to take up a position, first as Warden and later as
Master, of the Royal Mint. Although these duties interfered with his scientific research,
they made him a wealthy man. In 1704, Newton published the Opticks. He was knighted
in 1705 by Queen Anne, becoming the first scientist so honored. He died in March 1727
in London.
Johnnies interested in revisiting Newton and his great discoveries in mathematics,
optics, and motion in the solar system might enjoy Let Newton Be! A New Perspective
on His Life and Works, published in 1988 by Oxford University Press.
E
—RH
The College (usps 018-750)
is published quarterly 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
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
Jason Bielagus (SF98)
Barbara Goyette (A73)
Caroline Knapp (SF99)
Andrea Lamb
Andra Maguran
Jo Ann Mattson (A87)
Erica Naone (A05)
Chris Utter (A06)
Robin Weiss (SFGI86)
Kelly Wilson (SF09)
Magazine design by
Claude Skelton Design
�Spring 2006
Vo l u m e 3 2 , I s s u e 2
The
College
The Magazine for Alumni of St. John’s College
Annapolis
•
Santa Fe
{Contents}
10
“With a Clear and
Single Purpose”
d e p a r t m e n t s
page
2
•
•
•
A $125 million capital campaign seeks
to address the most important priorities
of St. John’s College by building the
endowment and strengthening the
Program for many years to come.
14
Newton and Aristotle
page
•
•
•
•
•
•
page 14
Victoria Mora is Santa Fe’s new dean
Annapolis dedicates Spector Hall
Mike Peters among the sophomores
A spring break to remember
Tutors study Proust, Upanishads
Retirements and appointments
The $10,000 short story
Experimenting in Santa Fe
Senior gifts: a lasting legacy
letters
20 history
9
A conversation on the Principia and the
Physics, between two tutors of starkly
different backgrounds, provides a rich
vein of inquiry.
An 1811 alumnus was at the center of
some of the most important issues in
19th-century American political life.
30
16
“Ever the Teacher”
page
Tutor William Darkey (class of 1942)
recounts memories of more than six
decades at St. John’s College, from being
a student in Annapolis to serving as dean
of a fledgling campus in Santa Fe.
from the bell towers
Bibliofile
Randolph Runyon (A71) decodes
Montesquieu’s Persian Letters.
Santa Fe tutor Jorge Aigla publishes
a new volume of poetry.
page 16
30
alumni notes
P RO F I L E S
28 Journalist Lydia Polgreen (A97) tells the
world about Africa’s suffering and hope.
40
Croquet:
32 Aman Cholas (SF98) saves Western forests.
36 Fiddler crabs fascinate Denise Pope (SF89).
page
37
It was the Cold War all over again.
46
tributes
alumni voices
Aboard the Makulu, Todd Wilson (AGI00)
connected inner-city students with
the wider world.
page 40
42
48
on the cover
Isaac Newton
Illustration by David Johnson
alumni association news
st. john’s forever
�2
{From the Bell Towers}
A Love of the Program
Victoria Mora is Santa Fe’s Next Dean
Tutor Victoria Mora has been
selected by her fellow tutors to
serve as the next dean of the
Santa Fe campus, effective
July 1, succeeding David Levine
(A67) in the post. The first
woman and the first native
New Mexican to become dean in
Santa Fe, Ms. Mora joined the
St. John’s College faculty in
1992. Her appointment as dean
became official with approval
by the Board of Visitors and
Governors on April 24, 2006.
For any tutor, the decision to
leave the classroom for five years
is a difficult one to make. “I love
teaching, and not teaching is
going to be a huge sacrifice,”
she says. To keep in contact with
students, books, and ideas,
Ms. Mora is planning a Dean’s
Seminar Series to be offered
periodically, and will set aside
time each day for a Dean’s walk
to maintain daily contact with
students.
Balancing the responsibilities
of the dean’s office with her
priorities at home may also be a
difficult adjustment. But Mora
takes on the job with a great
deal of support from her
husband, Tomas Fernández, a
retired educator. They have two
young children, Marisol
Fernández y Mora, 10, and
Alejandro Fernández y Mora, 6.
The family also includes Tomas’
sons, Antonio, Miguel, and Luis
Fernández, all “twenty-somethings finished with college and
on to wonderful families and
careers,” Ms. Mora says.
“I know I will have to figure
out how to balance the enormous demands of the college
with what I take to be extremely
important—family. If not for my
husband, who will be holding
down the fort at home, it would
have been nearly impossible for
me to consider” accepting the
appointment, she says. “Administering our rich academic
program will be challenging
enough, and we are facing
tremendous opportunities with
our new president, Michael
Peters, in place.”
President Peters says
Ms. Mora brings, “great
energy, intelligence, and charm
to the position,” he says. “I
enthusiastically look forward to
completed her dissertation,
“Gender, Expression, and
Analogy: A Reapproach to the
Problem of the Other.”
“It had its roots in phenomenology, with the primary focus
on an original phenomenological analysis of gender as a
feature of the expressive body,”
Ms. Mora says. “It was in
response to an argument made
by Ortega y Gasset against
Husserl’s claim that we know
the Other through our
experience of the Other’s body
A number of firsts mark Victoria Mora’s appointment as dean of
the Santa Fe campus: she’s the first woman, first mother, and
first native New Mexican to hold the post on that campus.
working with her to pursue the
aims of the Santa Fe campus
and the college.”
Ms. Mora grew up just 70
miles from Santa Fe and was the
first member of her family to
attend college. She visited
St. John’s during her sophomore
year at the University of New
Mexico and was fascinated by
the Program, but felt obligated
to remain at the less expensive
state college.
After completing her
bachelor’s degree in English
and philosophy at UNM, she
went to Yale University, where
she earned her master’s and
doctoral degrees in philosophy.
She taught for a year at a
community college in
Albuquerque while she
as analogous to our own—
a semaphore signaling
consciousness. I end up siding
with Husserl.”
When she was ready to look
for an academic home, Ms. Mora
recalled the small liberal arts
college in Santa Fe that had
captured her heart. “I remembered what a great experience I
had visiting as an undergraduate
and I thought, ‘Wouldn’t that be
a wonderful place to be able to
continue my education and have
a job?’ ”
After more than a decade on
the job, Ms. Mora is still shaping
her education at the college,
not to mention shaping the
community around her. She has
served on the faculty of the
undergraduate program as well
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2006 }
as in the Graduate Institute.
She has devoted a great deal of
time to the college’s outreach
programs: leading the faculty
component of the Opportunity
Initiative, contributing to the
Tecolote colloquia which
provide continuing education
to New Mexico teachers, and
leading Summer Classics
seminars. She has served on
the Instruction Committee and
on the presidential search
committee that selected
Mr. Peters.
“Victoria brings a solid
background in the Program,
experience working with
administration, and an ability
to work well with a wide range
of people,” says tutor Linda
Weiner, who served on the
dean’s search committee.
“Her thoughtfulness and
energy will be an asset to our
community, and we truly
appreciate her willingness to
serve the college as our dean
for the next five years.”
With such wide-ranging
interests and qualifications,
Ms. Mora’s appointment
promises a tenure that extends
far beyond the bounds of
Weigle Hall. But like her
predecessor, Dean Levine,
Ms. Mora’s goals are firmly in
the St. John’s Program.
“If you think about all of the
constituencies at the college,
what is it that holds all of those
people together?” Ms. Mora
asks. “It’s a love of the
St. John’s Program, and the
dean is charged with both
supervising the program of
instruction and seeing to the
well-being of the students so
that they can pursue it in the
best and deepest way possible.
Given that the dean is right
there working with the heart of
the Program, it seems to me
that it’s a role through which
these various constituencies can
come together. I’m honored to
assume this role.” x
—Kelly Wilson (SF09)
�{From the Bell Towers}
Spector Hall Dedicated in Annapolis
alain jonamillo
On January 28, students, faculty
and members of the college’s
Board of Visitors and Governors
gathered for the dedication of
Spector Hall, the newest dormitory on the Annapolis campus.
The ceremony held special
meaning for Warren Spector
(A81), whose gift to the college
made the dorm’s construction
possible, and his family. They
had come to St. John’s to
dedicate the new building in
the memory of a husband and
father, Philip Spector.
A successful contractor who
had built many residential,
commercial, and industrial
buildings in the Washington,
D.C., metropolitan area, Philip
Spector died in 1990. The new
dormitory is a fitting tribute to a
man who was “a builder in trade
and a builder in spirit,” said
Mr. Spector.
“I know that he would have
tremendous pride seeing this
hall erected in his memory,”
Mr. Spector said.
The President and Co-chief
Operating Officer of the Wall
Street firm Bear, Stearns & Co.,
and a member of the college’s
board, Mr. Spector has made
several generous gifts to the
college over the years in
appreciation for the education
he received at St. John’s. Along
with Gilliam Hall, which opened
in fall 2005, Spector Hall
extends community life to the
lower campus. Opened at the
start of the spring semester, the
new dorm houses 40 students
and features spacious common
areas, suite-style rooms, and a
faculty apartment.
Mr. Spector had attended
Princeton, but the Ivy League
college wasn’t right for him, he
said. After a brother suggested
St. John’s, Mr. Spector read the
catalog and knew this was the
college for him. “I had been at
one of the richest campuses in
the entire country, a [university]
with tremendous resources,” he
said. “I have nothing negative to
say about Princeton, but I found
that those were not the things
that mattered to me as a student.
It was something special that
was here in the community—
the Program, the people, the
dedication, everything about it was
what attracted me
to St. John’s, and I
was quite right in
my judgment that
this was the place
to be.”
After joining the
St. John’s board,
Mr. Spector saw
that while the
college didn’t
require
“superficial”
resources, the
need for more
campus housing was evident.
“When I lived off campus you
could walk to historic Annapolis
and live in a reasonable
apartment, but it has become
impossible to do that. I’m really
happy that we have 80 percent
of the students living on campus
now, because it keeps people
close, and I think that’s vitally
important.”
Mr. Spector’s mother,
Barbara, and other family
members and friends came to
campus for the ceremony, a
tour of the dormitory, and a
reception. “This means a lot to
me and a lot to my family,”
Mr. Spector said. “It is the first
thing we have dedicated in
memory of my
father.”
Representing
the student body,
Mary Davenport
(A06) spoke about
how Spector Hall
helped her make
another home at
the college. She
thanked the
Spector family for
their gift. “This
college—the things
we learn, the
alex lorman
A Fitting Tribute
3
people we meet, and the experiences we share—this has become
a place that I am comfortable
calling my home,” she said.
President Christopher Nelson
(SF70) also expressed his
thanks. “We are grateful to you,
Warren, for choosing St. John’s
College as the home for your
memorial dedication and the
object of your philanthropy and
extraordinary generosity,” he
said. Rather than just providing
dorm space, Mr. Spector’s gift
helps foster a close-knit
community of learners.
“We know that Warren’s
participation in community life
on campus was a transformative
experience for him, as he has
given us the means to erect this
building with the conviction
that a St. John’s education is
most completely achieved by
having students fully engaged in
the community of learning,
where the classroom experience
spills out into the quad
throughout all the activities of
student life and into the
common spaces and quiet hours
of the night in the college’s
dormitories,” Mr. Nelson said. x
—Rosemary Harty
Top: In January, Spector Hall was dedicated to the
memory of Philip Spector, husband to Barbara and
father to Warren Spector (A81), whose gift made
construction of the dormitory possible.
Left: Spector Hall common rooms are spacious and
inviting.
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2006 }
�4
{From the Bell Towers}
The Quiet Man
When you walk into a St. John’s
seminar, it’s rare to find
anything unexpected: several
different translations of a
Platonic dialogue, a group of
students in varying degrees of
sleep deprivation, and of
course, the omnipresent
St. John’s chair. But for
students on the Santa Fe
campus, there has been an
exciting addition to the
seminar: a college president.
For Michael Peters, who
became president in Santa Fe
in 2005, learning about the
Program firsthand was a top
priority, so he joined the
January freshman class as a
seminar auditor. By the time
Mr. Peters was officially
installed as president during
his inauguration ceremony last
October, many Johnnies were
already accustomed to seeing
him in the classroom, bent over
a copy of the Iliad.
Mr. Peters believes that
learning alongside students is
an integral part of achieving
the priorities that he outlined
at his inauguration: support for
learning, connection with the
community, and heightened
visibility. It soon became clear
to Mr. Peters that he needed to
be a part of the academic
program. “Because I didn’t
graduate from St. John’s, I
knew that I really needed to try
to find a way to get familiar
with the college through its
crux, the Program. I felt I
needed to gain the experiences
that the students have of how
the classroom works,” he says.
Balancing the hectic
schedule of the president’s
office with 200 pages of weekly
reading isn’t easy; nevertheless, as his January freshman
classmates began to tackle
the concepts of Aristotle,
Mr. Peters made time for the
readings. After his long days in
Weigle Hall, he stayed late to
listen to the conversation and
the ideas spilling forth. The
St. John’s seminar was a
different environment for the
West Point graduate, former
Army colonel, and long-time
foreign policy specialist.
“Sitting in on the first seminars
reinforced what I’d seen during
the interview process and is
very much the reason that I
thought St. John’s College was
the right place for me,” he
explains. “The level of engagement and the commitment of
everyone in the classroom, the
interaction between the
students and the material, the
students with one another, the
students and the tutors, it’s all
something that’s completely
unique to St. John’s.”
By the end of their second
semester, the JFs were used to
the tall, quiet man sitting in the
side chair. When they returned
for their sophomore year, many
were surprised and impressed
to see him back in seminar. As
he began visiting each of the
seven sophomore seminars,
students became curious and
asked if he could join the
conversation. “On several
occasions students said to me,
‘Gee, we wish you’d speak up
and offer your views on this,’”
“I had read
Machiavelli’s
The Prince
many times, but
this time I think
I saw it in a much
different light.”
Mike Peters,
St. John’s President, Santa Fe
christopher huston
Mike Peters Enjoys Seminars
To better understand Johnnies and the Program, Santa Fe
President Mike Peters began sitting in on January Freshman
seminars soon after taking office in January 2005.
he says. “But I feel that I’m
really there just as a way to see
the students, to get a sense of
what’s going on, to be able to
observe the approaches of the
different tutors.”
Mr. Peters is enjoying the
fresh perspectives the great
books provide. Even though he
has read many of the books on
the Program, the seminar still
offers new insights into texts,
some of which he thought he
knew very well. “I had read
Machiavelli’s The Prince many
times, but this time I think I
saw it in a much different
light,” he says. “Not the
stereotypical Machiavelli, the
ultimate politician who’s always
trying to figure out ways to
maneuver, but the kind of
moral underpinnings of the text
which I hadn’t really thought
about or appreciated before.”
The seminars have afforded
him “an understanding of the
language of St. John’s, which
revolves so much around the
books.” It’s an insight that will
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2006 }
surely prove essential as he
takes on a position that is vital
to communicating the unique
nature of St. John’s to the
greater world.
Mr. Peters said he’s looking
forward to continuing into
junior year. Sometime in the
future, he may consider
enrolling in the Graduate
Institute. “If I do the graduate
program, I would probably do
the Eastern Classics program,”
he says. “That would be a new
area for me and something I
would find fascinating.”
In the meantime, his efforts
have not gone unnoticed by
Brandon Winston (SF08), who
last year was a JF. “You know
how Machiavelli says that the
prince sometimes needs to
come down from the mountain
and get a different perspective
of who he is from below, from
the perspective of the citizens?
That’s what Mr. Peters was like,
and that’s the quality of the
true prince.” x
—Kelly Wilson (Sf09)
�5
{From the Bell Towers}
A Community of Hope
Santa Fe Students Join Katrina
Relief Efforts
Before she boarded a van to
New Orleans with 14 other
St. John’s students, Ilana
Kirschbaum (SF07) visited
Web sites that showed the
widespread devastation caused
by Hurricane Katrina. “I sort
of assumed that they were only
showing the extreme cases,”
she says. “But as we first drove
into the parish, there were
piles and piles of debris
everywhere, abandoned cars,
trees in the middle of the road,
everything was totally
destroyed and completely
abandoned. I wanted to cry.”
On March 11, the Santa Fe
students piled into two vans
(provided by a local dealership)
and set out to Louisiana’s
St. Bernard Parish, hit hard by
the storm. They set up camp in
a volunteer tent city run by the
Emergency Communities
organization and went right to
work. Half of the students
stayed at the campsite, where
they served free meals at the
organization’s Made with Love
Café and provided local
residents with needs ranging
from toiletries to child care.
The others, joining up with the
nonprofit Common Ground
Collective, took sledgehammers
and buckets into devastated
homes and businesses to strip
away damaged sheetrock and
insulation, haul away debris
and ruined belongings, and
clear homes of toxic mud.
“Sure, we were providing food
to people, but it was more about
the community we helped to create,
where people could just come
in and talk.”
Ilana Kirschbaum (SF07)
The volunteers also spent
time with the homeowners they
were helping. Jeff Stott (SF06)
listened as one woman relived
her ordeal with him. “She
experienced absolutely
traumatic things,” he says.
“During the storm, she was
trapped on her roof and
watched dead bodies floating
past her house. Some of her
neighbors were killed.”
While a tragedy of such
magnitude can “make you feel
pretty helpless,” Kirschbaum
says, the experience went
beyond providing food and
manual labor for two short
weeks. “Sure, we were
providing food to people, but it
was more about the community
we helped to create, where
people could just come in and
talk,” she explains. “There was
never really a distance between
people. There was music, there
was dancing. It was a glimpse of
what is possible.”
On April 26, the students
gave a multimedia presentation
of their trip for the college
community. Members of the
Santa Fe community were also
invited as a thank-you for donations they made to support the
effort. The presentation
featured photographs of the
devastation, video, and audio
interviews. More encouraging
images were of the community
Kirschbaum described among
volunteers in the tent city.
“This was something that
just happened spontaneously,”
says Rachel Davison (SF08),
the trip leader. Friendships
developed quickly out of an
atmosphere of goodwill.
“We here at St. John’s have
our own sense of community
that is built naturally out of the
Program. This was different.
We bonded with each other,
but we also bonded with so
many others.”
—Kelly Wilson (SF09)
photos by chris quinn
Top: Ben Gaddes (SF08)
prepares to feed Katrina
volunteers.
Left: Ezra Johnson (SF09,
far right) and Nicola Podboy
(SF06) at the tent city that
housed volunteers in
St. Bernard Parish.
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2006 }
�6
{From the Bell Towers}
News and Announcements
Tutor News
photos by alex lorman
In Annapolis two tutors are
beginning study projects on
interesting non-Program works
and will later lead faculty
groups on their topics.
PATRICIA LOCKE will hold
the Adolph W. Schmidt tutorship, gaining partial release
time from classes to pursue her
project. The tutorship was
established in 1985 through a
fund endowed by Mr. Schmidt,
a former St. John’s board
member and ambassador, and it
alternates between the
Annapolis and Santa Fe
campuses. Ms. Locke will study
Marcel Proust’s novel In Search
of Lost Time. “Issues of
memory, both voluntary and
involuntary, are most obvious,
but Proust deals thematically
with bodily processes such as
perception, speech, and sleep
as well. Proust considers stages
of mental and moral development before ‘teenage’ began
to separate childhood from
adult life. He also is concerned
with intersubjectivity, sexuality, and the boundaries of
language. My own questions
are primarily: what makes a
coherent self? How does one’s
perception of one’s body, on
the one hand, and language
that takes others into account,
on the other, shape a self?”
Ms. Locke is also interested
in how living in a city affects
one’s perception of self and
world. “The familiar urban
setting, the unpredictable joy
in truly recognizing others
through the masks age wears,
the desire and futility in trying
to stop time—Proust sees it all,
and he gives the reader access
to possible meanings of the
most delicate events.”
As holder of the National
Endowment for the Humanities
chair, ROBERT DRUECKER will
be studying the Upanishads, a
project he became interested in
after Annapolis faculty
discussed a report on the Santa
Fe Eastern Classics program.
He thought it would benefit
both campuses to become more
acquainted with what has
become a significant part of the
intellectual life on the Western
campus, he says.
The Upanishads “considered
by many to be the supreme
work of Indian wisdom,”
seemed the best starting point,
Mr. Druecker says. “They are
at once records of spiritual
experience, formulations of
intellectual insight, and expressions of poetic imagination.
They aim to bring about both
an illumination of the mind
and a transformation of the
reader’s experience so that it
manifests the inner realization
that the divine source of all is
one with the self within each
person,” he says
As the holder of the chair,
supported by endowment
funds, a tutor gains two-thirds
released time to study a topic
for a year. In the second year,
he or she leads a faculty study
group in the fall and gives a
lecture. Annapolis tutor
GEORGE RUSSELL is in his
second year of a study project
on the speeches of Abraham
Lincoln.
Retirements
A tutor since 1967, GISELA
BERNS (HA00) has retired from
the Annapolis faculty. Mrs.
Berns grew up in the Black
Forest of Germany and studied
at Heidelberg University, where
she earned a doctorate in classics and philosophy, and where
she also met her husband,
LAURENCE BERNS (HA00, tutor
emeritus in Annapolis), in a
class on Plato’s Phaedo.
During a reception in the
Great Hall near the end of the
spring semester, tutor David
Stephenson talked about
Mrs. Bern’s many fine
qualities, including her
passion for music. “Gisela has
sustained a violin section of
the orchestra all by herself on
more than one occasion,” said
Mr. Stephenson. “Without her
enthusiasm and hard work I
doubt we could ever have
attempted such ambitious
orchestral works. Bach,
Beethoven, Mozart are meat
and drink to her. In her music
tutorial she has discovered
innumerable newness in the
verbal and musical interplay of
the operas and passions we
study.”
During the same Annapolis
gathering, members of the
community turned out to
thank long-time Annapolis
Registrar REENIE CRAVEN for
her hard work and dedication
to the community. Mrs. Craven
worked for nearly 17 years for
St. John’s, and has been
Mr. Druecker delves into the
Upanishads; Ms. Locke takes on
Proust. Both benefit from
endowments set aside for
faculty study, and both will
lead study groups and give
lectures on their topics.
{ The College
St. John’s College • Spring 2006 }
�7
{From the Bell Towers}
The documentary captures
baseball as a national obsession
in Japan; it follows two high
school teams and their coaches
as they try to win the national
championship. “It’s really
unlike anything in the United
States, and the way Japanese
kids approach this rite is also
quite a contrast to youth
culture—especially sports
culture—in America,” he says.
For details, visit the production
company’s Web site:
www.projectilearts.org/
kokoyakyu.
registrar since September
2000. In retirement, she
plans to make time for
“grandmothering, reading,
gardening, walking, and
volunteering.” She’ll stay
involved with St. John’s
through the Caritas Society,
a volunteer group that
supports the college.
Appointments
CATHY SMITH is the new
director of Information Technology Services, based in Santa
Fe, but serving both campuses
and overseeing improvements
to IT infrastructure. Ms. Smith
earned bachelor’s and master’s
degrees in history from the
University of California-Irvine,
and has spent her IT career in
higher education with institutions including UC, Stanford
University, Indiana University,
and the University of Kansas.
At Carleton College, Ms. Smith
partnered with faculty to
develop a model of faculty
technology support widely
adopted in higher education;
she has also partnered with
administration at several
institutions to implement
innovative approaches to
automating business processes.
BRONTÉ JONES has been
appointed treasurer for the
Annapolis campus. Ms. Jones
earned her doctorate in higher
education from the University
of Texas after obtaining a
bachelor’s degree and an
M.B.A. in finance from
American University. In addition, she is a graduate of
the Harvard Institute for
Higher Education. Ms. Jones
joins St. John’s from HustonTillotson University in Austin,
Texas, where she has been vice
president for administration
and finance since 2004.
Previously she held the posts
of assistant dean of financial
services, dean of enrollment
management, and adjunct
instructor in finance at the
university. She has worked for
Bronté Jones: New treasurer
in Annapolis
the Texas State Auditor’s
Office, auditing statewide
financial aid programs at institutions of higher education.
Santa Fe Student Wins
Fiction Award
KELLY MARIE WILSON (SF09)
won a $10,000 Gold Award for
fiction writing from The
National Foundation for
Advancement in the Arts, a
Miami-based non-profit group
founded in 1981 that fosters
artistic talents of high school
seniors. Miss Wilson titled her
winning story “Driving in a
Hail Storm on the First Night
She’s Been Alone in Eleven
Years, Wendy Recalls her Four
Great Loves.” Besides the
$10,000 prize, Miss Wilson
received a free trip to take part
in the NFAA awards ceremony
in the Baryshnikov Arts Center
in New York City.
Jackhammer Time
Visitors to the Western campus
this summer will see more than
a few barriers and quite a few
construction crews, as
improvements in Santa Fe
continue. More than $1.3
million in renovation projects
are under way. Workers have
already completed a project in
the Weigle Hall lobby that
renders the entrance friendlier
to prospective students. A new
gazebo and walkway are in
place near “France,” the
parking lot on lower campus.
This summer, crews are
breaking up concrete sidewalks
throughout the central area of
the campus. Students will
return in the fall to brick pathways, teak tables, additional
lighting, increased accessibility
for people with disabilities, and
a much-improved koi pond. x
A Farewell to Febbies
Johnnie Documentary
to air on PBS
A Johnnie’s documentary on
high school baseball in Japan
will debut at the Brooklyn
International Film Festival,
June 2-11. Kokoyakyu also airs
July 4, 2006, on public broadcasting’s P.O.V., says ALEX
SHEAR (SF00), senior
producer. (Check local listings.)
Sara McClayton (A09) signs the college register during January
2006 convocation in Annapolis. Eighteen students matriculated
in January; they are expected to be the last of the Febbies, as the
Annapolis campus has ended the practice of enrolling freshmen
in January. The Santa Fe campus will continue to offer a January
Freshman class.
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2006 }
�8
{From the Bell Towers}
Leaving a Legacy
Nothing Says “Thank You”
Like the Senior Gift
For more than a decade,
graduating seniors have
honored the college with a gift
that class members select
together and fund with their
personal donations to
St. John’s. It’s a tradition that
started with the class of 1992,
when a large percentage of the
students in that class turned
over their “caution fees”
(dormitory security deposits)
to the college to endow a
Class of 1992 scholarship.
Caution fees seed many of the
gifts today, but seniors often
make additional gifts and
continue to contribute money
to some funds long after
they’ve graduated.
This year’s gifts, from
seniors in Santa Fe and
Annapolis, are eminently
practical and stem from needs
students perceived during their
years at St. John’s. Santa Fe
students chose to purchase
DVDs and CDs of their choice
for the Meem Library.
Members of the Annapolis
class of 2006 may also be
remembered with gratitude for
many years in the future for
their gift: a spiral binding
machine for the campus print
shop, intended to save future
seniors from late-night lines at
Kinkos when essays are due and
also to upgrade Program materials from comb-bindings to
spiral bindings. The machine is
already in place in Chris
Colby’s print shop—a much
more convenient place for
harried students to queue up to
copy and bind their essays.
“More than 71 percent of the
senior classes on each campus
participated in raising funds for
their respective gifts, with
excellent leadership from the
senior class gift committees,”
says Annual Fund director
Stefanie Takacs (A89). “We
expect the DVDs to be in place
for fall 2006 in Santa Fe, and
the first use for the new spiral
binder will be to make address
books for the recent Annapolis
graduates, so they can stay in
touch with each other after
graduation.”
Seniors in the class of 2005
in Santa Fe donated $4,300
toward restoration of the
fishpond, a project due to begin
this coming summer. In
Annapolis, the class of 2005
created an endowment to buy
Lobachevski’s Theory of
Parallels as a gift to each
incoming senior.
The Santa Fe Class of 2004
has in mind a most ambitious
project, and they’re seeking
long-term involvement in the
project from members of their
class and any other alumni who
are taken with the idea. Graduates chose to commission a
stainless steel operational
replica of 16th-century
astronomer Tycho Brahe’s
armillary sphere. The class has
already raised $6,000 toward
the $100,000 cost.
Class leaders have selected
an artist and hope to install the
sphere on campus in the next
decade or so, Brenna McMahon
(SF04) said. The sculpture
relates directly to the Program
because the sphere can be used
to replicate the data that
Kepler used and that Newton
then relied upon, McMahon
says. “It’s also our hope to
install a beautiful sculpture
that will reflect the unity of the
arts and sciences in the
Program. To the best of our
knowledge, there are only two
armillary spheres in the world
(including one at the
Smithsonian), and this would
be the only operational sphere
in the world. We hope that it
will show the St. John’s
community how invested our
class is in the college,”
says McMahon. x
David Harber’s sketch of the
armillary sphere that
Santa Fe’s Class of 2004 hopes
to one day install on campus.
Senior Class Gifts Over the Years
1905: The bell in the McDowell Hall tower was a gift from
this class.
Annapolis Class of 1997: Funded a portrait of Eva Brann by
noted artist Cedric Egeli. The painting graces Room 12 of
McDowell.
Santa Fe Classes of 1998, 99: Contributed gifts to the
endowment in support of faculty salaries.
Annapolis Class of 1999: Made a gift to the Music Library
Fund and acquisition of an apple seed from the tree that
inspired Sir Isaac Newton. The apple yielded two seedlings,
but sadly the trees did not survive.
Santa Fe Class of 2001: Raised money for an observatory in
honor of then-laboratory director Hans Von Briesen
(HSF03).
Annapolis Class of 2003: Funded digital re-mastering and
transcription of lectures that existed only on tape.
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2006 }
�9
{Letters}
Remembering Ralph
Swentzell
I wept hard when I learned of
Ralph Swentzell’s death. He was
one of my seminar tutors during
my sophomore year over 20
years ago. What I appreciated
most about him was his gentle,
steady, and unpretentious spirit.
He was the only tutor
courageous and caring enough
to reach out to comfort and
support me when I was disenabled at the devastating end of
my St. John’s career. This, to
me, was the true actualization of
any lofty philosophies examined
or perpetuated by this school: to
bring it home, where it really
does count. Having found such a
Great Soul, if only briefly, I
cannot begin to imagine the loss
that his friends and loved ones
must be enduring. I can only
hope that they know that he will
be truly treasured in our finest of
memories. I now wish for them
the comfort and support that he
so genuinely extended to me.
I strive to be as present for my
students as he was for us. Be
free, Sir Ralph, and many
thanks.
Bea Butler (SF80)
World Federalism
I read with great interest your
article about Joseph Baratta’s
scholarship on world federalism,
and was especially pleased to see
mention of Clarence Streit’s
work Union Now, which was so
influential in its day but is now
sometimes overlooked.
Actually, the organization
which he founded (Federal
Union) lives on. For a while it
was called the Association to
Unite the Democracies (AUD),
and it has now morphed into the
Streit Council for a Union of
Democracies (www.streitcouncil.org).
I worked for AUD in
Washington in 1986-87 before
starting World Democracy
News, a newsletter spanning the
international federalist movement (we lasted only through six
editions over three years before
ceasing for lack of funding). I
then served briefly as president
of the Coalition for Democratic
World Government. And I’ve
been on the Board of AUD and
now the Streit Council since
about 1990. Our focus is on
creating a nucleus for world
government from the existing
established democracies—for
example, creating real common
decision-making structures for
NATO and/or the OECD—to
which other democracies could
Books are the Teachers
Your article “Small Waves in a
Tranquil Sea: Melville, Literature, and the St. John’s Reading
List” (Winter 2006) was a very
enjoyable read on all accounts.
I was interested to receive some
insight into the workings of the
Instruction Committee.
However, I was disconcerted by
your use of the verb “to teach”
when writing about tutors and
books. For instance: “Dugan
sees no more compelling reason
“I do not recall what many of my tutors
thought that the books were really
about, precisely because the tutors
themselves didn’t teach me anything
about the books. The books did.”
Christian Blood (SF02)
be invited to join. Just as the EU
exerts a strong democratizing
pull on surrounding countries in
Europe (and even North Africa),
we would expect to have a
similar but more global effect
(maybe even restraining the U.S.
in the process). The EU hasn’t
yet been able to make the break
to real constitutional government, otherwise it would be a
model of what we want.
For a long time, the main split
in the international federalist
movement was between those
(including the world federalists)
who wanted immediate world
government including all
nations, and those who insisted
on democracy. But the American world federalists have
essentially become UN-reform
advocates, and I noticed recently
that some of those who want
more direct movement toward a
federal solution are starting a
new “World Democracy Movement-USA.” So Streit’s ideas,
as well as Barr’s and
Buchanan’s, are still in play.
Rick Wicks (SF68)
Melville’s tale must be on the
reading list. And yet, he allows,
‘life would be more full’ if he
could teach Moby-Dick and
Joyce’s Ulysses.” And from the
subsequent paragraph: “Having
taught two preceptorials on the
book, Annapolis tutor David
Townsend acknowledges the
impracticality of Moby-Dick as a
seminar reading.”
A St. John’s tutor teaching a
preceptorial? A St. John’s tutor
teaching a book? At St. John’s,
books are the only teachers.
I bristle because I have come
to believe, in my time since
leaving St. John’s, that we
observe at St. John’s a very
important distinction. I do not
recall what many of my tutors
thought that the books were
really about, precisely because
the tutors themselves didn’t
teach me anything about the
books. The books did.
I am currently a graduate
student and a teaching assistant
in literature at a major research
university where the professors
teach all kinds of things all the
time: books, courses, eras,
specialties. What the professors
teach is generally in line with
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2006 }
their most recent publications
and to me seems to be more like
indoctrination rather than
teaching. But none of the
students seem to learn much
about what they read.
Instead, they learn what the
professor taught them. They are
indoctrinated. Sometimes this
is fine, but often I cringe and a
bit of me dies as I think of how
their education compares to the
one I was lucky to receive from
St. John’s. I hesitate to liken the
activities of a St. John’s tutor to
the sorts of things that happen
at educational institutions
elsewhere.
Christian Blood (SF02)
Not Brothers
By now you have probably heard
from others that Charles and
Ray Eames were not brothers,
but husband and wife.
According to eamesoffice.com
they were married in 1941.
Nevertheless, I am delighted to
learn that a Johnnie was instrumental in producing Powers of
Ten. When my son was a child,
we often visited the Air and
Space Museum and enjoyed that
short movie many times.
Thanks as always for an
interesting issue of The College.
Christina Lauth Connell
(Class of 1967)
Editor’s note: Ms. Connell was
one of many Johnnies who
graciously alerted The College
to this error in the Winter 2006
issue.
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 also be sent via
e-mail to: rosemary.harty@
sjca.edu.
�10
{Capital Campaign}
“WITH A CLEAR AND
SINGLE PURPOSE”
St. John’s Seeks to
Preserve the Program
with an Ambitious
Capital Campaign
by Rosemary Harty
S
t. John’s College has
launched a $125 million
capital campaign to build
endowment for the future
and address immediate priorities. “With a Clear and
Single Purpose”: The Campaign for
St. John’s College will seek to add
significantly to the resources of the
college. “Our objective is to have all
aspects of the college reflect the excellence of our Program,” says Annapolis
President Christopher Nelson. “For many
years, the college has made many
sacrifices for the sake of the Program.
We must seize the opportunity now to
strengthen the college for the future.”
The last time the college launched a campaign, the goal was
$30 million; $36 million was raised by the time the campaign
ended in 1996. This much larger goal is within reach, Mr. Nelson
says, in part because $71 million has already been pledged or
received from individual donors and foundations. “Before we
publicly announced the campaign we had already received gifts
double the total raised in our previous campaign. Now, we need to
take our case for support to all of the college’s alumni, friends,
and parents, with the strong belief that we have their support for
this important undertaking,” he says. An opening celebration for
the campaign was held in Annapolis in April, and another special
celebration will be held in Santa Fe July 28.
The campaign’s theme was intended to underscore the vision
that led Stringfellow Barr and Scott Buchanan to begin the New
Program at St. John’s in 1937. The phrase “With a Clear and
Single Purpose” can be found in Barr’s 1939 president’s report to
the board. Even as the college struggled financially in the early
years of the Program, Barr stated that the college must always
hold firm to the ideals of liberal education.
In its infancy, the Program was viewed by outside observers as a
radical experiment. Today the academic program is seen as a
standard for liberal education. “Although the notion of a liberal
arts education is often challenged today by those who see higher
education as a type of job training program, St. John’s remains
committed to its ideals,” says Santa Fe President Michael Peters.
“An education should be about the search for truth and learning
for life.”
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2006 }
�11
{Capital Campaign}
The quiet phase of the
campaign, begun in
2002, was well under way
when Mr. Peters accepted
the presidency in Santa
Fe. He was eager to take
part in an endeavor that
will benefit the Santa Fe
campus and strengthen
St. John’s collegewide.
“I believe that this
campaign is important
for St. John’s College,
and I believe that it can be
successful. When I joined
the college in January
2005, I could see how far
St. John’s has come in
recent years, how much
the college has improved
while never losing sight
of its mission.
“Part of my own vision
for St. John’s is that the
college gains the recognition it deserves as a
leader in American higher education,” Mr. Peter adds. “Indeed,
education at all levels should take a close look at what we do. But
to remain true to our mission and to serve as an example to others,
we need the support of every alumnus, parent, and friend. I hope
that all who know the college will find a way to contribute to
this effort.”
The college’s capital campaign
seeks to address priorities that
will sustain the Program and
strengthen the college.
Funding these priorities will
require $125 million.
FINANCIAL AID: $33 million for
need-based aid.
FACULTY AND ACADEMIC SUPPORT:
$34 million to increase faculty
salaries to the median of peer
institutions; provide faculty
development opportunities;
develop program-related
student instructional material
Goals
of
Campaign
the
“Like a Euclid proposition,
this is a campaign characterized
by
clarity
and
simplicity,” says Sharon
Bishop (Class of 1965), chair
of the college’s Board of
Visitors and Governors.
“Everything that we are
seeking to do is in direct
support of the Program.”
Funds raised through the
campaign will be directed to
priorities in three areas:
• Students: Among the top
priorities of the college is the
need to sustain the needbased financial aid program
that ensures that students
accepted to the college can
attend regardless of their
financial circumstances.
• Faculty: St. John’s is
committed to bringing tutor salaries to the median of those at
comparable liberal arts colleges, while providing more opportunities for more tutors to engage in faculty study.
• Facilities: In order to house more students on campus, the
college seeks to build new dormitories and renovate existing
dorms. Academic buildings, especially laboratory classrooms
(manuals and workbooks);
and ensure small class sizes and
1:8 tutor-to-student ratio.
STUDENT SERVICES: $3.5 million
to improve services to students,
fund internship opportunities,
and provide grants so that
elementary and secondary
teachers can attend the
Graduate Institute.
ST. JOHN’S IMPROVEMENT FUND:
$5 million for library collections and laboratory equipment; improving Information
Technology infrastructure;
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2006 }
staff professional development
and compensation.
BUILDING PROJECTS ON THE TWO
CAMPUSES: $49.5 million for
building projects, including a
Santa Fe dormitory, a Graduate
Institute center in Santa Fe,
and the addition to and
renovation of Evans Science
Laboratory. The renovation of
Mellon Hall and the addition of
two new dormitories in
Annapolis are completed and
fully funded.
�12
{Capital Campaign}
Endowment per student
in Santa Fe, require renovation and
upgrading. And the college seeks to build a
new Graduate Institute center in Santa Fe
that would provide the campus
with a much-needed auditorium for
lectures, concerts, and other programs.
Grinnell
Pomona
Swarthmore
Bowdoin
Claremont McKenna
Haverford
Carleton
Reed
Colorado
Oberlin
St. John’s
“The board, the Alumni Association, and the
college’s administration are all in agreement
about what needs to be done,” says Ronald A.
Fielding (A70), a board member and chairman of the Capital
Campaign. “We must remain accessible to all qualified students.
We need to continue to attract talented and dedicated faculty
members and give them opportunities that will help them
continue to serve as model learners for our students. We also need
a physical environment in which a community of learners can
flourish.”
The college hasn’t waited in addressing the most urgent needs
of the strategic plan, says Ms. Bishop. Early fruits of the campaign
have been directed to the projects that most directly affect student
life and learning. Two new dormitories, paid for by gifts to the
campaign, have opened in the last two years in Annapolis,
enabling the college to house 80 percent of its students on
campus. The college committed $4.5 million to the Santa Fe
Initiative, and as a result, students benefit from renovated laboratories in the Evans Science Laboratory, paid summer internships,
and overall improvements to the buildings and grounds on the
Santa Fe campus.
Building Endowment
The St. John’s endowment, a carefully managed investment fund,
is larger than it has ever been, at just over $100 million. The
endowment’s primary purpose is to grow and to provide an
ever-increasing source of revenue for the college. Compared to
other small liberal arts colleges, St. John’s remains seriously
under-endowed, a situation that keeps the college too dependent
on tuition revenue for its yearly operations. With the current endowment, the college has $5,000 per student to spend annually, while
Grinnell College, with about 1,500 students, has $43,000 per
student to spend annually because of a substantially larger endowment.
“This is a time of opp-ortunity for St. John’s,” says Mr. Fielding,
senior vice president and portfolio manager of OppenheimerFunds’ municipal bond division. “By growing the endowment, we
can support the Program for many years to come.”
Mr. Fielding’s $10 million gift to the endowment, given in 2003
to support financial aid, was also intended to underscore his
support for the campaign and encourage others to join the effort.
“Everything else about St. John’s is strong. The college is in
$862,337
$750,470
$724,850
$313,181
$303,626
$300,709
$265,283
$258,294
$217,326
$208,039
$101,590
capable hands, with a solid administration
and a dedicated faculty. We have attracted
excellent students, and our applicant pool is
better than it has ever been. But the largest
missing link in terms of the quality of St.
John’s is—and always has been—related to
money,” he says.
Since its early days, when the Revolutionary War founders of St. John’s had to
send out bailiffs to collect pledges from
financial supporters of the new college, raising funds and keeping
the college financially healthy has not come easily. Mr. Fielding
points out that Barr and Buchanan were able to bring the New
Program to St. John’s in the 1930s in part because the college was
facing bankruptcy, and the board was willing to take a chance to
keep the college open.
“We’ve never had a John Harvard, a Johns Hopkins—a single
benefactor whose gift established the institution on strong
footing,” he says. “Even in the 1940s and ’50s, when philanthropist Paul Mellon was making very generous gifts to the college,
those gifts helped the college survive during some very lean years,
but they didn’t build the endowment.”
Mr. Fielding chose to direct his gift to financial aid in part because
a comprehensive aid package allowed him to attend St. John’s. The
need-based financial aid program at St. John’s is one of the few in the
country that devotes every dollar to students who would not otherwise be able to attend the college. About 70 percent of students
receive some form of financial aid, and the average St. John’s
grant is $15,000. Today, the amount the college needs to spend on
financial aid is growing faster than the rate of tuition increase,
with more than $11 million annually devoted to financial aid.
The Johnnie Giving Culture
During the campaign, alumni, parents, and friends will be
asked to make five-year pledges to the effort. Those capable of
large gifts may choose to support an endowment or building
project. Most supporters, however, will make their contribution
to the campaign through their gift to the Annual Fund. The goal
for the campaign is $29 million in Annual Fund gifts and
pledges by 2008. In order for the campaign to be successful, the
Annual Fund will need to grow in both the amount of individual
gifts and in the number of alumni who give (now at about
36 percent). Alumni can also join the ranks of volunteers
helping with the campaign.
Ray Cave (class of 1948) agreed to co-chair the current
campaign with Fielding, contributing the expertise gleaned from
chairing the Campaign for Our Fourth Century (which
ended in 1996). “The $125 million is going to be a stretch to
reach,” he acknowledges. “But thanks to the hard work of a lot of
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2006 }
�{Capital Campaign}
13
Campaign Progress
The college has already raised $71 million in gifts
and pledges toward the campaign. Those gifts
include: $10 million, Ronald A. Fielding (A70),
for financial aid; $12 million, anonymous alumnus,
for support of the endowment; $10 million from
The Hodson Trust for the renovation of Mellon
Hall and the construction of Gilliam Hall; a gift
(amount undisclosed) Warren Spector (A81),
toward construction of Spector Hall; $4 million
from board member Stephen L. Feinberg (HSF96);
and $1 million from BVG Chair Sharon Bishop
(Class of 1965). The college has obtained 100
percent participation in the campaign by the Board
of Visitors of Governors and the Alumni Association board.
A group of alumni and supporters of the college
have pledged $2 million gift to the campaign in
honor of Eva Brann. The college will create in
Miss Brann’s name a tutorship endowment fund.
people, the alumni have really been
brought back to the community, and
they’re responsive to the needs of the
college. They want to be involved, and
when we ask them, I think they’ll be
ready to give. They will look upon themselves as supporters of an institution
that they admire and that remains on
their mind.”
Mr. Cave never thought of himself as
a fund-raiser; he started out as a newspaper reporter in Baltimore and worked
his way up to become editor of Time
magazine. “When I was asked to be
chairman of the previous capital
campaign, I said, ‘I’m a journalist. I’ve
never asked anyone for a nickel, and I
don’t know how to do that.’ ”
But Mr. Cave knew how to tell a story, and the college’s story in
the mid-1990s was one of unmet needs that could not be ignored
without peril to the Program. For example, tutors at St. John’s
were at the very bottom of the salary scale for faculty members at
comparable institutions. “I think it’s important to understand
that in historical terms, this college basically lived from hand to
mouth. You can’t run a successful college or a business that way,
but that’s what St. John’s had been doing. It’s as if we were embarrassed to ask for money. But of course alumni should support
their alma mater—if you don’t want to give, it says you don’t feel
you got anything beneficial when you attended.”
When the Campaign for Our Fourth Century was launched,
“everyone agreed that we had to give tutors a pay raise, but the
endowment couldn’t support it,” Mr. Cave recalls. “Enough
money was raised in the campaign to give tutors a pay raise, and
now we’ve got them pretty darn near the middle.”
In the past 15 years, the college has cultivated a strong donor
base and has established good relationships with foundations and
trusts. “Today, St. John’s is well managed in all respects. The
college is going out now to raise $125 million to do two things:
support the institution as it exists and strengthen the financial
base so that St. John’s can keep pace with what students expect
and what parents expect, while remaining true to its mission.”
As he did in the last campaign, Mr. Cave will meet with donors
to ask for a gift to the campaign. He knows he’ll hear a lot of good
things about the college. “St. John’s is the kind of institution
that does create passion in those who support it,” he says. “There
are many alumni who support the college because it did
consequential things for them, whether they graduated or not.
And there are many people who support the college because they
know St. John’s matters for America.”
Steve Thomas (SF74) chairs the
Alumni Committee of the campaign.
“I loved every one of the four years I
spent at the college,” he says. “And I
believe most alumni feel that way.”
Only many years after graduation
did Mr. Thomas gain an appreciation
for how the college works. He became
involved in the Alumni Association
Board and is now a member of the
Board of Visitors and Governors.
He sees some challenges in the job
for which he has volunteered.
“Alumni love the college, and they’re
proud of being Johnnies,” says
Mr. Thomas, a New York lawyer. “But
for a long time, we were trained not to
like the administration—there was this
suspicion of that side of the college. We need to convince alumni
that the money they give is going to go directly to supporting
students and the institution.”
As a member of the BVG’s Visiting Committee, Mr. Thomas has
the opportunity to sit in on classes and meet students on both
campuses. “I’m pleased that the college is providing substantively the same education as when I was a student,” he says.
“I don’t think I realized until recently how much work goes into
preserving the most important aspects of St. John’s.”
Along with alumni, parents will be asked to make a gift to the
campaign. Linda Schaefer, a BVG member and former Santa Fe
Parent Association member, has volunteered to serve as one of
the chairs of the Parent Committee of the campaign. Her son
Eric graduated from St. John’s in Santa Fe in 2004, and during
his student years she volunteered to assist the college with the
Annual Fund.
Mrs. Schaefer believes parents will respond to the needs of the
capital campaign. “When you look back at your own sons and
daughters, you can see the incredible changes that take place
between freshman and senior years, and you know the difference
the college had made in their lives,” she says. “They leave the
college with a lifelong love of learning and the ability to think
for themselves.”
Mrs. Schaefer and her husband, Mark, are also supporting the
capital campaign with a gift because they admire what St. John’s
represents. “We believe that St. John’s is the kind of institution
that really needs to be here. Just look at those students who have
been to traditional liberal arts colleges and found it didn’t work
for them. We really need to support and preserve the Program
because so many people have benefited from it.” x
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2006 }
�14
{The Program}
POETRY in MOTION
Mr. Sinnett and Mr. Braithwaite, Newton and Aristotle
by Rosemary Harty
nnapolis students and tutors gathering
for a Friday night lecture in January
found an unusual setup on the stage of
Key Auditorium. A pair of tutors sat
facing each other at a coffee shop table,
with books and papers spread out before
them, and a blackboard positioned
nearby. Instead of introducing the
lecturer, Dean Michael Dink (A75) stood
briefly to quiet the audience. The tutors, Mark Sinnett and William
Braithwaite, began talking to each other about the nature of motion
in the works of Newton and Aristotle. They were continuing a
conversation—now for the benefit of an audience—that had been
taking place nearly every week for almost three years.
The role of a St. John’s tutor is often described as that of a model
learner engaging with students on the lifelong journey of seeking
knowledge. During the academic year and summer breaks, tutors
work in formal study groups to pursue topics of interest together. In
Annapolis this summer, tutors will study Kepler, for example. In
Santa Fe, the summer topics include Mann’s Dr. Faustus. But the
alex lorman
A
endeavor pursued by Mr. Braithwaite and Mr. Sinnett demonstrates
another interesting aspect of life at St. John’s: many more tutors
take part in informal groups that arise from a particular interest or
a question. Their engagement in such pursuits lasts as long as they
still have something they want to talk about.
The Braithwaite-Sinnett collaboration on Aristotle’s Physics and
Newton’s Principia also demonstrates how tutors with different
experiences and abilities offer each other a deeper understanding of
a work—the same thing that happens with students in an allrequired curriculum.
Of the many things unique to St. John’s, the requirement that
tutors teach across the curriculum may seem most puzzling to
outsiders. At most colleges and universities, an English department
decides it needs an expert in rhetoric; a history department seeks a
Civil War expert. At St. John’s, the dean and instruction committee
interviewing prospective tutors looks not for a particular expertise,
but an agile, imaginative mind.
As the two men described their collaboration a few weeks after
their lecture (presented as a public conversation), they also
captured what makes conversation at St. John’s such a fruitful
and satisfying activity. Mr. Braithwaite came to
St. John’s in 1995 from a law school faculty;
Mr. Sinnett came from the pulpit of a Presbyterian
church.
“We were both teaching junior mathematics and
were in the same archon group,” explained
Mr. Sinnett. “I have a master’s degree in mathematics and I had been pursuing doctoral studies in
mathematics when I shifted to theology. But being at
St. John’s has brought mathematics back to life for
me. Mathematics is done here for all the right
reasons, because of the way, as Ptolemy says, it
orders the soul; it’s a way of ordering the mind.”
“I’m a former corporate trial lawyer whose mathematics experience before St. John’s was limited to
Instead of delivering a lecture, tutors Mark
Sinnett (l.) and William Braithwaite continued
their conversation on Newton and Aristotle,
this time for the benefit of an audience.
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2006 }
�{The Program}
reading balance sheets,” Mr. Braithwaite said. “I had been out of
college and done no other math but basic arithmetic for 40 years. If
you look at our backgrounds, it wouldn’t appear that we’d have a
great deal to say to one another. And that’s still something of a
delightful mystery for me. We never planned to talk for 30 months.
We were just going to study junior math together.”
“We found that we were coming at the text in different ways, and
it was fruitful,” added Mr. Sinnett. “We had a common interest, and
we pursued it. That’s what happens at this college.”
Junior mathematics at St. John’s centers on Newton and calculus.
Students begin by reading Zeno, Aristotle, and Galileo. They
consider Zeno’s famous paradox: how is continuous motion
possible if, at each instant, the moving object fills the space it occupies, equal to its own size? The arrow is not moving there, Zeno
posited, it’s at rest there, and it can’t be moving anywhere else,
therefore motion is illusory. Continuing on to Newton’s Principia,
and armed with a calculus manual, juniors explore the mechanical
motions of the universe.
The tutors’ joint inquiry started with Newton’s calculus, but kept
returning to questions raised in the Physics. Eventually, the two
settled on pursuing one central question: How does the mathematical account of motions of bodies in Newton differ from Aristotle’s
nonmathematical account of nature and change in general?
“Aristotle has a very limited view of what mathematics can do in
relation to nature,” explained Mr. Braithwaite. “In the Physics he
devotes a chapter to talking about how the mathematician’s study of
nature differs from that of the physicist, what he would regard as the
nonmathematical student of nature. He says that although the
mathematician abstracts from nature, he doesn’t falsify the things
that he studies. It looks as if Aristotle was making room for a
mathematical inquiry into nature.”
In their public conversation, the tutors started with Zeno’s
paradoxes, which are carried through the Physics. “Something that
intrigued us early on is: how did Newton think about Zeno’s
paradoxes? Had he thought about them at all?” Mr. Braithwaite
said. “Was Zeno a problem for Newton, or had he worked out a way
of dealing with the problems the paradoxes raise that was different
from Aristotle’s, or in some sense the same? We talked a lot about
that over a long period of time, then we discovered that it looked to
us as if Newton had found a way around the paradoxes.”
According to Newton’s understanding, one divides up space and
the corresponding times in the same way, resulting in a finite sum of
time corresponding to the given finite expanse of space, explained
Mr. Sinnett. Thus, an unbounded time is no longer necessary in
order to traverse a bounded space. Similarly, he adds, Aristotle
divides both space and time in a consistent manner. Both become
countably infinite collections in exact correspondence of each
other, with the result, as with Newton, that the paradox disappears.
“Aristotle’s whole inquiry into motion, of course, is much
broader. He’s concerned with change, which includes the plant over
there growing, your writing on that piece of paper, the table
decomposing. Newton’s got a very small portion of this: the motion
of ballistic objects,” Mr. Sinnett said.
15
“I think it’s right that nothing in Newton’s calculus tells you
about growing plants or the motions of animals,” agreed Mr. Braithwaite. “It’s about moving bodies from place A to place B, so it has a
narrow but extremely powerful focus because of his development of
the calculus. Newton is asking a different set of questions, but in the
background was always this concession by Aristotle that the mathematical account isn’t false—in other words, it could tell you real, true
things—it’s just not the whole horizon that Aristotle set for himself.”
Newton’s ultimate ratio is not going to be visible to anyone who
doesn’t proceed to it in a regular way, said Mr. Sinnett: “He’s just as
dependent upon his reader’s personal insight—seeing into what is
not visible to the eye—as Aristotle is, and Aristotle’s language is just
perfect for describing what the student of his book has to let happen
in his mind to grasp what is important. It’s startling to me to have
been teaching calculus on and off for 25 years to find some of the
best language for describing what I was doing in Aristotle’s
Physics.”
“Together we came to see that the Physics was extraordinarily
helpful in understanding Newton,” Mr. Braithwaite said. “Our
effort, when our imagination is not working properly, is to nail
something down and hold it still so we can walk all around it and
think that’s going to get us to an understanding of it. And the
problem is you can’t do that with motion. Zeno’s paradoxes all
appeal in some way to this natural reaction of trying to stop something in order to understand it. If you stop motion in order to
understand it you’re not going to understand it as motion, you’re
going to understand it as rest. That’s the difficulty.”
Mr. Braithwaite had first heard of St. John’s in 1956, when he saw
a movie about the college. He applied and was accepted, but for
financial reasons, chose Virginia Military Institute. The college
came back into his life in the early ’90s, when his two oldest sons
Matthew (A96), and David (A97); matriculated here, and when
Christopher Nelson (SF70), then fairly new as Annapolis president,
asked him to join a President’s Advisory Council. (A third son,
Daniel (01) followed, and a fourth, Jonathan, will matriculate with
the class of 2010.) In 1993, at age 56, Mr. Braithwaite applied to join
the faculty and was astounded to receive an offer.
Similarly, Mr. Sinnett’s path to St. John’s stemmed from his
wide-ranging intellectual interests. After earning his Ph.D. in
systematic theology at Cambridge University, he was ordained a
minister in the Presbyterian Church. He served a congregation in
Texas for five years, but he wasn’t a good fit for the second
congregation that called him. “One day I preached a sermon in
which part of the message—from Paul’s Letter to the Corinthians—
was that we shouldn’t turn ourselves down. The world tries hard
enough to do that. I was talking with my wife about what to do next
and said what I’d really like to do is teach at St. John’s. She said,
‘Well, don’t turn yourself down.’ So I wrote a letter to St. John’s.”
The two are not planning another joint endeavor for some time.
But given a moment to think about it, Mr. Braithwaite suggested to
Mr. Sinnett, “Maybe we should take a look at the Metaphysics? You
have a background in theology, after all, and I don’t, so we’d ask
different questions—it could be interesting.” x
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2006 }
�16
{The Tutors}
“EVER THE
TEAC HER”
Santa Fe Tutor William Darkey
by Robin Weiss, SFGI86
s William A. Darkey prepared
to become one of the first graduates of the New Program in
1942, he received a startling
offer from Scott Buchanan and
Stringfellow Barr, founders of
the Program.
Mr. Darkey recounts the
story—and his own bewilderment—with a grin, recalling the details 63 years later.
“Buchanan called me in and he said, ‘You know, Winkie
[Barr] and I have been talking . . . we ought to have a
student or two on the faculty because none of us have actually been through the curriculum.’ I said, ‘You must be
kidding!’ But after the initial shock wore off, I asked,
‘Gosh, you really think I could do that?’ ”
“If I didn’t think you could, I wouldn’t have asked you,”
Buchanan replied.
Barr and Buchanan are often described as visionaries,
but it’s hard to imagine that they could have foreseen how
much Mr. Darkey, now tutor emeritus, would contribute to
the life of St. John’s College: as a long-serving and
dedicated tutor, willing to take on various duties including
admissions director and librarian in Annapolis; as one of
the first faculty members and a dean of the Santa Fe
campus; and as a mentor and friend to colleagues and
students for more than six decades.
Mr. Darkey’s teaching contract, dated May 29, 1942,
honored him with a $500 salary and free board at the
college. But his appointment came at a tenuous time for a
A
struggling college. After the attack on Pearl Harbor,
students and faculty began leaving St. John’s for military
service. In his book A Search for the Liberal College,
J. Winfree Smith describes a student body torn between
“good thinking about war and peace” and the actual
demands of war. Between 1942-43, enrollment plummeted
from 178 to 100.
Mr. Darkey himself tried several times to enlist, but poor
eyesight stood in his way. “I went through the peculiar initiation of going to Baltimore every six months and
going through the routine—and guess what? They discovered
I was nearsighted,” he recalls, chuckling. “And then they’d
say, ‘No, you won’t do at all.’ This happened quite regularly.”
In November 1943, Mr. Darkey was one of five tutors who
served on the committee drafting the first Polity, which
(according to Smith) became official by Barr’s fiat in 1945,
over the faculty’s objections.
Peter Hamill, class of 1949, met Mr. Darkey in January
1946 when Mr. Darkey was serving as a “third leader” in his
seminar, comprising veterans from the war. Hamill
attended the college for a year before being recalled by the
Navy, and he remembers Mr. Darkey as a quiet presence in
the classroom.
“Mr. Darkey seldom spoke up. He mostly sat back and
observed. Ford K. Brown [as senior leader] was handling
things.” Dr. Hamill remembers how the two men “made it
easy to drop any military swagger and become a human
being in the group.”
At the end of that year, Mr. Darkey finally succeeded in
enlisting in the Army. Asked about his background, he told
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2006 }
�{The Tutors}
17
Tutor Emeritus William Darkey
at Santa Fe commencement, 2003.
his commanding officer he was a teacher. “Ah, a school
marm!” the officer replied. “We can use you.”
Mr. Darkey was assigned to training methods. “This was
teaching people useful things like how to throw a hand
grenade.” Mr. Darkey worked for a colonel who thought
him “a very good training methods man,” and asked if he
intended to make a career out of the military. No,
Mr. Darkey said, he had marriage and graduate school in
mind. Although he was up for a transfer to Japan, he was
allowed to stay stateside to await his honorable discharge.
With his wife, Connie, he went to New York to embark on
a graduate degree in English literature at Columbia
University. One of his teachers was noted poet and
professor Mark Van Doren, an
early supporter of the
Program. “The very first
lecture I went to at St. John’s
was by Mark. I remember
thinking: My God, this is an
honest-to-God poet.” At
Columbia the two men
became good friends, and
Mr. Van Doren counseled him
through difficulties such as
writer’s block.
After earning his degree in
1949, Mr. Darkey returned to
teach at St. John’s. Barr and
Buchanan had moved on, and
“the center of it all was
[Jacob] Klein . . . a great
reader of books” and in a
sense “the soul of the
college.” “He knew about
good and evil, Greek mathematics, Hebrew, French,
English. Europe gave us a
great gift in all of these
people,” Mr. Darkey says of
Mr. Klein, Simon Kaplan, Eva
Brann, and other intellectuals who were refugees from
Europe and helped build the college’s reputation.
Also at the college were gifted musicians and composers
who inspired students with their love for music: Nicholas
Nabokov, Elliot Carter, and Victor Zuckerkandl. “Music
was very much alive,” recalls Mr. Darkey. “Scott Buchanan
had the notion, deep inside him, that music was a liberal art
and that it ought to be cultivated as such.”
Mr. Darkey was Miss Brann’s seminar co-leader in her first
year at the college, 1957-58. “He took me into the community and showed me the ins and outs,” she says. As a
“member of the old guard,” he was the model of a good
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2006 }
�18
{The Tutors}
“He had the ability to make the material his own, then
lend it to you; he could get inside the material and take
you by the hand. He did it with great gentility.”
Bob Warren (SFGI93)
Alfred Eisenstaedt/L IFE Magazine
seminar leader. “He’s a gentle man and
a gentleman both,” Miss Brann says.
Mr. Darkey’s devotion to teaching
extended beyond St. John’s. He was one
of several tutors to found The Key
School in 1958, and when the independent school based on the St. John’s
model outgrew a rented facility in
Annapolis, Mr. Darkey was appointed
acting headmaster. He took a year’s
leave from St. John’s to help relocate
Key to a permanent home.
Max Ochs (AGI91) grew up in
Annapolis and has known Mr. Darkey
for more than four decades. His best
friend was Peter Nabokov, Connie’s son
from her first marriage to Nicholas
Nabokov. One day near Christmas in
1959, when Ochs was elementary-school
age, he visited the Darkey home to
discover Mr. Darkey cutting out pieces of colored construction paper. “He was trying to teach me and Peter how to
make tree ornaments—tetrahedrons and dodecahedrons . . .
Just learning the word was wonderful,” says Ochs. “He was
ever the teacher. And he did it in a very non-threatening
way, always.”
Another memory, from Ochs’ teenage years, is of the time
Mr. Darkey decided to offer seminars to neighborhood kids.
The first assignment was Don Quixote. “When he asked how
many people actually read the book, fewer than half of us
raised our hands . . . I’ve hardly ever seen his face get dark
and cloudy like that,” Ochs says. If disappointed, Mr. Darkey
persevered with his seminars. “He has this great, intense
love of the truth.”
In the early 1960s, former president Richard Weigle
(HA49) spearheaded the move to open a Western campus of
St. John’s. When Santa Fe was chosen, Mr. Darkey was
selected to be one of the founding faculty members at the
new campus. Mr. Darkey describes “the proselytizing
aspect” of the endeavor. “Dick Weigle . . . wanted to bring
the liberal arts to the West. We had very gifted people
working on it.”
William Darkey grew up in western
Maryland, earned a scholarship to
St. John’s, and before graduating in 1942
was offered a faculty position by thendean Scott Buchanan.
His wife, Connie, he adds, “thought
that the notion of founding a new
campus in the West was a great idea.
She was full of enthusiasm” for the
adventure.
A member of Santa Fe’s first class,
Marilynne Scott (Maurie Wills Schell,
SF68), remembers Mr. Darkey well.
He led her tutorial and co-led seminar
in her freshman year, and he “listened
to us with such intensity,” she recalls.
“Out of our ramblings he zeroed [in]
on the germ of the idea we were trying
to put forth. His eyes looked at the
speaker as he asked us to explain, elaborate, give examples. He helped us formulate thoughts we
hardly knew we had.”
He also gave Ms. Scott rides to and from church. “Here
was a person who dissected the Bible, Augustine, Aquinas
and Calvin, yet had a deep and public faith. In the freshman
don rag, Mr. Darkey asked me what wisdom was. I can now
say a wise person is one who sees with his heart and acts on
his convictions. Such a man is Bill Darkey.”
From 1968-72, Mr. Darkey served as the second dean of the
Santa Fe campus, bringing to the post “imagination,
diligence, and perceptiveness,” Weigle later wrote in one of
his memoirs.
Mr. Darkey was a tutor to David Levine (A67) in
Annapolis, and when Mr. Levine returned as a faculty
member in Santa Fe, he was pleased to have Mr. Darkey as a
colleague. “His sense of the mission of the college is wellcentered,” says Mr. Levine, now outgoing dean in Santa Fe.
“He’s a partisan of a smaller college, someone who has
expressed, many times, his concern that the college will
become too large to be a community of learners . . . People
have looked up to him as a way of keeping our balance.”
In 1998, Mr. Levine suggested renovating the former
bookstore in Peterson Hall into a much-needed common
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2006 }
�19
marion warren
{The Tutors}
room. Bob Warren (SFGI93), a strong supporter of the
college, agreed to underwrite the project if the room was
named in honor of Mr. Darkey.
Not surprisingly, the humble Mr. Darkey was reluctant to
see a room named for him, notes Mr. Warren. He and his
wife, Carol, have taken several community seminars with
Mr. Darkey and have always been impressed by his gentle
manner and his intellect. “He never raised his voice, or an
eyebrow. He had the ability to make the material his own,
then lend it to you; he could get inside the material and take
you by the hand. He did it with great gentility.”
Mr. Darkey was on the Instruction Committee that hired
Santa Fe tutor Jorge Aigla in 1985. In terms of the Program,
Mr. Darkey is “never complacent, but always reexamining
what we do and why,” says Mr. Aigla. And as his friend for the
past 21 years, Mr. Darkey has taught him what friendship
may mean: “he’s committed, kind, amiable . . . [and] has a
fantastic ability to listen.”
“He’s the best of a St. John’s tutor; he allows differing
points of view while inspiring the conversation to continue,”
says Laura Mulry (SFGI02), who developed a friendship with
Mr. Darkey in her years in the GI and on the college staff.
“He’s broadened my intellect and opened my spirit by always
asking: ‘What’s the discovery for you? What’s the pleasure
and joy you obtain?’ ”
Former President John Balkcom (SFGI00) has also
enjoyed many long talks with Mr. Darkey, about the
His students have always found tutor Bill Darkey (shown here
in a 1961 math tutorial) to be a gentle, but vital, presence in
the classroom.
Program, students, and faculty. He was always eager for the
visits, held every six weeks. “I would basically sit and listen
to him just as long as he wanted to talk,” says Mr. Balkcom.
“He’s the soul of the college in my book.”
Mr. Balkcom remembers a lecture Mr. Darkey gave in
2002. The Great Hall was packed, people spilled into the
Senior Common Room, and Mr. Darkey gave a wonderful
lecture on the poems of Mark Van Doren. The next day,
Mr. Balkcom learned that Mr. Darkey had left the text
at home. “He did it extemporaneously. You would not
have known.”
Last summer, with his dog Beau close at hand, Mr. Darkey
reflected on what the college has meant to him. In a little
more than an hour, sitting outside the Peterson Student
Center, he had tried to summarize a journey that began in
Annapolis and brought him to this beautiful campus built at
the foot of the mountains. “It’s the life, in all these things we
do,” he said. “It’s a rare thing to understand—you have to
live it.” x
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2006 }
�20
{History}
THE
Re m a rk a b l e
R E V E R DY J O H N S O N
An American Statesman
by Andrea Lamb
everdy Johnson, Esq., class of 1811,
was bold and concise in his defense of
Mary E. Surratt, one of the accused coconspirators in the assassination of
Abraham Lincoln. Johnson’s fame
rested on his reputation as a constitutional lawyer and senator. He based his
defense of Surratt on the argument
that the military commission created
after the assasination of Lincoln was unconstitutional.
“If a military commission, created by the mere authority of the
President, can deprive a citizen of the benefit of the guaranties
secured by the 5th amendment, it can deprive him of those
secured by the 6th. It may deny him the right to a speedy and
public trial, information ‘of the nature and cause of the accusation,’ of the right ‘to be confronted with the witnesses against
him,’ of ‘compulsory process for his witnesses,’ and of ‘the assistance of counsel for his defense’ . . . If then, it was true that the
creation of a military commission like the present is incidental to
the war power, it must be authorized by the department to which
that power belongs, and not by the Executive, to whom no portion
of it belongs.”
Unfortunately for Surratt, Johnson’s defense was unsuccessful,
and on July 7, 1865, she was hanged—the first woman to be
executed by the federal government.
According to the 19th-century newspaper, The North American
Review, intrigue may have interfered with justice even with so
R
eminent a counsel as Reverdy Johnson. On the third day of the
session, a member of the military commission, General T.M.
Harris, questioned the integrity of Johnson as counsel on the
grounds that he had earlier refused to recognize the moral
obligation of an oath required of voters in the state of Maryland.
Johnson’s reason was based on his belief that the state Convention
had exceeded its authority in attempting to exact an oath as a
condition for citizens to exercise the vote. In a strange turn of
events, Johnson was forced to defend himself.
General Harris’ attempt to have Johnson dismissed on grounds
of integrity failed, due to Johnson’s eloquence and comportment
in the court room. Unfortunately, such an affront to his character
was intolerable, and the dignified Johnson declined to appear in
person again, submitting written arguments to the court instead.
Although it failed in Surratt’s case, Johnson’s legal argument was
later proven sound. In 1866, one year after Surratt’s execution,
the landmark Supreme Court decision Ex Parte Milligan was
issued. It stated that while civilians may be imprisoned by the
military during times of war, it was unconstitutional to
subject civilians to military courts as long as the civilian courts
were operating.
His defense of the doomed Surratt was only one of Johnson’s
many controversial undertakings. He was co-counsel for the slave
owner in the 1857 Dred Scott case. Chief Justice Roger Taney,
earlier of the Baltimore Bar and a close friend of Johnson’s,
rendered the opinion that slaves were not citizens of the United
States, and could not sue in federal courts. The decision also
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2006 }
�library of congress
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2006 }
�22
{History}
declared that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional,
and that Congress did not have the authority to prohibit slavery in
the territories. Later, during the Lincoln-Douglas presidential
campaign, Johnson spoke at Faneuil Hall in Boston. According to
his biographer Steiner, he delivered an eloquent and moving
address expressing his view that slavery was a local institution,
with which Congress should not interfere. Although he personally
opposed slavery, Johnson’s respect for the Constitution prevailed
over all.
It is not at all unusual to think of many successful St. John’s
alumni much in the same vein as Johnson—brilliant, extraordi-
nary, but perhaps an irregular fit in a regular world. Some of the
intense controversy he attracted can be explained in part by the
historical setting of his life. He served in the Senate during a
turbulent time: slavery, the Civil War, Lincoln’s assassination,
war reparations, the Mexican War, and the first impeachment of
an American president, in 1868, were issues for men like Johnson
and benchmarks in American history. In all of his legal and
political pursuits, Johnson met the challenges while maintaining
his personal integrity.
In addition to his St. John’s education, Johnson had many
resources, including influential family connections. His father
From One Johnnie’s Library to Another
Some coincidences are almost too remarkable to believe.
Take, for example, how a volume of The Report of the Exploring
Expedition to the Rocky Mountains in the Year 1842, by Brevet
Captain J. C. Fremont, came to be included in the rare books
collection of the Greenfield Library.
Stewart H. Greenfield (Class of 1953), a member of the
college’s Board of Visitors and Governors, has always
enjoyed visiting used bookstores and adding to his
personal library. (About a decade
ago, he demonstrated his love for
books by providing the gift that
allowed the college to renovate the
former Maryland State Archives
building for a new library—named,
accordingly, for Mr. Greenfield.)
Many years ago Mr. Greenfield
came across a copy of Fremont’s
journals. In 1841 Congress
commissioned a survey of the Oregon
Trail and named Lt. John C. Fremont
to head the expedition. Upon his
return, Fremont prepared the official
report to Congress. It was so wellreceived that an extra 1,000 copies
were printed.
“I have a couple of books about
exploration and expeditions, and I
saw the Fremont volume and leafed
through it,” Mr. Greenfield recalls.
Mr. Greenfield read the book, put
it back on a shelf, and forgot about
it—until he picked up the New York
Times Book Review one day and
saw an advertisement from a rare
book dealer.
“It was from Bauman’s Rare
Books. Bauman’s had a copy of
Fremont’s journals, and the ad mentioned that it was a senatorial copy, one of the first editions prepared for the report to the
Congress. The copy they were selling had a rare map in the
pocket of the back cover, and as I recall, the price tag on theirs
was $6,000.
“This gave me incentive to go and see if my copy included the
map and was a senatorial edition.”
Not only did it have a map, not only was it a senatorial
edition, but it was the copy
presented to Reverdy Johnson,
St. John’s Class of 1811. “This was
the first time I’d looked closely at
the inscription. It was signed by
Reverdy Johnson, whose name I
knew well from my days as a student
at St. John’s. I looked up his history,
and indeed on the day he signed the
volume, he was a member of the
Congress.”
Indeed, a remarkable coincidence.
Since then, Bauman’s has continued
to seek buyers for other Fremont
volumes; the last one had an asking
price of $7,800. But Mr. Greenfield’s
volume became a gift to the
St. John’s library, where, he says,
it belongs. x
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2006 }
In November 2005, Stewart
Greenfield donated his copy of
FREMONT’S REPORT to the Greenfield
Library, where it is on display in the
Nutt Room. The inscription inside
reads “From Reverdy Johnson to his
friend Wm Price Dec. 30, 1845.”
�{History}
had been a lawyer and appeals court judge in Maryland. After
graduating from St. John’s at age 15, Reverdy Johnson read law
with his father, joined the Baltimore Bar and practiced law in
Maryland. After having served as a state senator, he was elected in
1845 to the U.S. Senate as a Whig. In 1849, he was appointed by
Zachary Taylor to be attorney general of the United States. He
later served as a representative in the Maryland Assembly, and
returned to the U.S. Senate, this time as a democrat. During the
Civil War, he was a strenuous supporter of keeping Maryland in
the Union.
At age 50, Johnson accepted the appointment of minister to
Britain’s Court of St. James’s, launching his international career.
Lord Clarendon, at the time of Johnson’s appointment, wrote to a
friend in America that “Mr. Johnson was the only diplomatic
representative that had ever brought out the true friendly feeling
of the British people for those in the
United States.” Some Americans
thought him too friendly to England.
Johnson faced the emerging controversies of his day with expansive
intellect and largeness of spirit.
However, some observers, noting the
pattern of shifting alliances and political
positions, did not hesitate to charge him
with being a “trimmer,” one who
changes his political opinions to suit
popular views. Other accounts cast him
in more favorable light. The Hon. J.
Upshur Dennis, in writing his recollections, stated that Johnson was “cursed
with neither nerves nor liver, but was
the robust embodiment of mens sana in
corpore sano,” a healthy mind in a
healthy body. (2).
Even Johnson’s physical attributes attracted attention. Dennis
recalls in his account that Johnson was of “medium height, round
bodied, solidly almost sturdily built, just such a physical mould as
indicated perfect health, capacity for work, and endurance,
without risk of breakdown, of all the oils and strains of the most
active life at the trial table . . . his features were strong; his forehead of great height, fullness and breadth; while the back of his
head was shaped like a barrel, and seemed to bulge out all around,
as if holding capacity. But the dome of his head was its most
striking feature—so lofty, so symmetrically rounded, that it
seemed to tower above all others, as the dome of St. Peter’s
minimizes all other designs (2-3).”
Apparently, possessing a measured temperament did not keep
Johnson out of a gentlemen’s duel, which ended with grave
physical consequences before it could even take place. According
23
to Dennis, the duel resulted from an altercation at a horse race
attended by congressmen. The owners of the two horses
competing, Rep. Henry Wise of Virginia and Rep. Edward Stanley
of North Carolina, were also the marshals. The men got into a
fight, and the challenge to a duel was issued. As Wise’s second,
Johnson went out to practice his shooting. He took aim at a small
hickory tree and fired. But the ball failed to penetrate the tree,
boomeranged, and struck Johnson in one eye. From that moment
on, he needed assistance in crossing streets and rooms, and relied
on voices to identify people. He died in 1876 in Annapolis.
Johnson was a persuasive speaker with his own style. He
apparently made few references to literary or other authorities,
in contrast to other learned men of his day, but rather built
his arguments on principles and logic. He attracted many controversies in his life, most often triggered by shifting his political
alliances and revising his opinions.
And yet, one may view those shifts
as characteristic of open-mindedness
manifested in an educated man.
His character traits demonstrated,
according to John Grene Proud, class of
1834, “the liberality of his mind and his
habit of bringing every subject to the
test of calm reasoning and cool judgment . . .” which prevented Johnson
from becoming “a bigoted partisan.”
Such was the legacy of a St. John’s
education then, and now. x
It is not at all unusual to
think of many successful
St. John’s alumni much in
the same vein as Johnson—
brilliant, extraordinary,
but perhaps an irregular fit
in a regular world.
Andrea Lamb is librarian in Annapolis.
Sources: Personal Recollections of a
Quartet of the Baltimore Bar (1905), by
J. Upshur Dennis, in the Reverdy Johnson Special Collection,
Maryland State Archives; Argument on the Jurisdiction of the
Military Commission, by Reverdy Johnson, found in Surratt
House Museum Archives at www.surratt.org/documents/
Bplact14.pdf.; The North American Review, 131 and 147 (1888)
(http:memory.loc.gov.ammem.ammemhome.html);
Biographical Cyclopedia of Representative Men of Maryland,
Baltimore (1879); Ex parte Milligan, 71 US2 (1866).
(www.abanet.org/publiced/criticism.html); Life of Reverdy
Johnson, by Bernard Steiner (1941); Memoirs of Deceased
Alumni of St. John’s College, Annapolis, by John G. Proud,
Baltimore (1879); Tercentenary History of Maryland, by
Matthew P. Andrews, Chicago, Clarke (1925).
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2006 }
�24
{ S t u d e n t Vo i c e s }
T W E N T Y- S I X DA Y S
A Senior Essay Diary
Tuesday, January 10
Beard growing and essay
writing progressed slowly
and with varied success
for seniors (l. to r.)
Benjamin Cromartie,
Christopher Utter,
Geremy Coy, and
Andrew MacKinlay.
beard” is a tradition for
the brave few who attempt
it each year. I’m curious to
see how much of a beard I
can actually grow.
alex lorman
Christopher Utter, a former
editor of the Gadfly and a
prolific contributor to
college publications, took
breaks from essay writing
to keep a journal on the
process. He overcame a
slow start, Seinfeld
episodes on DVD, and
much angst to complete a
fine essay on Plato’s
Republic. He defended it in
April—the morning after
Prank.
Tuesday, January 17
It was good to be at home
over break, but toward the end I began to feel the weight of my
essay pressing on my conscience. My plane landed at BWI last
night at about 8 p.m. My girlfriend, Shoshana Goldstein, and my
friend Alex Claxton met me at the baggage claim, and we drove to
campus without saying much. We are pretending not to be
concerned about our essays, although I’m sure most seniors are
slightly panicked. We have four weeks (26 days), which sounds like
a long time. I had wanted to re-read the Republic and write at least
an outline for my essay, but neither of these things happened.
Writing, but mostly in the
form of notes, and not very cohesive notes at that. I met with
Mr. Kalkavage yesterday, and as a result I have narrowed my focus
to imitation in Book X.
It’s very strange being here without having to go to class. It’s
not that I don’t feel like I am a part of the school, it’s more that I
don’t feel like I’m going to school at all. It’s always the weekend,
or it’s never the weekend, depending on how you look at it. The
only difference between one day and the next is that each day I am
closer to the deadline.
Beard progress: still stubble, but at least it’s evenly distributed.
Friday, January 13
I hope Friday the thirteenth is lucky for me. Yesterday, I met with
my adviser, Mr. Kalkavage, and told him I wanted to change my
topic. I was originally going to write on freedom in the Republic,
but the more I thought about it the more I realized that I had no
idea how I would write such an essay. So after discussing the
matter for a while with Mr. Kalkavage, I remembered how
interested and perplexed I was at Socrates’ discussion of images
and imagery. I finally settled on an examination of Socrates’ two
treatments of poetry, in Books II-III and X, as the focus of my
essay. As I said, I will need a bit of luck to come up with an
interesting way to approach this topic so late in the game.
Earlier this evening I went for pizza with Shoshana and Andrew
(MacKinlay), Geremy (Coy), and Ben (Cromartie). They (except
Shoshana) have decided not to shave until they turn in their essays
February 4, and so I decided to join them. I’m told the “essay
{ The College
Saturday, January 22
Go to the library and work there until it closes? Or just stay here at
my desk in Gilliam Hall? I have about 20 pages of notes. One
major development is that I came up with an outline yesterday
covering everything I think I need to talk about, though I have
still not written much. Everyone seems to have dozens of pages
already! I have to write something substantial to give to
Mr. Kalkavage before our meeting Tuesday.
Last night I saw Match Point with Shoshana and the other usual
people. The only thing about it that was typical of Woody Allen’s
style was the plot’s nihilistic tinge. Because of this it ended up
reminding me of my essay and the danger poetry of all kinds can
pose to an audience’s thought.
Geremy, perhaps influenced by the movie, is making a film of
the writing process. To illustrate what we do with our free time he
John’s College • Spring 2006 }
�{ S t u d e n t Vo i c e s }
25
Tutors Patricia Locke and William
Braithwaite walk out with Mr. Utter
after the examination.
filmed Alex and Ben bouncing a tennis
ball across the floor to each other in
silence for about a minute and a half.
Writing. After my last entry I went to
the library and wrote until closing,
then I went back to my room and wrote
for several hours more. I went through
about a third of Book X and wrote
15 pages. Mr. Kalkavage thinks they’re
well written and need almost no
revision, so I’m relieved. Now I just
have to write the rest of the essay.
My beard is coming along, although
I’m not sure how well I like it. It’s
strange being able to feel the wind
through it when I’m standing outside.
Also, it itches.
alex lorman
Tuesday, January 25
Friday, March 31
Friday, January 27
The more time I spend on the essay the more time I need to spend
doing something else. I’ve been watching Seinfeld episodes on
DVD. It’s actually very interesting how much Seinfeld bears on the
subject of my essay. Then again everything bears on the subject of
everyone’s essay. I have discussed this phenomenon many times
with my friends; whenever we read a book or watch a movie or
television program, we have to be careful not to say, “You know,
this reminds me of something I just said in my essay.” I suppose it
means our minds are invested in the work.
Tuesday, January 31
Finished a draft of the central part of the essay and sent it to
Mr. Kalkavage, but I still have to write a conclusion. A problem:
this central section is 50 pages long. I’ll see what Mr. Kalkavage
thinks tomorrow. Surprisingly, I’m not sick of the Republic—just
the opposite.
Sunday, February 5
It’s done. I spent the remainder of last week cutting my essay and
managed to get it down to 37 pages. Mr. Kalkavage thinks it’s very
good, and so does Shoshana. I am not sure that I can tell whether it
is good anymore; I’ve spent too much time with it. Andrew,
Geremy, and I went to Kinko’s to get our essays bound on Saturday
evening, and managed to get there just before everyone else—in
and out in 20 minutes, not the two-hour wait we feared. At about
10 p.m., a group of us piled into the Polity van and headed to the
president’s house to turn in our essays. Then we drove back to
campus to ring the bell, a tradition we are graciously allowed to
continue despite the fact that it violates the city noise ordinance.
I guess 100 people ringing the bell at 1 a.m. must be annoying.
Oh, and I shaved this morning.
{ The College
I just went to the Registrar’s office to pick up my commencement
invitations. They come with a little slip of paper marked “etiquette
instructions” detailing how the invitations should be assembled:
“The invitation and calling card go into the small, un-gummed
envelope with a tissue placed over the face of the invitation and the
card inserted inside the invitation . . . ” etc. For some perverse
reason I enjoy little exercises like this.
Wednesday, April 5
I found out two weeks ago that my oral would fall the day after
Senior Prank. I was disappointed at first, of course, because this
meant that I couldn’t participate in the parties. But it worked out
for the best because it gave me more time to prepare yesterday
morning.
I was nervous beforehand, but once I sat down at 11:45 a.m.
and started reading my précis, I was fine. In the robing room
Mr. Umphrey, Ms. Locke, and Mr. Braithwaite explained the
procedures—entering and leaving the room, how I should wear my
mortar board, etc. My friends sat in the chairs around the table,
but I hardly noticed them. I was so entrenched in the conversation
that it didn’t matter what was going on outside of it. This is true of
conversations in general at St. John’s; they’re deathly boring if you
are merely watching them and are not invested in them, but when
you are a part of the conversation it so envelops you that you
barely notice other things.
The oral was over much more quickly than I thought it would
be, and before I knew it I was shaking people’s hands and being
congratulated from all sides. Shoshana and I had lunch to
celebrate. Then there’s a seminar reading waiting. x
John’s College • Spring 2006 }
�26
{Bibliofile}
The Art of the PERSIAN LETTERS:
Unlocking Montesquieu’s
Secret Chain
by Randolph Paul Runyon (A71)
University of Delaware Press (2005)
Randolph Runyon, a professor of French
literature at Miami University in Ohio,
loves a good puzzle. He’s also good at
finding hidden connections and uncovering secrets—one reason Montesquieu’s
Persian Letters held such interest for him.
Best known for The Spirit of the Laws,
written in 1738, Montesquieu first
achieved literary success with the Persian
Letters, which tells the story of Usbek and
Rica and their journey from Persia into
the Western World. The two travelers
correspond with the seraglio back home
and receive letters of news from Usbek’s
harem. What develops is an enjoyable and
interesting exposition of the differences
between East and West.
Thirty years after Montesquieu
published his epistolary novel, he hinted
that the seemingly disconnected letters
held a “secret, and somehow unnoticed,
chain” that tied the letters together. No
scholars have been quite successful in
finding that chain, Runyon posits,
because they concentrated instead on
finding a unifying theme. While he
greatly admires the research of scholar
Pauline Kra, Runyon ultimately
concluded that her work concentrated
on identifying a theme rather than
uncovering a structural link.
Instead, Runyon proposes that a chain
of linguistic echoes, situational parallels,
and reversals carry the reader from each
letter to the next. He had already invested
months in his labor—a careful textual
analysis of the 161 letters—before he was
sure his approach would actually work.
“I became familiar with the Persian
Letters because I teach French literature,
and it’s often anthologized, at least in
fragments,” he says. “My first response to
the work was that it’s a whole world on its
own. But once you enter it on its own
terms, you start to see how it’s put
together.”
For example, Runyon finds a connection in linguistic echoes between Letters
24-25 and 26. The first two letters capture
Rica’s reports of “Louis XIV searching in
vain for hidden Jansenists . . . ” Runyon
writes. Rica uses the words “a cherchés”
and “le chagrin” in reference to the
king’s fruitless searches. In Letter 26,
when writing to his elusive love Roxanne,
Rica refers to his own “chagrin” when his
searches (“recherches”) for his love are
unsuccessful.
Runyon also enjoyed Montesquieu’s
political satire: “So here we have Louis
XIV beating the bushes for Jansenists and
Usbek doing the same for the object of his
desire,” writes Runyon. “It’s a hidden
parallel, but it’s a pretty funny one. The
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2006 }
absolutist Sun King in his persecuting
mania is likened, in the hidden chain, to
a husband who can’t even make love to
the wife over whom he supposedly has
absolute power (19).”
After leaving St. John’s at the
completion of his sophomore year,
Runyon earned a doctorate in French
from Johns Hopkins University. He
joined the Miami University faculty in
1977. Runyon’s research covers a wide
range of English and French literature
(The Art of the Persian Letters is one of
eight books he has published), but lately
he’s been fascinated by uncovering links
within an individual work. He may take
on Montaigne next to show how the first
essay relates to the last essay in each of
his three books. He’s found the writer
“intentionally self-contradictory” in
many of his essays. “At one point he says
we have too many commentators on
poetry and not enough poets, but at
another he says we have too many poets,”
says Runyon. “He says civil war is terrible
at one point; in another, he says such
wars serve a purpose.”
His studies of the poetry of Fontaine
and Baudelaire have also uncovered
hidden chains. La Fontaine, for example,
seems to employ a rhyme scheme that
many readers believe “disintegrates into
chaos.” Instead, what Runyon has found
is that different syllable counts in
individual poems often correspond with
sudden shifts in action or mood. “And
each fable is connected to its neighbors by
the same kind of linguistic and situational
parallels found in the Persian Letters.”
While he appreciates the enduring
ideas behind great books, Runyon is more
fascinated by the manipulation of
language, more interested in how the
parts form an esthetic whole. His love of
language was nurtured at St. John’s,
where he enjoyed studying Greek and
working through Euclid’s propositions.
He credits the college with helping him
develop his ability to find disparities, and
therefore, identify similarities. In
studying the Persian Letters, he could see
when one letter contradicted the one
preceding or following it because he
could also pick out the underlying
sameness. “I had Ford K. Brown as my
tutor for Greek, and he used to say, ‘The
closest you can be to being right is to be
exactly wrong.’ I was greatly influenced
by this, and it influenced my approach to
all these writers.”
�27
{Bibliofile}
His love of French was also discovered
at St. John’s, not in the classroom, but in
the library in Woodward Hall. “I worked
there in the evenings, and they had these
lovely 19th-century editions of Racine
and Diderot. I had never liked reading
literature in English, but I fell in love
with French literature. It’s now extended
to English.”
Runyon has always found the Persian
Letters to be amusing and interesting, and
he recommends the book as good reading
for Johnnies. Although today
Montesquieu’s approach to Arabic culture
seems somewhat misinformed and
patronizing, “at least he was writing
about another culture in a serious way,
long before anyone else,” he notes. x
—Rosemary Harty
The Cycle of Learning/
El ciclo de aprendizaje
by Jorge Aigla
Bilingual Press (2005)
It is understandable for a poet to write
about his own friends and family, but
perhaps only a poet who is also a St.
John’s College tutor could so deftly speak
to such a broad range of topics as family,
martial arts, and classical works,
extending from the streets of Mexico City
to the three sons of Socrates, “or the
waif/ adopted by an aging Epictetus.”
Santa Fe tutor, poet, and head karatedo instructor Jorge Aigla has released a
third volume of poetry entitled The Cycle
of Learning, his first book that includes
Spanish and English versions of each
poem. Haunting and evocative, the poems
explore the mysterious ways in which we
apprehend the world, and the dichotomy
between internalizing our awareness and
using language to express ideas and forms
that come to us independent of language.
On the book’s left-hand pages, poems are
printed in the language—Spanish or
English—in which they were first
composed; the right-hand page offers the
translation.
“Poetry comes to our imagination and
its linguistic representation differently,”
writes Aigla in the book’s preface.
“Perhaps this work could serve as an
invitation to a case study on the
psycholinguistics of bilingualism.”
Influences of the Program abound in
The Cycle of Learning. In “Ruminations
of a Monk,” Aigla writes: “Why do we not
realize/ that we do not learn,/ that we
must always/ start again in love from the
beginning/ as Kierkegaard suggested.”
There is a poem called “Miguel de
Cervantes” and another called “Don
Quixote’s Mill.” Socrates, Goethe,
Baudelaire, Plato, Confucius, Augustine,
Mencius (Meng Tzu), Milton, and
Shakespeare also gain mention.
Each poem opens onto wider worlds of
imagination, family, discovery, and the
passage of time. Drawing inspiration from
his family members, his martial arts
practice, and his boyhood in Mexico, the
poems sketch moving images of his loved
ones in such gentle ways as to honor their
place on the mantel of his life. Aigla
creates imagery as vivid and colorful as
portraiture, as moving as breath, as in
“One Morning”:
That cement wasteland
on an early Mexico City morning,
as I waited for the bus
to take me to the high school gym,
revealed to me a man:
the same thin and dirty and dark
manual laborer carrying a hemp sack,
his face a bible of sorrows,
condemned to ride for perhaps two hours
to the factory whose stoves
and chimneys devour men.
Learning, the poetic counterpart to
William Carlos Williams’s collection of
prose essays The Embodiment of
Knowledge.”
One of the most sensory-rich poems is
entitled “A Flower for My Mother.”
Crossing borders and decades, Aigla
reflects on his mother while sitting in a
garden spot on Canyon Road in Santa Fe.
He writes, “The garden is full this year/
after so much rain, of all/ the colors you
enjoyed, and especially the deep
magenta/ of that low and shy flower/ you
once so tenderly straightened/ as we
walked carefully on the path/ between the
two large horse chestnut trees/ trees like
the ones you used to help me/ climb as a
boy in Cuernavaca.”
Aigla was born in Mexico City. He
earned a degree in medicine from the
University of California, San Francisco,
in 1979. Prior to coming to St. John’s, he
was a medical examiner in San Francisco
and taught at both the City College of
San Francisco and at St. Mary’s College.
His first volume of poetry, Sublunary
(Pennywhistle Press), was published in
1989. His previous book of poetry, Aztec
Shell (Bilingual Press, 1995), in which
some poems are in Spanish, is set in both
Mexico and the United States.x
—Andra Maguran
Charles Bell, Santa Fe tutor emeritus,
wrote in his forward to the volume: “Let
me promise the reader this mature and
powerful experience of this Cycle of
The Cycle of Learning
El ciclo de aprendizaje
I closed the senses
and allowed the dark to envelop me,
I dreamt. A wind visited me:
People had loved me;
I had been sick
for a long time,
almost unconscious,
and had been taken care of,
fed, and watched.
I had not realized
what this implied;
I stared at the enormity
of some of my actions
and of my secret inertias.
Awaking, alone,
I opened once more
the cycle of learning.
Cerré los sentidos
y permití que la oscuridad me envolviese.
Sõné. Visitóme un viento:
Gente me había amado;
Había estado enfermo
por largo tiempo,
casi inconsciente,
y me habían cuidado,
alimentado y vigilado.
No me había dado cuenta
de lo que esto significaba;
Miré la enormidad
de algunos de mis actos
y de mis inercias secretas.
Despertando solo,
abrí de nuevo
el cilco de aprendizaje
—Jorge Aigla
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2006 }
�28
{Alumni Profile}
Out of Africa
Journalist Lydia Polgreen (A97)
by Patricia Dempsey
s the New York Times
foreign correspondent for
West Africa, Lydia
Polgreen (A97) is
accustomed to danger.
Last winter, she boarded a
flight to Nigeria to meet with militants in
the oil-producing delta region who were
holding nine foreigners as hostages. The
Movement for the Emancipation of the
Niger Delta invited journalists to interview
them, as Polgreen wrote later, “to show
their strength and outline their demands.”
But before the meeting could take place,
Polgreen found herself sitting in a small
boat, her hands in the air, looking at the
barrel of an AK-47 assault rifle.
“We were navigating the creeks and
rivers of the Niger Delta, and the Nigerian
military were looking for the hostages the
militants were holding, so there was a
strong possibility that we could get caught
in the crossfire,” she recalls. “A boat with a
group of men wearing hoods over their
faces, aiming AK-47s and a grenade
launcher, came speeding up to us. There
had been a misunderstanding with our
guide. We talked to them, convinced them
that we meant no harm. Finally they gave
us permission to proceed to meet with
the militants.”
Polgreen covers two dozen countries,
including the war-ravaged areas of eastern
Chad and western Sudan, politically
volatile Liberia, and regions such as the
Niger Delta. She travels for two to three
weeks at a time, returning to the Times’
West African bureau, her home in the
suburbs of Dakar, Senegal, that she shares
with her partner, Candice Feit (A96), a
freelance photographer. Any down time is
used preparing for the next assignment:
haggling with embassy employees to get
visas and permits, or arranging for
translators and drivers. Reporting on the
oil pipeline in Chad, for instance, required
two weeks of planning complex logistics
and six days driving around the dusty
A
desert. “The biggest part of this job—being
a foreign correspondent—is showing up,”
she says. “How can you know for sure you
will be safe? You cannot. So you gauge
the risks.”
Polgreen’s willingness to take these
risks is rooted in a childhood spent in
Africa. She grew up in Kenya and Ghana.
Her mother, Pamela, is from Ethiopia, and
her father, John (SF71), once worked as an
agricultural engineer involved in
sustainable development. “For me,
covering the war or events in Iraq is not
compelling, but covering Africa is,” she
explains. “Africa has always been a part
of my life. I love Africa. I want to
communicate about it to the rest of the
world. The situation in Africa is not
hopeless. Even if it is not going to be easily
remedied, my job is to tell the world about
it with style, intelligence, and humanity.”
To this end, Polgreen brings an insider’s
sensibility to African culture, a gift for
crafting succinct, vivid prose, and an
outsider’s perspective on what is
newsworthy. Polgreen moved from Ghana
to the United States when she attended
“This is true
everywhere you go
in Africa: despite the
poverty and misery,
the human spirit is
powerful.”
Lydia Polgreen (A97)
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2006 }
St. John’s. (Her brother, David, is also a
1997 graduate of St. John’s.) After an
internship in Washington, D.C., she went
to Columbia University to earn a master’s
in journalism—a natural career choice for
her and for many Johnnies. “It’s the
critical thinking skills, being able to
question, to think independently,” she
says. “You are coming to things with
an open mind. In journalism, you go
to the primary source so you can get
information—a Johnnie would be drawn
to that.”
The headlines of Polgreen’s Times
stories convey the breadth of her coverage:
“Why So Starry Eyed? Misery Loves
Optimism in Africa”; “Chad’s Oil Riches,
Meant for Poor, Are Diverted”; and “Why
Hope in Africa is Not a Paradox.” Africa’s
startling contrasts fascinate Polgreen.
“Particularly in Africa, one of the world’s
poorest continents, there is a paradox that
I love. There is great suffering, abject
misery, yet there is dignity, joy, and an
optimism in life that sustains people. I find
this compelling. We as Westerners, we
arrive and we say, ‘Oh the horror, the
horror.’ Yet in fact these people have an
incredible spirit full of hope.”
Polgreen describes encounters with
seemingly poor people who are rich in
kindness and generosity. “When I was in
Chad reporting a story on the civil war,
one of the town officials let me camp in his
compound. Here I was sleeping under the
stars, eating mush and stew from a
communal bowl. Yet it was all done with
the most gracious, kind hospitality. He
said, ‘I wish you had been here when my
children were here.’ He sent them to
another town for safekeeping. This is a
village that is under constant attack from
Arab militia from the Sudan. You see how
terribly they suffer. Yet here is this man, so
gracious, his capacity for joy, spirituality,
and survival is so great. This is true everywhere you go in Africa: despite the poverty
and misery, the human spirit is powerful.”
�29
george esiri
{Alumni Profile}
Given the misery she encounters, it’s no
surprise that Polgreen sometimes
questions the impartiality journalism
demands. “You try not to get personally
involved, but it is difficult. For example,
when I was reporting in Haiti during the
2004 rebellion and working with a
photographer, a young man had been shot.
He was going from one public hospital to
the next. I don’t know how many were
injured in the protests we were covering,
but he was turned away. He had a bullet in
his gut and private hospitals were not
going to treat him without money. You as a
human being, you make a choice.”
Polgreen and her colleague decided that
since they were not going to report on the
young man, it was not a breach of
professional ethics to give him $100-$200
to save his life. “But usually you can’t
intervene. You see so much on a daily
basis—sick babies, hungry families. There
is always some form of human misery. I
don’t believe the pie-in-the-sky nonsense
that just because journalism is a public
service—it gets information out there—it
will change these things. Yet it is important
that the world knows. I am not foolhardy,
but still I write hoping to have an impact.”
To have an impact Polgreen needs to
interview a wide range of individuals, many
of whom do not see the importance of
sharing their stories with a New York
Times reporter. “You want, as a journalist,
to believe in truth, in openness. So you
make arguments as to why it is in
someone’s best interest to let you interview
them. I say, ‘You should talk to me. We do
not want to support your cause, but we
want to tell the world about it.’ ” Polgreen
says the difficulty in getting someone to
talk “increases exponentially” with their
level of sophistication—unless they have
something to gain from it.
The media-savvy militants holding nine
foreign oil workers hostage in Nigeria
sought out news coverage. “They wanted
to talk, to show the world that they were a
serious military force, a powerful force that
operates brazenly on the major waterways,” Polgreen says. “They understood
‘the media increases our power.’ ”
Polgreen may never know the impact of
the stories she files with the Times, many
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2006 }
Lydia Polgreen, interviewing members of
a militant group in the Niger Delta last
winter, encounters danger, disease,
tragedy, and hope in Africa.
of them from dangerous places where, “my
phone is on the fritz and satellites are
down.” She can’t be sure if her February 25
story, “Armed Group Shuts Down Part of
Nigeria’s Oil Output,” contributed to the
militants’ freeing six of the nine hostages.
But within days of visiting the Niger Delta
Polgreen hopped back on a plane—this time
to cover the violence in Darfur pushing
across the border into Chad.
Her work is never finished, she says,
because there is always more to discover,
one more question to ask. “You learn so
much with every story,” she says. “I’m
always wishing and wanting one more day
for more reporting.” x
�30
{Alumni Notes}
1935
RICHARD WOODMAN is still
practicing law in a small town in
central New York and enjoying
long trips abroad with his
daughters and their husbands.
“I’m just back from a trip around
South America, and it was pretty
interesting,” he writes.
1943
MARTIN ANDREWS has begun his
10th year as commander of the
Nassau-Suffolk L.I. Chapter of
the American Ex-Prisoners of
War and has passed his 6,000th
hour of volunteer service at the
Northport V.A. Medical Center.
1944
A note from PETER C. WOLFF:
“I suffer from an irreversible
condition: getting older.”
lively group of residents,
numerous activities, current
affairs discussions—even a
five-session course on Greek
mythology! Our apartment
overlooks the Hudson with
spectacular views, sunsets, and
barges going up and down the
river. Yes, we are politically
engaged, and I am vice-chair of
our resident council. And, we are
in good health.”
1956
“Phyllis and I have moved to
Kendal-on-Hudson, a
Quaker-sponsored community
in Washington Irving country,
Sleepy Hollow, N.Y.,” writes
PETER J. DAVIES. “Enjoying the
1974
1959
A note from sunny Florida, from
GAY HALL: “My husband,
Mortimer, died June 30, 2005.
I am retired and will continue to
live in the Keys. It’s warm here!”
“My son, Will, graduates with a
B.S. in Business from the
University of Southern California
in May,” writes GEORGE ANTHONY
(A). “My daughter, Beth,
graduates with a B.S. in Human
Physiology from the University
of Oregon in June.”
Honored for Service
AIELLO (SFGI69) has been honored by
AARP New Mexico for her ability to enhance the lives
of others, improve the community around them, and
inspire others to volunteer. Among other volunteer
efforts, Aiello served as secretary of the Los Alamos
AARP Chapter, where she helped to build membership,
ran a group for retired local teachers, served the Los Alamos Retired
Senior Organization, worked on the senior center’s advisory council,
and ran a great books discussion group for more than 15 years.
In recognition of her accomplishments, AARP nominated her for a
2005 Andrus Award. x
E
“After having my own optical
shop in Georgetown for the last
17 years and receiving the highest
rating in the Washington
Consumer Checkbook, I have cut
back to being open only four days
a week,” reports VIRGINIA HINDS
BURTON (A). “My customers have
been wonderfully supportive and
business has even improved. I’ll
never retire. This job is way too
much fun. But a three-day
weekend every week feels so
civilized!”
“I wonder—what would
Tocqueville make of us now?”
writes DORIK MECHAU.
1969
1948
1970
“After 19 years at Dartmouth in
Hanover, N.H., I am pleased to
return to Santa Fe and am
looking forward to being closer to
St. John’s College again,” writes
RENATE LEWIS (SFGI).
STEPHEN A. SLUSHER (SF) moved
to the East Coast.
1975
“I’m finally having surgery on the
knee I injured in 1972 while
borrowing stage lights from
the Naval Academy for SJC’s
production of The Taming of the
Shrew,” says CHRIS HOVING (A).
“I tried to turn on the ladder
while holding the big lights and
my knee popped—and after a few
steps, collapsed.”
LIZABETH
1976
BETSY DAVENPORT (SF) has been
living in Portland since 1978.
She has married and has had one
child. She also has three stepchildren and three grandchildren. She has been running a
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2006 }
private psychotherapy practice.
Lately she has been evaluating
and treating adults with AD/HD.
The first of several writing
projects on the subjects is ready
to publish.
1983
JOYCE HOWELL (AGI) recently
began an SAT tutoring business,
Haddontutors@aol.com. “There
seems to be a great demand!”
she writes.
1985
“I’m teaching a spring 2006
semester course at Anne Arundel
Community College on
‘Emergence of Ancient Israel,’ ”
writes PAUL SCHATZBERG (AGI).
“This course presents the latest
scholarly knowledge on how and
why desert-roaming pastoral
nomads settled in the Canaan
highlands beginning in 1300
B.C.E. and later identified
themselves as a distinct ethnic
group called Israelites. Sources
of information are the Hebrew
Bible, hi-tech archeology,
Egyptian records, philology,
epigraphy, Mesopotamian
sources and others.”
1986
JAY POWERS (SF) is in Chicago:
“In January, I joined McDougal
Littell as a senior editor. First
project: an economics textbook
(gasp!) for high school seniors.
I moved to McDougal from The
World Book Encyclopedia, where
I had been in charge of the
articles on Europe and Russia
since 1999.When the weather
turns warm here in Chicago, I
still like to bike and skateboard.
Haven’t played table tennis in a
while, though. I started with the
�31
{Alumni Notes}
SF class of 1986, and I am curious
to learn what happened to everybody. I would welcome an update
from the reunion this summer.”
ROBERT F. RICHARDS (A) is a
professor of engineering at
Washington State University.
“I live in Pullman with my wife
(also a professor here) and two
children, Dimitry (10) and
Alexander (7). Although I left
St. John’s after two years to finish
up at the University of Chicago, I
have fond memories of my times
there. I recently bought a
St. John’s sweatshirt and I wear
it around town here, but sadly I
have yet to run into anyone who
is familiar with the Program.
Are there any other Johnnies in
the inland Northwest?”
1987
CHRISTOPHER BAILEY (A) recently
published The Grail Code:
Revelation of an Ancient Mystery,
published by Loyola Press,
according to one of his fans.
“Christopher Bailey has worked
as a writer, editor, translator, and
researcher for more than 15 years.
His articles have appeared in
Touchstone, Columbia, New
Covenant, the New Catholic
Encyclopedia (second edition),
and elsewhere. Schooled in the
great-books tradition, he has
spent many years in close study
and translation of the Arthurian
Texts. I know this because I am
his proud wife, TERESA
FULLINWIDER BAILEY (A).”
SCOTT CUTHBERT (SF) was made
chairman of the Research Board
for the International College of
Applied Kinesiology, 2005-06,
and his research literature can be
seen online by going to www.sotousa.com, where his CV and online
research papers can also be
found. “Living with diabetes
since the age of 4 and going to the
john without a blood-testing
instrument to control my diabetes
has made my calling as a
functional medical physician a
perfect fit,” he writes. “Such a
study as I am upon may continue
for a lifetime and keeps me
learning and learning. It is a
wonderful thing to discover a
professional activity, a calling,
that has no horizon or limits on
it, one that can continually
romance, glorify, and excite your
daily work. I am also going to
India in March 2006!”
A Big Surprise
OHN C. WRIGHT (A84) received a Nebula nomination for
his book, Orphans of Chaos. Along with the Hugo, the
Nebula is one of the most prestigious awards in science
fiction publishing. “This was a big surprise to us because
he was not on the preliminary ballot, but apparently the
judges have the discretion to add a book of their choice to
each category,” wrote John’s wife, L. Jagi Lamplighter
Wright. Though the book was a dark horse, she says, “it is still
very exciting to be nominated and this will get his name out in
front of new readers.” x
J
1988
ELAINE PINKERTON COLEMAN
(SFGI) has completed the screenplay for the film adaptation of her
WWII suspense novel, Beast of
Bengal. The Gage Group Inc.
has selected Elaine’s book for
development as a feature movie.
THEODORE (TED) MERZ (A) and
DIANA MARTINEZ (SF86) recently
celebrated the third birthday of
their son, Hayden.
KIM PAFFENROTH (A) is the
co-author, with Tom Bertonneau,
of a new book, The Truth Is Out
There: Christian Faith and the
Classics of TV Science Fiction
(Brazos Press, 2006). The book
looks at the religious relevance of
Dr. Who, Star Trek, The Prisoner,
The Twilight Zone, The X Files,
and Babylon 5. Kim is associate
professor and chairman of the
Department Religious Studies at
Iona College, New Rochelle, NY.
1990
MARK KREIDER (A) and SARAH
WETHERSON (A89) announce the
birth of their child, Isaac Levi
Bechtel, on Thursday, February
23. Isaac weighed in at 9 lb., 8
oz., and is “chubby- cheeked and
beautiful.” His parents love to
hear from other Johnnies: e-mail
them at wimmin@teleport.com.
1991
ANNE MARLOW-GETER and KEN
GETER (both SF91) completed
their first half-marathon in
September 2006. 2006 also
brought Anne a promotion to
planning supervisor at the
Colorado Department of
STD/HIV Public Health and
Environment and the completion
of a fellowship with the Regional
Institute of Health and
Environmental Leadership. Ken
continues the work to save us
from mad cows and bird flu at the
USDA.
1992
ELYETTE BLOCK KIRBY (SF) lives in
the Paris area (near Versailles)
with her husband, Jonathan, and
three children, Benjy (5 years),
Bronwyn Elyse (3 years) ,and
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2006 }
Luca (1 year): “We plan to be here
at least one more year, and I’d
love to hear from other Johnnies
in the area, to know if there is an
alumni group meeting already.
My e-mail remains:
elyette@hotmail.com.
1993
A DWI program manager for the
local government division of the
Department of Finance and
Administration for New Mexico,
MICHAEL A. BALDWIN (SF)
encourages everyone not to drink
and drive.
MARIA PUMILIA (SF) and Brian
Bolding are the proud parents of
Annika Marie Bolding, born
March 9, at 7:25 a.m., weight
7 lbs., 4 oz. Annika was born in
her room at home, right smack
into the waiting hands of her dad.
continued on page 33
�32
{Alumni Profile}
Where There’s Smoke
Aman Cholas (SF98) Finds Purpose in the West’s Endangered Forests
by Jason Bielagus (SF98)
I
t’s still dark when the
siren sounds at the
Redmond Air Center.
The ready room at the
jump base becomes a whirl
of activity. A lightning
storm moved across Northeastern
Oregon earlier in the night, and
multiple ‘smokes’ have been
sighted by lookouts in the
Wallawa-Whitman National
Forest, about 200 miles away.
Spirits are high as Aman
Cholas and his fellow smokejumpers don their gear-padded
Kevlar jumpsuit, harness and
parachute, reserve chute,
personal gear bag, and a helmet
with a steel mesh face guard.
In a minute they have added
60 pounds to their body weight.
They waddle out to the tarmac,
where they load the twin-prop
Sherpa. As the plane makes its
way to the runway, carrying ten
smokejumpers, two spotters, the
pilot and co-pilot, a veteran
jumper shouts above the engines’
drone, “Another early commute
to the office!” In the cabin, smiles
flash in the early dawn light.
Once they’ve reached their
destination, the crew members spot smoke
rising from a steep, heavily wooded ridgeline. It appears to be a relatively small fire,
maybe an acre in size, enough work for four
smokejumpers. The spotter confers with the
pilot on the best jump spot, a small opening
in the trees a few hundred yards further down
the ridge. It’s a narrow target and missing it
would mean drifting down off the ridge into
a thick mat of 150-foot ponderosa pine and
Douglas fir. After a few wide passes to drop
wind-indicating streamers, the spotter
signals for the first set of two jumpers to
come to the rear of the plane and clip in their
parachute rip cords.
Cholas will be first. After confirming that
Cholas has seen the jump site and the
streamers, the spotter calls out, “Turning
final, 1500 feet, get in the door!” Cholas
positions his body with his hands on the
frame of the doorway opening to the vast
It was dangerous, exhausting,
and dirty—but being a smokejumper was also exhilarating,
says Aman Cholas.
forest below, the slipstream of air just
brushing his face. With the spotter’s shout—
“Get ready!”—Cholas rears back like a
spring, the sudden slap on the back of his
calf initiating the lunge that propels him into
the void. Without hesitation the second
jumper follows.
In a few seconds, the parachute canopy
fills with air. Cholas checks his position in
relation to the jump spot as well as to his
jump partner, then feels a moment of peace.
The noise of the plane and the burden of his
gear are replaced by a quiet weightlessness, a
beautiful suspension over green wilderness.
“It’s the last couple hundred feet that are
scary,” Cholas explains. “The ground
suddenly begins to show its true roughness, a
broken snag here, a boulder there, and it’s all
rushing towards you.”
In this case, the opening in the trees is a
dense patch of oak brush, a soft enough
landing area, but it takes some effort to get
untangled and out of the jump
gear. Cholas’ jump partner
doesn’t quite make the spot and
is left dangling 40 feet in the air
from his parachute, caught in a
tree. However, within minutes,
he rappels to safety. A big
danger, Cholas explains, is not
properly “bagging” a tree. If
only the edge of the parachute
catches a limb, it could collapse
the canopy. If the limb breaks or
the parachute comes loose,
there is little to break the fall the
rest of the way down.
Once the jumpers are safely
on the ground, the Sherpa
makes another pass for the
paracargo drop—boxes of tools,
food, water and other gear for
fighting the fire. Cholas makes
one last call on his handheld
radio to the plane, confirming
that the crew has everything it
needs, and the Sherpa heads for
the next fire.
The smokejumpers make their way to the
fire, determine its behavior, identify hazards,
and make a plan of attack. The fire is fought
by creating a “fire line,” a break in the fuel
around the fire’s edges. This particular fire is
not moving very fast yet. One of the jumpers
uses a chainsaw to cut trees and heavier logs
on the ground. The others use hand tools,
shovels and Pulaskis (tools with an ax on one
end, a hoe on the other), to dig and scrape a
line down to mineral soil. By late afternoon,
the fire is “contained,” and the jumpers
gather for a break. Everyone pitches in to
make camp comfortable and prepare a meal.
They eat, joke, and enjoy the rest before it is
time for “mop-up,” moving through the
“black” to extinguish anything still burning
by digging and mixing it in with the soil. A
small fire could take a day or two; a larger
one could take weeks.
Their work completed, the smokejumpers
load everything into enormous backpacks
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2006 }
�33
{Alumni Notes}
that often weigh over 100 pounds and hike to
the nearest trailhead to be picked up. Only
occasionally are they lucky enough to get a
mule train to come for the gear or get a
helicopter pick-up.
“Often the pack-out can be the most
grueling challenge of a fire,” says Cholas,
remembering the exhaustion—and
excitement—of eight years spent fighting
fires. It was a career born from a love of the
mountains, discovered in Santa Fe. And it’s
led him to another side of preserving forests,
by preventing fires.
Cholas grew up in Vieques, Puerto Rico,
and Corozal, Belize, with his parents, four
sisters, and a brother. After graduating from
high school, he spent several years working
and traveling in Europe and Israel. He was
working as a gardener at the Bahaí World
Center in Haifa, Israel, when he visited a
friend who owned the Britannica Great
Books of the Western World series. He
remembers thinking, “I wish that I could
just sit here and read all these books.” That
set him on the path to St. John’s.
In Santa Fe, Cholas discovered his
enchantment with mountains and forests
when his freshman lab class made an outing
to the Sangre de Cristos to examine
coniferous trees. He often took long walks
on Monte Sol to do his seminar readings and
spent many weekends hiking around the
Santa Fe National Forest.
His firefighting career began with a
summer job with a ground crew in Isleta,
N.M., where his mother’s family lives. Every
“Never thought I was the home
birth type, but the right midwife
and doula can make a world of
difference,” writes Maria. Maria
ditched software development for
real-estate last year—get in touch
with her if you’re in the market.
1994
SARAH and MICHAEL AFFLERBACH
(both A) have been having a great
year watching twins Max and Evie
grow into little people. “They are
so fun to have around and each
day brings something new to
enjoy,” writes Sarah. “I received
my architectural license last year
and work for a wonderful firm
summer, he continued firefighting, moving
to a Forest Service helicopter rappel crew,
Sandia Helitack, based in Tijeras, N.M.
“Fire fighting complemented St. John’s
well,” Cholas says. “By the end of spring
semester, all I wanted to do was be out in the
woods. And by the end of a fire season, all I
wanted to do was hang out in the library and
read. So it was a good balance.”
After graduating from St. John’s, he went
to work for the Forest Service full time,
becoming the crew leader for Sandia
Helitack. Later he spent his summers in
Redmond, Ore., working as a smokejumper.
After nine seasons of fighting fires, Cholas
became disillusioned with the Forest
Service’s fire suppression policy. In keeping
with its original mandate “to furnish a
continuous supply of timber” (Organic Act
of 1897, 16 U.S.C. § 475), the Forest Service
maintains a policy of stopping all forest fires.
Many of the fires he helped put out needed to
burn, Cholas realized.
“After almost a century of stopping fires
so aggressively, we have hindered the natural
process that fires perform in the forest
ecosystem,” he explains. “As a result, most
of our forests in the Western United States
are unhealthy and overgrown, clogged with
dead and fallen timber, and are prone to
disease and catastrophic wildfires.”
Low-intensity fires in a healthy forest can rid
the forest of dead and sickly trees, while
leaving stronger trees to thrive, as well as
reintroducing nutrients to the soil, he adds.
On the other hand, though fire is part of a
here in New Bern, N.C. Mike’s
radio business continues to grow
and they are building a new
station which will be on the air in
February. We had a great time
traveling to Columbia, South
America, to witness JON
ARCHER’S (A94) wedding to his
lovely wife, Monica.”
“I finally finished my philosophy
doctorate in December of 2005,
specializing in 18th- and 19thcentury German philosophy,
history of modern philosophy,
and logic,” writes PETER
BEZANSON (A). “The title of my
dissertation is ‘Idealism: A Brief
History, Taxonomy, and
Nietzschean Evaluation.’
I continue to teach calculus
forest’s natural cycle, fires of recent years
have grown so intense that they “kill everything in their path” and “leave moonscapes
of sterilized soil and cause unnatural erosion
and other problems,” he says.
Two years ago, Cholas and fellow
firefighter Jeremy Hanlon left the Forest
Service to start their own company, Forest
Fitness, based in Tijeras. They work
primarily to protect properties from fire
danger by thinning forested areas of overgrowth and dead material. Forest Fitness has
been very successful at promoting thinning
as a way to prevent the danger of fires around
homes and properties. “Like a fire, we
remove the unhealthiest trees and leave a
mosaic of the strongest healthiest trees with
room to grow,” Cholas says. “We also try to
achieve a mix of tree types and age classes
that is indicative of the natural vegetation.
Even people who are against the cutting of
trees are often very happy with the results of
our work. The beauty and balance that is
achieved, as well as the reduced fire danger,
is very appealing to people.”
As satisfying as he finds his current work,
Cholas looks back fondly on his smokejumping days. “It was the most incredible job
I have ever had.” x
Author’s note: For more about smokejumping, see Norman Maclean’s Young Men
and Fire (an account of the Mann Gulch fire);
the Forest Service documentary The Greatest
Good, or the NOVA documentary Fire Wars.
classes and a philosophy seminar
at a great books liberal arts
school in Tempe, Ariz.,
(Tempe Preparatory Academy). In
addition, I serve as the mathematics curriculum consultant to
Great Hearts Academies
(www.greatheartsaz.org) helping
them realize their mission to
create a network of academically
rigorous, liberal arts middle and
high schools in the Phoenix
metropolitan area. My wife,
Alison, and I have one son,
Noah, who was born nearly
two years ago.”
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2006 }
1995
JOEL ARD (A) and HANNAH
(STIRES) ARD (A92) welcomed
Ruth Anne Ard into the world on
April 4, 2005. Ruth joins big
brother David (2 years old).
TED NAFF (A92) is Ruth’s
godfather. The Ards sadly left
their Annapolis abode and moved
closer to D.C. in June. They are
now in University Park, Md.
Hannah is working part time for a
law firm in D.C. and Joel is
working at the Department of
Justice. They would love to hear
from old friends and can be
reached at joelandhannahard@
hotmail.com.
�34
{Alumni Notes}
Prefers Sleeping
B
ETH MARTIN and ALEX GAMMON (both A94) are
pleased to announce the arrival of their son,
Theodore Jasper Gammon. Theodore made his
appearance on January 29, 2006, at 8:27 a.m.,
weighing in at 8 lbs 9.4 oz. All are doing well, and
Theodore prefers to spend his time eating, sleeping,
and making his parents smile. x
fellow Annapolis alums RICH
(A96) and KARA (A99) LUNA.
Hannah’s law practice focuses on
estate planning and adoptions.
She’d love to hear from anyone in
the area—her e-mail is hannah@
dcadoptionlaw.com.
1997
MICHAEL CHIANTELLA (SF) has
been practicing law for three
years. “Started my own firm in
2004 in the lovely seaside town of
Venice, Florida. In October of
2005, my wife and I attended the
wedding of TAFFETA ELLIOTT
(SF97) in New York City.
ZENA HITZ (A) has accepted a
job teaching philosophy at the
University of Maryland,
Baltimore County, starting
this fall.
MIKE LAYNE (A) writes: “My
family moved from Barrow to
Anchorage last summer. We live
next door to DANNY MYERS (SF93).
I am happy to report he still has
long hair and has stopped
wearing high-heels to Halloween
parties. THEA AGNEW (SF95) is
also living in Anchorage and
expecting her first baby in
February or March. Audrey Rae
will turn 4 in February, and
Jackson will celebrate his first
birthday in March. And I still
have a full head of hair –thank
goodness. My work e-mail has
changed to: MikeL@
EAtribes.net—I’d love to hear
from SJC alumni. I am a grant
administrator and grant writer for
a non-profit tribal organization.
This spring I am running for one
of the seats on the Anchorage
School Board. Feel free to visit
the campaign Web site at:
www.MikeLayne.info.”
1996
ANNE and MARK CORMIER (both
SFGI) write: “We’ve recently
moved to a new house to accommodate our newest addition,
Sarah Clare, who was born
September 29, 2005. Her older
sisters Anna (5) and Eliza (3)
continue to astonish us with their
limitless energy and fresh
perspective on our (their?) world.
Mark is still teaching English
literature at Longmeadow High
School, and Anne is home
attempting to impart something
that might lead to virtue to the
three girls.”
ALLISON and JOHN EDDYBLOUIN
(SF) are enjoying life in mid-coast
Maine: wooden boat building,
home schooling, etc . . .
HANNAH GOLDSTEIN (NÉE
GILLELAN, A) joyfully announces
both her November 2005
marriage to Stephen Goldstein
and the opening of her own law
practice. Hannah and Stephen
live on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., just blocks from
DOMINIC CRAPUCHETTES (A)
is enjoying the life of an
entrepreneur: “North Star Games
is now putting on corporate
team-building events and
monthly trivia nights at several
local bars. These events are a
blast! Come join us. You can
learn about them at www.NorthStarGames.com.” Sales of “Wits
and Wagers,” he notes, have
picked up dramatically since the
game was featured in Time,
Games Magazine, Knucklebones,
and other media.
ARAND PIERCE (SF98) graduated
from the University of New
Mexico Medical School May 12.
He also was presented with an
award for academic, research and
service excellence May 11 at a
public ceremony at the UNM
Health Sciences Center.
1998
RICK FIELD (SF) recently
published a children’s book,
Momma, Momma Brown Toes.
The book is a collection of poems
and pictures inspired by his
eight-year-old daughter, Amanda.
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2006 }
1999
GREG KOEHLERT (SFGI) wants all
his old friends to know that he
and Merrie have bought an
apartment in Park Slope in
Brooklyn. Also, Greg and
Merrie’s daughter is turning one
around Thanksgiving.
PATRICK BARRINGTON REED (AGI)
writes: “Our first baby, Lucille
Lahja Reed, was born June 17,
2005. Now, we move in April to
Bitburg, Germany—thanks to the
Air Force. We expect to be on
hand at the World Cup this
summer and at the Tour de
France in July. May God bless St.
John’s College!”
“It’s been 10 years since I last saw
most of you, and I hope life is
treating you well,” writes
BENJAMIN THORNBER (A).
“After leaving St. John’s in ’96, I
transferred to Guilford College, a
Quaker school in North Carolina.
While there, I met my fiancée,
Eva, whom I’m marrying this
July. I graduated from seminary
in 2004 and I’m now the pastor of
a Quaker church. While my time
at St. John’s was quite brief, I
really value the friendships that
I made there. Let’s get back
in touch!”
2000
ZACHARY WARZEL and ERIKA
CARLSON (both SF) were married
in August 2005 in Colorado, their
new home after a move from New
York City in May 2005. Erika
received a master’s degree in
historic preservation from
Columbia University in May 2005
and is working as a preservation
specialist at Humphries Poli
Architects in Denver. Zach
received a law degree from
Brooklyn Law School in May
2005 and is currently working as
a litigation associate at Roberts
�35
{Alumni Notes}
No Mail?
2001
DANIEL FRAM (SF) reports that he
is “living cheap in Boston;
playing the now smoke-free
Irish pubs and sneaking into
classes on ethics.”
JESSICA K. REITZ (A) and
Christopher Wallace proudly
announce the birth of their first
son, William Alexander Wallace,
born March 21, 2006.
2002
Have your fellow Johnnies lost
track of you? Reconnect with
your classmates by joining the
online alumni community at
www.stjohnscollege.edu; click
on For Alumni and follow the
links from there. More than
3,000 alumni have registered
for the community. Johnnies
can also sign up to receive a
free St. John’s e-mail address
for life, post resumes or job
openings through the Career
Services section, find out
what’s happening in their
local chapters, and register
for events online.
Levin & Patterson in Denver, a
plaintiffs’ litigation firm.
CHRISTOPHER VAUGHAN (A)
continues to work with his older
brother, renovating old houses.
He is engaged to ASHLEY BROOK
T YLER (A07) and is taking classes
at a local college to prepare for
grad school.
“I have been accepted into the
University of Tennessee’s College
of Veterinary Medicine and will
be starting that program in the
fall,” writes BEN YOUNG (A).
“My wife and our dogs still
have not tired of my stories
from St. John’s.”
ALANA and JOEY CHERNILLA (both
SF) had their second little girl,
Rose Isabella, in February. Sadie
Pearl recently turned two.
“Besides enjoying our intense
domesticity, Joey runs a daycare,
and I work in publishing and
tutor home-schoolers in Euclid,”
Alana writes.
MEGAN GRAFF (A) writes: “After a
few years spent working in what is
laughably known as ‘the real
world,’ I will begin attending the
North Carolina School of the Arts
this fall as an MFA candidate in
Performing Arts Management.”
ERIN KRASNIEWICZ (A) is living in
Philadelphia with RANDY PENNELL
(also A02) and working as a
library research assistant for
the Pew Charitable Trusts.
“This is really the time to be in
Philadelphia, which is undergoing a renaissance of sorts,”
she writes. “Drop us a line if
you’d like to see the sights, we
love to show off our city.”
GEORGE NELSON and MONICA
ANATALIO (both A) are getting
married this August in downtown
Washington, D.C., and will be
honeymooning in Rome and
Athens. George is in his first year
at American University’s Washington College of Law and will be
pursuing the litigation track.
Monica is graduating from
Catholic University’s Columbus
School of Law and will be an
attorney for the U.S. Government
Accountability Office, the investigatory arm of Congress.
Coldwell Banker in Annapolis,
and Douglas works as a court
reporter for a firm in
Washington, D.C. x
2005
2003
CORINNE HUTCHINSON (SF) and
PAUL OBRECHT (SF02) are
getting married in Santa Fe this
coming spring.
KATE REDDING (A) is enrolled at
the University of Western
Ontario in Canada, where she is
studying for a certification in
piano technology.
CYNTHIA BARRY (AGI) has recently
completed text-editing the
National Geographic Collegiate
Atlas of the World, to be
published in fall 2006. She and
ANDREW ROMITI (A06) are
currently conducting
Touchstones discussions with
middle-schoolers at St. Martin’sin-the-Field Day School in
Severna Park, Md., where
Ms. Barry is the librarian. x
ISAAC SMITH (A) is going to the
University of Maryland this fall to
begin studies toward a master’s
degree in public policy. He
writes, “Johnnies in the D.C. area
interested in politics, policy, the
old days, or anything else should
drop me a line at
ikesmith@gmail.com.”
2004
After her retirement from St.
John’s a few years ago, GINGER
ROHERTY (HSF) is now director of
development for the Santa Fe
Children’s Museum.
DOUGLAS C. TURNER (A, aka Rex
Nerdorum, Archon of Melee)
married DARLENE B. ROGERS
(A05) on September 3, 2005, in
Alford, Mass., Rev. David Rogers,
father of the bride, presiding.
Several Johnnies were in
attendance, women in various
green costumes and men in
tuxedos, armed with broadswords
for the ceremonial arch. The
honeymoon in London included
Phantom of the Opera and two
plays at the Globe, Pericles and
The Tempest. The newlyweds live
in Annapolis. Darlene works for
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2006 }
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
section is August 1.
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
�36
{Alumni Profile}
The Secret Lives of Crabs
Biologist Denise Pope (SF89) Finds the Charisma in Animals
by Erica Naone (A05)
Studying individual fiddler crabs is
interesting to biologist Denise
Pope (SF89). But what she really
likes to do is get them in a group,
stand back, and see what develops.
In her research on fiddler crabs,
Pope focuses less on the brain and
body of a single crab and more on
how many crabs interact and
communicate. For her, the
arthropod’s life is as much about
its environment and society as it is
about its breath, blood, and neural
signals. “I enjoy being able to
make inferences by watching
whole organisms and what they do
and how they interact,” she explains.
“I want to manipulate them just enough to
ask questions.”
An assistant professor in the biology
department at Trinity University in San
Antonio, Texas, Pope spends the academic
year communicating her enthusiasm for the
life of animals to students. Her summers are
spent going to where the crabs are—Panama
and Portugal—for example. Days in the field
are spent observing animals and recording
her observations in the summer sun; during
the evenings she enjoys local cuisine and
good conversation.
In her classes, Pope teaches students
to ask scientific questions and discover
answers in the lab. Her research into
animal behavior gives her students plenty
of opportunity to see science as an
undiscovered country. When Pope began
studying fiddler crabs, enough was known
about the animals to give her a basis for her
research, but enough was unknown that
Pope had to learn for herself the advantages
and disadvantages of studying crabs
in captivity.
Pope knew she wanted to study animal
behavior since high school. “I was a shy
kid,” she says, “and gravitated toward
animals. Lots of people would say, ‘Oh, you
must want to be a vet.’ ”
Through a high-school assignment,
Pope found that a person with an interest
in animals did not have to become a
veterinarian. She discovered the work of
When she’s not doing field
work, Denise Pope shares the
St. John’s method of inquiry
with her students at Trinity
University: ask questions and
talk it through.
Nikolaas Tinbergen and Konrad Lorenz, two
key researchers of animal behavior.
“My reasons for studying animal behavior
come from a fascination, appreciation, and
love for the natural world for its own sake,
not for what it teaches me about myself or
my species,” Pope says. Though she
recognizes commonalities between humans
and animals, Pope also notes, “Our culture,
society, and our obsessive and intense
internal life that enables us to analyze and
question our own actions set us apart in
some ways from other animals.” Because of
this, she is careful about comparing human
behavior to that of animals.
The breadth of Pope’s interests brought
her to St. John’s for her undergraduate
degree. Her teaching philosophy is heavily
influenced by her experience at the college,
and by seeing the process of discovery
rather than only the discovery itself. She
wrote her essay on Kant and quantum
theory.
“I couldn’t get over how much everything
is overturned,” Pope says, “seeing what a
huge shift there was. Quantum mechanics
blew me away, but it wasn’t just that. I read
Joyce for preceptorial, and then we read
Nietzsche and Freud. It was the accumulation of it all. There was the building up of
this realization that the physical world isn’t
at all what I thought it was. It epitomizes the
sense of science as natural philosophy.”
Soon after graduation, Pope worked for
the GenBank Project in Los Alamos
National Laboratory, which paid for biology
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2006 }
classes that allowed her to prepare
for the Graduate Record Exam.
She enrolled in Duke University,
where she earned her Ph.D. in
zoology in 1998.
At Duke, Pope discovered her
love of fiddler crabs. Having
begun with the study of birdsong,
the typical focus of scientists with her type
of interest, she found herself feeling
discouraged.
“It seemed as if everyone else had perfect
pitch and an excellent sense of acoustics,”
Pope says. “. . . I decided I was more visual
and wanted to look at visual signaling.”
A friend pointed her toward fiddler crabs
because the males have an enlarged claw
that they wave in a visual display, “which is
presumed to attract females for mating.”
“They’re surprisingly entertaining and
charismatic animals,” she says.
This experience of science as hands-on, a
work-in-progress, full of unknowns and the
need for ingenuity, is an experience she
tries to re-create in her classes. She gives
her students a great deal of autonomy in the
lab, autonomy she knows can be daunting
before becoming liberating. She is also
helping to redesign introductory biology
courses at Trinity, reshaping them to
emphasize the questioning and searching of
real science.
With such an intense and busy working
life, Pope pursues a more relaxing schedule
outside academe. She read Gregory
Maguire’s Wicked during breaks from a
symposium she recently attended in Japan.
She has three cats at home and loves to
cook. Though she learned to cook red and
green chili and posole after the time she
spent in Santa Fe, Pope has given up
cooking New Mexican dishes for friends,
offering Tex-Mex instead. “They can’t take
the heat,” she says. x
�37
{Tributes}
Remembering Tom McDonald
Thomas McDonald, who was a tutor
for 33 years in Annapolis and Santa
Fe, died in December 2005. His
former student and good friend John
White (class of 1964) prepared this
remembrance of Mr. McDonald for a
memorial service that was held in
Baltimore earlier this year:
Tom was the best teacher I had.
He was the most intelligent man I’ve
ever known, and he was the best
educated. His memory was extraordinary, but it never seemed to be just
a scholar’s memory. It was part of
his living and thinking, a “human”
memory; he was never showy or
pedantic. His personality was
compelling. His classes were
intense, but relieved by bursts of
laughter. Whatever you studied with
him was worth your best effort, but
being serious is not the same as
being grim. His classes were long
and often exhausting because of the
nervous stimulation of concentration. I felt I was asked to give all I
could and felt “used up” and elated.
I learned more, and more quickly,
than from any other academic
experience. Tom somehow elicited his fierce
attention and urgency without using
anything that might lead to argument rather
than thought. My contact with him as a
teacher had a beginning and end. Although I
never stopped learning from him (and [his
wife] Julia), he became a friend as well.
In the fall of 1964, Tom’s second year at
St. John’s, Ed Weinberger (class of 1965), a
classmate, gathered a group of students to
read a Kant essay with Tom. I didn’t know
Tom at the time . . . We met in Tom’s
apartment at 214 Prince George Street.
The day was cold and the room was very hot.
Tom’s voice was soft and monotonous. The
building was old and the windows had the old
glass, the glass of uneven thickness and
bubbles. I stared outside, slowly moving my
head back and forth, watching the trees the
cars ripple and wobble. Then a word or an
intonation caught my attention. By chance I
actually heard two or three sentences. At first
they were strange sounding, difficult, then
Johnnies admired Tom
McDonald (class of 1948, shown
here with his dog Belle) for his
brilliance, his sense of humor,
and his humility.
“He helped you to
see things clearly from
all sides, to keep the
difficulties in mind
while not being overpowered by them.”
John White
they became clear, then they became
thrilling. I had a moment where I lost my
orientation, even got a little dizzy: This
man was saying wonderful things in an
unemphatic way. Why wasn’t he shouting
and gesturing? Strange man.
In the next years he gave many of these
extra classes on diverse subjects such as
poetry, mathematics, Latin, and German.
All faculty members were generous with
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2006 }
their time, but no faculty member
had done so much teaching “just
because people wanted to learn.”
He did all of this and advised
6-10 senior essays each year, until
his health gave out.
After that first Kant class, a
group of us asked Tom to give a
preceptorial on Hegel. Hegel was
a daring choice (in a teeny-tiny
way): for some reason, without
exception, the faculty was against
German philosophy and Hegel.
They made fun of Hegel. Not only
was there no serious effort to
understand Hegel, there was pride
in claiming not to understand
him. The Philosophy of History
was read in senior seminar at that
time. The book encouraged
students to produce grandiose
historical statements, the kind of
statements that their freshman
seminar leaders had convinced them not
to make.
The preceptorial meetings always ran
longer than the scheduled time—partly
because at the beginning of class Tom always
came 10-15 minutes late, partly because at
the end of class Tom took 5-10 minutes to
decide on the next reading, but mostly
because we never looked at the clock.
We never stopped in the middle of a
conversation. After the preceptorial was
over, we gathered around Tom to ask more
questions. Tom loved to think; he couldn’t
stop. He had patience and concentration
beyond anything I’d ever experienced. Once
when I was on my way to a one o’clock class,
I saw him and a student standing on the
corner of College Avenue and Prince George
Street, deep in conversation despite the
falling snow. And when I left two hours later,
they were still there, still talking, brushing
snow off their sleeves.
�38
In class Tom spoke more directly than my
other teachers. But he was not gathering
disciples, even though he was much
admired. He always made one feel that the
material was important and subtle, and it
needed and deserved serious effort. Usually
his students did not know what Tom’s
opinion was. He helped you to see things
clearly from all sides, to keep the difficulties
in mind while not being overpowered
by them.
After the Hegel preceptorial, I asked Tom
to advise my senior essay. We talked at
length and he came up with a suggestion that
allowed me to pursue several of the things I
was interested in. We had to consider
passages from four or five Platonic dialogues
and some Hegel. The plan was exciting.
Up until that time at St. John’s I had had only
three or four paper conferences. But now I
met with Tom two or three times a week, and
the meetings lasted two to four hours. Sometimes I went there in the afternoon, worked
on revisions, was invited to dinner, then
started to work again. (Julia also helped me.)
{Tributes}
I had never worked so long or so hard on one
thing; new standards and habits began to
take hold. We worked on my essay beyond
the deadline—one week, then two weeks, all
the time the dean giving me looks. But I
couldn’t actually get the essay from Tom,
who saw new paths, better ways of interpreting and explaining. I sort of tricked him
to get the paper back and hand it in. (I think
he was not a fan of finishing things.)
Between the end of essay writing and the
end of the year, I saw another side of Tom.
One Friday afternoon, I was in lab, in the
midst of a long discussion. Ed Weinberger
opened the door and interrupted the class.
“Excuse me, is John White in this class?”
I raised my hand. Ed said, “You have an
important call at the switchboard. Could you
come with me?” As we walked down the hall,
Ed told me not to worry; “McDonald and I
wanted to play Monopoly and we need you.”
We played a lot of Monopoly at that time
(driving Julia crazy). I learned from Tom that
the best properties on the board were
Tennessee, New York, and St. James. I also
learned that Tom had a dark side. He said
that during a game his motives were greed
and spite, no more, no less: he bought every
property he landed on—even pathetic
Waterworks—because 1) he wanted it for
himself and 2) he didn’t want anyone else to
get it. At graduation several of his students
got together and gave Tom a present to
thank him for a wonderful year:
an 8" x 11" card for Boardwalk . . . .
I think of Tom as liberal, generous in his
actions and judgments. He was free with his
time and his mind to those who sought him
out. He didn’t care for foolish, shallow
people. He liked people who worked
intensely and liked to laugh. To be serious is
not to be grim. He was side-splittingly funny
at times. He was intelligent, well-educated,
serious, witty, good company—also unusual,
different, and even eccentric. But whenever
you talked to him, after five minutes, you
felt, “This is what sanity is, this is the way a
human mind was meant to work.” x
{Obituaries}
CHARLOTTE FLETCHER, HA69
Charlotte Goldsborough Fletcher (HA69),
former librarian of St. John’s College in
Annapolis, died of pneumonia March 29,
2006, at the age of 90. After her retirement in
1981, she pursued a scholarly interest in the
early history of the college and published
several works, including St. John’s Forever:
Five Essays on the History of St. John’s
College and Cato’s Mirania: A Life of
Provost Smith.
In one of her essays, Miss
Fletcher made the most solid case
yet for explaining how St. John’s
got its name. Many hours spent
poring through the Maryland and
St. John’s archives led her to
conclude that St. John’s was likely
named by Masons involved in the
founding of the college for
St. John the Evangelist—perhaps
to honor George Washington.
“It is hard to understand why a
cloud of mystery has ever since
enveloped the circumstances of
the naming,” Miss Fletcher
wrote. “But if Masons were
responsible, one could expect
secrecy about their role. Discretion . . . is the
first of the Masonic virtues.”
Miss Fletcher was born in Cambridge, Md.,
in 1915. She earned her bachelor’s degree
from Hollins College and a bachelor’s in
library science from Columbia University,
both in 1939. Miss Fletcher was conferred
with a Master of Arts, honoris causa, from
St. John’s when Woodward Hall was rededicated on October 18, 1969.
After several years at the Enoch Pratt Free
Library in Baltimore, she became librarian of
the Talbot County Free Library. In July 1944
she began 37 years of service to St. John’s
College. She retired in 1981, but as she lived
close to the college, was a frequent visitor
to campus.
Miss Fletcher was a favorite of students and
faculty. During the years before the Naval
Academy-St. John’s croquet matches, Miss
Fletcher kept her own croquet set at the
library and was always willing
to lend it to students—often
with the stipulation that she be
invited to join them. Although
normally a gentle, soft-spoken
person, on the croquet court
she took no prisoners. In
addition to croquet, she
Longtime St. John’s
librarian Charlotte
Fletcher displays a book
from the St. John’s “cage” in
the Maryland State Archives
building, later to become
the Greenfield Library, in
1974. Miss Fletcher pursued
a special interest in the
college’s history.
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2006 }
�39
{Obituaries}
instructed generations of students in the
esoteric art of bookbinding.
Miss Fletcher traveled widely with her
sister, Mary Henry Fletcher, who died earlier
this year. At the time of her death she was
planning another trip to Europe and in the
midst of writing a second book, a collection
of short stories.
The college plans a memorial service for
Miss Fletcher in the fall.
—Rose Wynn
ARCHER JONES, CLASS OF 1947
Archer Jones, Class of 1947, died in
Richmond, Va., on January 23, 2006.
Mr. Jones enrolled in St. John’s in July of
1943. After three years at the college he was
drafted into the Army in 1946. After his
discharge in 1947, Mr. Jones, apprehensive
about taking the enabling examinations after
such a long break, transferred to HampdenSydney College, graduating in 1949.
He then enrolled in the University of
Virginia’s law school, but later decided to
pursue his deep attachment to history. He
received a doctorate in history from UVA in
1958 and launched a career as a teacher,
academic administrator, and author. He
taught at the University of Virginia,
Hampden-Sydney, Randolph-Macon
Women’s College, and the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. The
capstone of his teaching career was his
service as Morrison Professor of History at
the U.S. Army’s Command and Staff College
at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.
Mr. Jones held a number of key academic
posts: dean of Clinch Valley College of the
University of Virginia; founder of the
Department of History and Political Science
at Virginia Tech; associate dean of the
University of South Carolina; and for many
years, dean of the College of Humanities,
Social Sciences, Business Administration,
and Education at North Dakota
State University.
He was a prolific and prize-winning writer
in the field of military history. He was the
co-author of: Politics of Command; How the
North Won; and Why the South Lost. His
magnum opus was The Art of War in the
Western World.
Mr. Jones is survived by his wife, Joanne
Leach Jones, a son, and two grandchildren.
Ever a loyal St. John’s alumnus, Mr. Jones
felt that whatever success and recognition he
may have achieved were the direct result of
his undergraduate studies in the New
Program. He always expressed great affection
for the college and his fellow Johnnies, and
was a frequent attendee of homecomings and
a generous contributor to various St. John’s
fundraising efforts.
—George M. Van Sant, Class of 1947
EDWARD LATHROP, CLASS OF 1938
Edward Flint “Ned” Lathrop died April 8,
2006, in Annapolis. He was a decorated
Naval officer and a St. John’s tutor who also
taught mathematics. As director of athletics,
he organized the intramural program at
St. John’s.
Capt. Lathrop spent two years at the Coast
Guard Academy before transferring to
St. John’s. He joined the St. John’s faculty
and taught until 1941 before enlisting in the
Navy. During World War II he served aboard
submarines in the Pacific and was awarded
the Bronze Star and Silver Star medals.
After the war he rejoined the St. John’s
faculty in 1945, where he remained until 1950
before returning to active duty in the Navy.
At the time of his retirement in 1965, he was
commanding officer of the Naval Reserve
Training Center in Baltimore.
In 1965 Capt. Lathrop began teaching
mathematics at the Landon School in
Bethesda, Md. He created Landon’s first
varsity lacrosse team and served as head
coach until 1974, when he returned to
Annapolis.
MERLE SHORE, CLASS OF 1954
A gathering in honor of Merle Shore, a
member of the class of 1954 who became a
noted artist and art director, will be held at
the home of tutor Sam Kutler and his wife,
Emily (classes of 1954 and ’55), during
Homecoming Weekend 2006 in Annapolis.
Mr. Shore died January 28, 2006, in Santa
Barbara, Calif., at the age of 86.
After serving in the Navy for five years
during World War II, Mr. Shore started his
own graphic and commercial art studio in
Hollywood, Calif. In 1950, at age 31, he
fulfilled a lifelong ambition to attend
St. John’s and put his art career on hold while
he immersed himself in the Program.
After graduating from St. John’s, Mr. Shore
resumed his professional art career in Santa
Barbara. Mr. Shore served as art director for
Frank Sinatra’s Reprise label, as well as art
director for Verve and Warner Brothers,
where he also illustrated album covers. He
illustrated for magazines including Esquire,
Playboy, Saturday Evening Post, and
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2006 }
Atlantic Monthly. He did book illustrations
and commercial advertising. His artistic
talents extended to the cinema as well; he
designed graphics for the films Manchurian
Candidate and Spartacus. He was also a
serious painter.
Mr. Shore is survived by his wife, Priscilla
Bender-Shore (class of 1955), whom he
married in 1951 and who attended St. John’s
with him, a daughter, son, son-in-law, three
grandchildren and two brothers.
For details on the luncheon gathering,
contact Mr. Kutler at: 410-263-2261, or by
e-mail at: reltuk@comcast.nrt.
ALEX MAGOSCI , SF89
Alex Magosci, SF89, died Friday, March 24,
2006, in Santa Fe. Born in New York and
raised in Dallas, Mr. Magosci was an
accomplished writer and musician who made
many friends, especially in the music scene in
Santa Fe. After graduating from St. John’s in
1989, he became music editor for The Dallas
Observer. He moved back to Santa Fe in 1990
and later became an editor and columnist for
the Santa Fe New Mexican. He was a
drummer for a number of rock groups both in
Dallas and Santa Fe.
ALSO NOTED:
JOHN BRUNN (class of 1947), Jan. 17, 2006
D. MASON CHEEZUM (class of 1933), Feb. 2,
2006
BRUCE COLLIER (class of 1965), March 26, 2006
THE REV. FREDERICK P. DAVIS (class of 1949),
Jan. 7, 2006
THOMAS G. FROMME (class of 1950), March 31,
2006
MICHAEL F. GRAY (SGI84), Jan. 29, 2005
MARK HABREL (SF75), March 10, 2006
THOMAS JUSKEVICH (A03), March 15, 2006
LAWRENCE KANTOR (class of 1935), Feb. 20,
2006
HAROLD MILSTEAD (class of 1937), March 23,
2006
RALPH RACE (class of 1930), died February 20,
2006
STEWART A. WASHBURN (class of 1951), Feb. 17,
2006
INA WUNDRAM (SFGI97), Jan. 18, 2006
�40
{Croquet}
S WEET VICTORY
alex lorman
G
other stake. That happened; Navy
staked me out. So, on my first
turn after sitting out, I took a
shot to go to the other end of the
court, and that turned out nicely.
Navy set themselves right in front
of the wickets that they needed to
go through next, and they were
halfway back to the finishing
stake.They could have won.
“The closest ball to me was
blue. But it was probably about
20- to 30-feet away—the Hail
Mary shot of croquet. On my
turn—what actually turned out to
be the actual last turn—I took
probably an eight-foot shot to hit
the stake. Because I hit the
stake, I got an extra shot. The
first plan that presented itself
was to rocket my ball to the other
end of the court so I could be
close to that stake. But Navy
was guarding that stake, so there
was a chance of being staked
Above: Mac Ward and Geremy Coy (both A06) ponder
out again.
their strategy; at left: Coy celebrates victory.
Opposite page, clockwise: the Dobbyn family, decked
“As I was setting myself up to
out in seersucker suits: Jack (A02), Joe (A05),
take that shot, suddenly Plan B
Mike (A06), and Dick (A06), with future Johnnie
arose, and I saw blue, lodged in
Alex Dobbyn; Tutor Cordell Yee and his daughter,
his wicket. That was the long
before the skies cleared; a natty group of Johnnies
shot. I struck the ball—it was a
enjoy a beautiful afternoon; Navy’s minions await
leap of faith shot. I worried I
their duties; Peter Kalkavage leads the freshman
hadn’t put enough on it, but it
chorus.
took the perfect little curve and
hit blue—the crowd erupted, this
was huge!
hit the ball. But my ball ended much farther
“So, I had a second shot on them, and
now I had to get to black, all the way over on from the stake. All I had to do was hit the
stake and win the game. I bent down on one
the other side of the court. I reared back,
knee. I could hear people on the sidelines.
put as much as I could into it, somehow it
I reared back, hit the ball, hit the stake, Mac
bounced off a nearby wicket, and struck
rushed at me, people were swarming, and
black! Now I had two more shots, and this
my glasses were lost.”
serene calm. Since Navy had been sticklers
Final score: St. John’s 5, Navy 0. x
about the quiver rule [when two balls are in
contact, the striking player must make the
opponent’s ball quiver], I was careful when I
dimitri fotos
eremy Coy (A06) never
dreamed he’d get to be “the
man.” He had never been
hoisted atop the shoulders
of a little league team after
hitting the winning homerun, never doused with Gatorade after
scoring the winning touchdown.
But thanks to croquet, Coy got to be a
sports hero. Three-and-a-half hours into the
annual contest with Navy, the Johnnies had
won two matches, and a tense match was
unfolding between Coy and Mac Ward (A06)
and their Navy opponents. The Mids were
determined to try to take the Annapolis Cup
for the second straight year. Coy was in
position to make the winning shot. With
Zen-like concentration, he took the mallet
into his hands . . . and had ESPN been
there, this is what he would have told
the interviewer:
“I had gone through all my wickets, so all
I had to do was finish. There’s a rule that if
the other team knocks your ball into the
stake, then you lose two turns, and you have
to go to the other end of the court, hit that
stake and then go back down and hit the
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2006 }
�41
dimitri fotos
dimitri fotos
alex lorman
{Croquet}
As part of the croquet tradition, the
Imperial Wicket went to the Naval
Academy the Friday before the match to
speak to the Corps of Midshipman at
lunch in the mess hall following their
noontime formation. In keeping with the
Soviet theme the Johnnies adopted, Matt
Mangold read two pages of excerpts from
the Communist Manifesto. But not a
word could be heard above the din of the
Middies, hooting, hollering, and
banging their silverware against their
plates and on the tables. (It is another
good-natured part of the tradition for the
Corps to shout down the Johnnie.) “It
was hard to pass up the chance—so rich
with irony—to read Karl Marx to this
room of some 4,000 screaming
midshipmen,” said Mangold. x
The Team
Imperial Wicket Matt Mangold (A06);
Rob Hurst (A07); Tommy Dyer (A06);
Micah Beck (A09); Ian Hanover (A08);
Charlie Fleming (A08); Mac Ward
(A06); Geremy Coy (A06); Paul Patrone
(A06); Andrew MacKinlay (A06); Will
Kelly (A07); and Dan Houck (A06).
gary pierpoint
The Touch of Irony
Soviet Domination. The team uniforms
this year were red t-shirts with the
hammer and sickle (croquet mallets
taking the place of the hammer).
The team emerged from the BarrBuchanan Center to the Beatles’
“Back in the USSR.”
gary pierpoint
The Theme
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2006 }
�42
{ A l u m n i tA ses o c il lt i oo w N r s }s }
{From
h
Be a T n e ew
From the Alumni
Association
President
I recently made my
pledge to the
college’s Capital
Campaign, and I am
hoping you will, too!
As my non-Johnnie
husband and I talked
about our gift, I had a
chance to articulate
for him the several
reasons that I wanted to give the largest gift
we could afford.
First, I hope that generations of eager
readers and talkers can immerse themselves
in the St. John’s Program long into the
future. I want to help ensure that others have
the same opportunity I had when I went to
college to engage with the books and fellow
students as we learned about ourselves, each
other, and the most profound questions. I feel
honor-bound to help others share this experience.
Second, I see my gift as an acknowledgement of the people at the college who taught
me so much. Tutors, administrators, and
fellow students all shared their questions and
emerging answers with me. I want to say
“thank you” to one particular tutor who read
my Kant essay, gave me a copy of Strunk and
White’s The Elements of Style, and sent me
home to rewrite and rethink it. I can name
the people who influenced me, just as I’m
CHAPTER CONTACTS
ALBUQUERQUE
Robert Morgan, SF76
505-275-9012
rim2u@comcast.net
ANNAPOLIS
Beth Martin Gammon,
A94
410-951-7359
emartin@crs.org
AUSTIN
Charles Claunch,
SFGI05
512-446-0222
cclaunch.sjcalum@
earthlink.net
BALTIMORE
Deborah Cohen, A77
410-472-9158
deborahcohen@
comcast.net
BOSTON
Dianne Cowan, A91
617-666-4381
dianecowan@rcn.com
CHICAGO
Rick Lightburn, SF76
847-922-3862
rlightburn@gmail.com
DALLAS/FORT
WORTH
Paula Fulks, SF76
817-654-2986
puffjd@swbell.net
sure you can name those who were important
in your time at St. John’s. Conversations with
these people were most intense while I was
on campus, but they have continued through
the years and (I expect) will carry on through
my lifetime.
Third, I wish to help make an investment
in the physical and fiscal infrastructure that
supports the college. As a student I had little
appreciation for the practical side of the
college community. I didn’t know (or care)
what it cost to house and feed us, to maintain
a committed faculty, and to take care of the
myriad challenges of daily life. Today I appreciate the institutional needs and monetary
necessities of sustaining a community like St.
John’s, and I want to do what I can so those
on the campuses can focus on the work that
really matters—reading and talking about the
books.
Finally, my gift is, in part, a thank-you to
those alumni and friends of St. John’s who
have made leadership gifts to the campaign.
We have received some remarkable gifts from
individuals with much greater giving capacity
than mine. My gift is one way I can thank
them for their commitment to the college’s
community, institution, and Program. They
have invested in our college because they
believe in our principles and want to help
perpetuate this special way of learning and
teaching. With my gift, I want to thank
everyone who invests in St. John’s.
There are many other reasons for me and
probably for you, too:
• Foundations are impressed and give more
when a high percentage of alumni participate in giving to the college.
• Government support for private colleges is
dwindling or being redirected.
• Many students who want and would benefit
from a St. John’s education struggle to
make ends meet.
• Giving to the college keeps me connected
with a community of people I admire and
enjoy.
• I see a new level of strength and stability in
college staff and leadership.
• I am concerned about the state of the
public discourse across the country, and I
think the college offers a good alternative
to dogma and demagoguery.
• I want to be sure that when I come back for
my 40th, 50th, and 60th reunions the
college is there to greet me—stronger than
ever.
The Alumni Association is independent of
the college, and as an organization we focus
on serving the constituency of the alumni (as
opposed to being organizationally focused on
fundraising). We provide opportunities for
alumni to engage in many ways that do not
involve financial support. On the other hand,
the Alumni Association board recognizes the
significance of this campaign and is
committed to supporting the “clear and
single purpose.” The board has approved a
campaign gift of $75,000 to support the
college’s new online alumni community
(click on “For Alumni” on the college’s Web
site) and endowment for scholarships. We
also expect that every one of the 47 members
of the Alumni Association board will make a
personal pledge to support the campaign.
Please join us. Whatever your reasons, I’m
sure they are compelling. Thank you for all
the ways you support the college!
PHILADELPHIA
Helen Zartarian, AGI86
215-482-5697
helenstevezartarian@
mac.com
SOUTHERN CALIF.
SALT LAKE CITY
Elizabeth Eastman,
Erin Hanlon, AF03
SFGI84
801-364-1097
erin_hanlon@juno.com 562-426-1934
e.eastman@verizon.net
SANTA FE
TRIANGLE CIRCLE,
Richard Cowles,
NORTH CAROLINA
SFGI95
Susan Eversole, SF79
505-986-1814
rcowles2@comcast.net 919-968-4856
sfevers@yahoo.com
SEATTLE
James Doherty, AFGI76 WASHINGTON, DC
Deborah Papier, A72
206-542-3441
202-387-4520
jdoherty@mrsc.org
dpapier@verizon.net
SOUTH FLORIDA
WESTERN NEW
Jon Sackson, A69
ENGLAND
305-682-4634
Peter Weiss, SF84
jonathan.sackson@
413-367-2174
ubs.com
peter_weis@
nmhschool.org
DENVER/BOULDER
Lee Katherine
Goldstein, SGI90
720-746-1496
LGoldstein@
Lindquist.com
MINN./ST. PAUL
Carol Freeman, AGI94
612-822-3216
Freem013@umn.edu
NEW YORK CITY
Daniel Van Doren, A81
914-949-6811
president@
sjcalums.com
PITTSBURGH
Joanne Murray, A70
724-325-4151
Joanne.Murray@
alcoa.com
PORTLAND
Lake Perriguey, SF91
503-803-5184
lake@law-works.com
SAN DIEGO
Stephanie Rico, A86
NORTHERN CALIF.
Reynaldo Miranda, A99 805-684-6793
srico@sandi.net
415-333-4452
reynaldo.miranda@
gmail.com
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2006 }
Glenda Eoyang (SF76)
�43
{ o u ni e B c
t T w ws s
{ F rA lm m t h A s s o e ilal i o no N ee r } }
Eva in Israel
Annapolis tutor Eva Brann was asked to
lecture at the Israel Academy of Sciences
and Humanities in January. She spoke on
Plato’s Republic and the next day took part
in a seminar with members of the Philosophy Department of the Hebrew University.
“It began wonderfully when a professor
said, ‘I will tell you the difference between a
Socratic conversation and a Talmudic
discussion. In the first, Socrates and his
partners all come knowing nothing and
they leaving knowing nothing, friends as
before. In the second, the rabbis come each
with his opinion and they leave each with
that opinion, friends as before.’ ”
The college knows of 23 alumni living in
Israel. Miss Brann had an opportunity to
meet about half of them at a lively dinner
in Jerusalem. “One, Jed Arkin (A85), made
himself my special host, and we did something marvelous,” Miss Brann says. “We—
he and his lovable two sons and his army
pal and I—went to the Negev, the beautiful
desert in southern Israel. We went in two
jeeps, intercom, mini-Uzi, water and all,
but the land was empty and grand.” x
West Coast
Johnnies
Dedicated volunteers have always been the
hallmark of strong alumni chapters, and
Elizabeth Eastman (SFGI84), president of
the Southern California Chapter for the
past six years, is no exception. “I’ve
always been looking for ways to extend
the mission of St. John’s outside the
boundaries of the Annapolis and Santa Fe
campuses,” says Eastman, “Alumni
chapters can play a critical role in
extending the college’s reach.”
Six years ago, Eastman, with the help of
Susan Allen (SGI89), a member of the
college’s Board of Visitors and Governors,
reinvigorated the Southern California
chapter, drawing members from a wide
geographic area that was once served by
three chapters. “There is an enormous
challenge here because of the distances
people have to travel and the traffic.
To make this viable we had to select a
central location, the Westwood area of
Los Angeles, and the time we picked,
Sunday afternoon, is also dictated by the
43
but prior to Hitler’s rise
to power,” says Eastman.
The person who
chooses the reading
typically leads the
seminar, says Eastman.
About half of the
readings are from the
St. John’s curriculum,
including the Eastern
Classics program.
“We talk about life
experiences,” says
Eastman. “It is not
uncommon to have
someone from every
decade, back to the
1940s. This makes for a
fabulous discussion with
different perspectives
from different generaA desert wanderer: Tutor Eva Brann with Tal and Matin
tions, and yet age is
Arkin, sons of Jed Arkin (A85), in the Negev last winter.
transcended.”
Benjamin Friedman,
traffic,” says Eastman. Members, who
who grew up in Santa Fe, where his
include Benjamin Friedman (SF95),
mother worked at the college and both his
Dierdre Lenihan (A67), and Amy Cooper
parents attended the Graduate Institute,
(SF75), come from Los Angeles as well as
agrees, “It’s very interesting having
areas such as Claremont, 40 miles east,
seminars with a more diverse group than I
Santa Barbara, 90 miles north, and
had as an undergrad; the maturity of the
Orange, about 32 miles southeast.
participants make for some fascinating
The geographic spread of the chapter’s
and surprising discussions. I run into
area also dictates the kinds of events the
people at the seminars who babysat me
chapter can hold. “We don’t have signature
when they were students, or were the
events like wine tastings and cultural
parents of children I played with during
activities. We are solely a reading group,”
the summer GI sessions oh so many years
says Eastman. “It can take some members
ago. I always wonder who I’ll encounter
longer to travel here than they’re here for
from my past when I walk into a seminar.”
the seminar, so we have a potluck following
Over the years the chapter members
it to make it worthwhile. It is a contrast to
have invited tutors to lead their discusNew York chapter, for instance, where they
sions, among them Eva Brann, Frank
have ease of access to the downtown area.”
Pagano, John Balkcom (SFGI00), and
Eastman mails postcard reminders one
Sam Kutler (class of 1954). “We also had
month prior to each gathering, inviting
Danielle Allen, (Susan Allen’s daughter
alumni, friends of the college, and also
and a professor of classics at the University
participants in the Summer Classics
of Chicago) lead a seminar on her book
program offered at Santa Fe. Alumni—
Talking to Strangers. I actually went to the
about half are from Annapolis and half
St. John’s summer day camp in Santa Fe
from Santa Fe—bring along significant
with Danielle when we were both kids and
others, spouses, and friends for the
her mom was in the GI,” says Freidman.
monthly two-hour seminar which focuses
Eastman, a busy mother of two who has
on a reading chosen the month before.
a master’s degree in political science, will
This spring, the Southern California
step down this spring as president of the
chapter discussed Shakespeare’s Troilus
Southern California chapter. But she’ll
and Cressida in March, and in April
always make time for seminars with other
they will discuss “The Concept of the
Johnnies. “The opportunity to have a
Political.” “It’s a short political tract that
conversation is so welcome, it brings
Carl Schmitt wrote during the Weimar
balance to my life,” she says. x
period in Germany after World War I,
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2006 }
�44
44
{ F { Ao mm n ihA s sB c il t i o n oN e e r}s }
r lu t e o e al T w ws
Summer in Santa Fe: Great Books, Great Friends
discussion, the practicum brings participants to paint outside at some of the most
compelling sites in Santa Fe. Guided
gallery tours will provide an opportunity
to revel in contemporary and classic
Western art. No painting experience
is required.
This year’s other offerings are:
Descartes’ Discourse on Method, led by
tutor Sam Kutler (class of 1954) and the
Book of Job and Karl Jung’s “Answer to
Job,” led by tutors Keri Ames and
Jessica Jerome.
Through the Summer Alumni Program in
Santa Fe, alumni from both campuses can
spend a week revisiting a favorite Program
work, discussing something they’ve never
read before with other Johnnies, painting,
listening to opera, and enjoying the
company of others who love books and
ideas. The program this year starts
Sunday, July 23, and runs through Friday,
July 29, when Homecoming begins. To
find out more about the program, visit the
college Web site: www.stjohnscollege.edu;
click on “Alumni” and follow the link to
the “Summer Alumni Program.” More
information is available by calling the
Santa Fe Alumni office at 505-984-6103.
Two avid participants of the Summer
Alumni Program shared their thoughts on
what makes the week worthwhile.
“Revelling in Art”
Elizabeth Pollard Jenny (SF80), an artist
who lives in Boulder, Co., brings art to
participants in the Summer Alumni
Program.
In 1995, I noticed that St. John’s was
offering alumni the chance to return to
Santa Fe for a week with fellow alumni
from all different years and from both
campuses to study together. This seemed
to me like a way to really keep the conversation going. St. John’s alumni leave the
college with the message that we are the
enduring community of the college. I have
always construed being a Johnnie to mean
being a life-long learner who keeps the
conversation going, in our world and in
our college community.
I responded to the mailer because, along
with giving me an opportunity to check in
with my fellow alumni, it offered me the
chance to study art in one of the art
capitals of the United States.That summer,
I was fortunate to take the seminar,
practicum, and lecture with tutors Charles
Bell and Steve Houser, and with Steve’s
wife, Michelle Bender. Steve and Michelle
designed the art tutorial in Santa Fe.
In addition, John Agresto, then president
of the Santa Fe campus, took Alumni
Program and Summer Classics participants on a tour of Hispanic religious folk
art in Chimayo, Taos, and Truchas.
“There’s a Special Conversation”
Mary Fisher (AGI92) of Ontario, N.Y.,
will attend the Summer Alumni Program
for her fifth straight year.
Catch up with friends this July in
Santa Fe. Register by June 30 for the
Summer Alumni Program.
In addition to sharing his knowledge about
the artwork, John showed us a great
restaurant along the Rio Grande, where we
stopped and had fresh trout for lunch.
During another summer, I took the
course offerings that focused on issues
relating to consciousness, artificial intelligence, and optics, with one of my former
tutors, Phil Chandler (A68), and his son.
The Alumni Program has been a wonderful
way to revisit familiar friends and places,
but it has also been a way to meet new
people and explore new paths in this
Johnnie enterprise of learning together.
That brings me to my role as offering an
art practicum to alumni through the
Summer Alumni Program. To me, painting
in and around Santa Fe with fellow alumni
is like a dream come true. Add to this that
you are in Santa Fe, you can see contemporary art shown in local galleries, and you
can meet artistic alumni during the AllAlumni Art Show.
With tutor Phil LeCuyer, this year I will
be leading the practicum side of “Plein-Air
Painting as Practice and Reflection.” The
program includes seminar discussions of
the nature of perception and the role of
visual art in the formation of our language
of perception. Complementing seminar
After I graduated from the Graduate
Institute in 1992, I received information
about the Summer Alumni Program.
I thought it would be a dream come true to
reconnect with the college and have
enriching conversations with Johnnies.
There’s a special kind of conversation that
we develop among ourselves, and it’s a
wonderful way to encounter other
human beings.
In 2002, I thought, “If I don’t start
doing it, when will I do it?” It’s not easy to
make these treks, but since my oldest son
and his family live in Colorado, I can get to
Santa Fe on my trips to visit them. As I
considered signing up for the first year, the
thing that really clinched it for me was that
Eva Brann and David Carl were leading a
discussion on the Republic and I had the
never had the opportunity take a seminar
with Miss Brann.
And there was Mozart’s Cosi Fan Tutte,
with Peter Pesic. I’m a musician, so that
was a joy. One of the wonderful things
about the Summer Alumni Program is that
we have access to Santa Fe Opera tickets
at a reduced rate.
One summer, as part of the seminar that
included plein-air painting with Liz Jenny,
we made trips to artists’ studios. We were
also reading Heidegger and listening to
Don Giovanni. I really have a special
appreciation for the seminars on the arts.
In painting and in sculpture—in all the
arts—we find different aspects of the
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2006 }
�45
{ o u ni e B c
t T w ws s
{ F rA lm m t h A s s o e ilal i o no N ee r } }
human community. Last year, I had
another seminar with Miss Brann and
Mr. Carl, this time on Milton.
What I find really remarkable is that we
alumni can encounter each other in
conversation about so many different
aspects of what life is about, not just in the
philosophy and the sciences, but also in
the various arts—which in my world is a
huge part of what I consider the riches of
being on this earth. In a seminar, we don’t
just look at the structure of the music, we
also talk about human themes. That brings
me to one of the real riches I find in this
kind of alumni encounter. We’ve gone out
into the world, done a multitude of things,
and lived all kinds of different lives. That
enriches our conversation, but it also gives
us an added opportunity to reflect on what
our ongoing lives are about.
When we revisit a book such as The
Republic, we have a wonderful opportunity
Are you Reading?
From Portland, Oregon to Putney,
Vermont alumni chapters and groups all
over the country continue to “read the
books.” Eighteen chapters and three
reading groups held events during 2005.
In the last four years, several new groups
worked with the alumni offices to organize
seminars and other events. As one alumna
wrote, “Anyone wish to start a reading
group? I’m starving for some intellectual
discourse.”
Here’s a look at some newer locations
creating SJC alumni groups:
• The Pittsburgh group became a
chapter in 2003 after more than a
year of regular activities as a reading
group. Though there are fewer than
70 St. John’s alumni in their area,
they have 6 to 10 people at their
monthly events.
• The Western New England reading
group has been holding seminars
since 2002. In 2005, they had a
regular bi-monthly schedule of events
for their nearly 130 alumni.
• The Miami/South Florida reading
group, drawing from over 200 alumni
in their area, has held regular
seminars during both 2004 and
2005 and will be petitioning to
become a chapter this coming year.
• The Salt Lake City reading group has
held seminars since November 2004.
to look at larger issues and gain more
insight into the work. These books don’t
stand alone; it’s the tutors and the other
participants who help lead us to a greater
understanding of these ideas.
St. John’s is not just a four-year experience. It’s the kind of ground on which we
build our lives. There’s always more to be
learned, and there’s always something
interesting to talk about. We are works in
progress. Any of us can become a little
harassed by things so that we get hog-tied,
like Gulliver being tied down by the
Lilliputians. Every summer, we have the
opportunity to reacquaint ourselves with
all the college can offer us. The college
arranges this special time just for us
alumni.
45
It’s something much richer, and
sustaining and balancing, and it stays with
us when we leave. It is nutrition for our
mind’s eye. We really are privileged to
have this opportunity. x
Alumni from both campuses choose a
thinking vacation with the Summer
Alumni Program.
There are only 45 alumni in the area,
but they have had 6 to 14 people
attending each event.
• In Atlanta, alumni stay connected
with informal groups and at gatherings sponsored by the Alumni office.
• A meeting is planned in Phoenix to
organize area alumni this spring.
• Interest is brewing to start a local
chapter in the Indianapolis area.
Though the number of alumni in the
area is small, the desire to read and
talk to other Johnnies remains strong.
Though not every attempt to start a
reading group has been successful, there
does not seem to be a minimal number of
alumni needed to have sufficient interest
Christopher Nelson (SF70), president of
the Annapolis campus, and President
Michael Peters, president in Santa Fe,
regularly visit chapters and reading
groups. Tutors from Annapolis and Santa
Fe are interested and available to travel to
chapters and groups throughout the
country. The Alumni Office funds their
trips and provides an average of two tutor
visits per year to chapters.
Alumni interested in assessing interest
in holding seminars and other activities in
a new area should contact Jo Ann Mattson,
Alumni Director, at JoAnn.Mattson@
sjca.edu or 410-626-2531. The alumni
office staff provides support in setting up
an initial event, answering questions,
giving advice on how to get started, and
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2006 }
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 – Glenda Eoyang, SF76
Vice President – Jason Walsh, A85
Secretary – Barbara Lauer, SF76
Treasurer – Bill Fant, A79
Getting-the-Word-Out Action Team Chair –
Linda Stabler-Talty, SFGI76
Mailing address – Alumni Association,
St. John’s College, P.O Box 2800, Annapolis,
MD 21404, or 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca,
Santa Fe, NM 87505-4599.
mailing notices to all alumni within the
geographic area identified.
The new Online Community is also an
excellent way to keep in touch with alumni
in your area and to stay involved. You can
find a listing of your chapter or group’s
events at www.stjohnscollege.edu. Click
on “alumni” and then “chapters.” x
�46
{ A l u m n i Vo i c e s }
T WO MONTHS
BEFORE THE MAST
by Todd Wilson (AGI00)
Todd Wilson combines yoga
with duties at the helm.
Wilson never quite got his sea
legs during his Reach the
World voyage.
Todd Wilson spent two months
aboard the Makulu a 43-foot
sailboat, documenting his experiences for Reach the World, an
educational organization that
seeks to give inner-city students
in grades three through six a
wider view of their world.
B
ased in New York
City, Reach the
World is a
nonprofit organization founded by
Heather Halstead.
Sailor-educators circumnavigate the world and document
their journey using digital
cameras, laptops, and the
Reach the World Web site.
They post answers to eight
essential questions for each
geographic region on the site,
which teachers use as part of
their curriculum. Before the
voyage, we met the students
and toured their schools in the
Bronx, Queens, and Harlem,
talking to them about the
itinerary. The goal is to open
their minds to the idea that
they belong to a global
community.
Since graduating from the
GI, I have sought eclectic positions in
education, such as teaching English on the
Texas/Mexico border with Teach for
America and managing an environmental
education campus in Yosemite National
Park. When RTW offered me a job, I
thought: How can I pass on this
opportunity? I have always been interested
in documentary films, photography, and
journalism. The great books, being the
ancient documents of societies and human
thought, seemed the perfect foundation.
Thus, I went to learn about modern
human life from observing how people live
and the environment living around them,
documenting it all for students.
As part of a five-person crew, I sailed
from Cairns, Australia, to Bali, Indonesia.
Jim, the captain, and Hannah, the first
mate, taught the fundamentals of sailing to
Amie, Tonia and me: steering a course,
reading charts, and navigating open waters
in daylight and darkness. Each day at sea
was spent rotating through a watch and
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2006 }
cooking schedule, meeting
about the program, writing, and
for me, finding time to practice
yoga on the aft deck—usually in
three- to six-foot waves. We all
worked to keep a tidy, safe ship.
And the weather was consistently helpful with more wind
and sunshine than galls and
high seas.
As the days turned like pages
from a great, blue mind, I found
the open ocean to be a true
wilderness. From my first
glimpse of the Great Barrier
Reef to dolphins racing to and
fro off the bow, sparkling with
phosphorescence in midnight
waters, I realized that the ocean
is untamed and amazing. We
bring a floating shell of
humanity, yet our coming is one
precarious rise and fall upon
the waves after another. I
embraced the austere vastness
of being at sea with respect and
humility.
Three days out of Australia in
the Timor Sea, we stopped
Makulu for an afternoon swim. After 20
minutes, Hannah called us aboard quietly.
Once atop, she pointed to the five tiger
sharks that joined us from the depths.
“Just visiting,” I whispered.
Komodo Island was truly enigmatic, a
land rare and sculpted by time into timelessness. The land befits the dragon that
exists only there, the largest lizard in the
world. When I first saw two dragons below
the kitchen, they were flattened out like
�{ A l u m n i Vo i c e s }
47
todd wilson
Left: A hut on Komodo Island frames the
MAKULU.
Below: Schoolchildren on Balo-Baloang
stop to pose for Wilson.
attaining balance than enjoying the
ocean’s grandeur. It was not seasickness
(though I did lose my crackers coming into
Bali after 10 hours enduring 10-foot seas);
I can only describe it using the Ayurvedic
term ahamkara, which translates as the
todd wilson
dogs: content and lacking ferocity. Two
hours later we tracked a female with a
radio collar to her nest. Again, the sight of
her brought a fearless awe. She, like all
things rare, lived through the myths and
labels in the simplicity of being.
Two weeks later, we visited a school on
Balo-Baloang Atoll. The tiny island (twohour circumambulation) is the home of
shipbuilders. These men have honed their
craft for a thousand years, and like the
dragons, only these Indonesian seas are
home to their designs. In their presence,
Makulu looked extravagant and awkward
in her modernity. We felt the slowness of
time here when we signed the school’s
register, the sixth visitors in five years!
In a classroom without electricity, we
interviewed the students about their
unique and simple lives, their teacher
translating our words. Afterwards, we
enjoyed lunch at the teacher’s stilt house:
sweets, tea, black-sugar coffee, rice, and
vegetable broth eaten on the floor of the
kitchen, with our fingers, the women and
children waiting for the guests to eat first.
I had signed on for a two-year journey.
But my new environment rattled my
equilibrium, and days were more about
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2006 }
integral feeling of self despite the
commingling of the numerous physical
elements of which we are composed.
My ahamkara was tilted, and this feeling
combined with the understanding that my
overall health was the foundation of any
position. Even though I loved the work on
land, the days at sea took my legs from me.
After an amazing two months before the
mast, I chose to leave and offer the rare
opportunity to someone who is an
educator and a sailor. I am sure there are a
few Johnnies who fit this description. x
Wilson’s articles on Australia and Bali can
be found at www.reachtheworld.com
�48
{St. John’s Forever}
Books, Balance and a Bell Tower
A
crane sets in place the iron
finial in the bell tower of
Weigle Hall in Santa Fe,
circa 1972. The finial was
designed by John Gaw
Meem, the noted architect
who also donated the land for St. John’s
Western campus. Meem’s finial was meant
to represent a “stand-up” version of the
college seal, according to an article in the
Santa Fe New Mexican. First called the
Tower Building and later renamed for
former St. John’s President Richard Weigle
(HA49), the campus’ main academic
building was dedicated in 1971, while work
on the finial was still under way.
Design of the finial was one of the few
commissions that Meem took after he
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2006 }
retired in 1960, according to John Gaw
Meem: Southwestern Architect, by
Bainbridge Bunting: “. . . Meem accepted
only a few commissions from close friends
or produced occasional designs for a public
cause or for historical preservation. Among
these . . . the delightful bell tower on the
administration building of St. John’s
College . . .” x
�{Alumni Events Calendar}
Alumni Calendar
Come home to Santa Fe this summer!
This year’s festivities including a special
Opening Celebration for “With a Clear
and Single Purpose”: The Campaign for St.
John’s College, along with the traditional
Homecoming Banquet, art show, and
varied parties. Catch up with your old
friends, make new ones, and learn about
the college’s plans for the future.
Friday, July 28
2 - 5 p.m. Registration
5:30 p.m. “With a Clear and Single
Purpose,” Opening Celebration for the
Capital Campaign
9 p.m. Rock Party in the Coffee Shop
Saturday, July 29
10 a.m. Seminars
Noon – 2 p.m. Picnic
2 – 3 p.m. All-Alumni gathering
4 p.m. Alumni and tutor book signing
5 – 6 p.m. “Speaking Volumes” lecture:
Louise Heydt (EC97), author of Divine
Rainbow: Nature as Spiritual Teacher
5:30 – 7 p.m. All-Alumni art show
5: 30 p.m. Combined art show and
“Speaking Volumes” reception
7 – 9 p.m. Homecoming banquet
9 p.m. Cantina San Juan: margaritas and
mariachi at the Homecoming ball
9: 30 p.m. Movie: Singing in the Rain
Annapolis
Mark your calendars for Annapolis
Homecoming, Sept. 29 – Oct. 1, 2006.
The theme: Oktoberfest. Look for a
brochure to be mailed this summer,
or watch the St. John’s Web site,
www.stjohnscollege.edu, for more details.
Sunday, July 30
8 – 11 a.m. Early Riser – light breakfast fare
in the Fireside Lounge
11 a.m. Brunch, hosted by Mike and
Eleanor Peters
Mountain in Santa Fe
by Virginia Strong Newlin, SFGI74
One August night three of us tried to scale
a small peak above the college.
We took the rock face, sneakers slipping,
gripping whatever felt firm to grasping
hands.
hauling ourselves to the top, we sat upon
stones
spoke softly, looking over St. John’s
in silver sleep amongst its great books.
bill denison
In the sky great constellations spread
near enough to finger in the midnight air.
I thought of being East again, the session
over,
minus this evening’s mountain walk
and the highs of a seminar’s lively talk
on Aristotle and Aquinas, Aeschylus and
Socrates,
handholds for people scaling peaks.
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2006 }
�P ERIODICALS
P OSTAGE PAID
P UBLISHED BY THE
COMMUNICATIONS OFFICE
P.O. BOX 2800
A NNAPOLIS , M ARYLAND 21404
ADDRESS SERVICE REQUESTED
�
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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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St. John's College
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Annapolis, Md.
Santa Fe, NM
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thecollege2001
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paper
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48 pages
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St. John's College
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The College, Spring 2006
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2006
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pdf
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Volume 32, Issue 2 of <em>The College</em> Magazine. Published in Spring 2006.
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St. John's College
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Annapolis, MD
Santa Fe, NM
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text
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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
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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
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Co
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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
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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. . "
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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
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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
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READING NIETZSCHE'S FAVORITES GIVES US MORE INSIGHT INTO A
PUZZLING AUTHOR, SAYS TUTOR JOHN VERDI.
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�{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}
2,2,
{ A LU M NI VOIC E S}
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
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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
{ TH£
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St. John 's College. Spring !1,005
}
�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
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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
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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
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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
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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
E.
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
LL E
c
E.
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
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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
Co LL E c
E.
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
CoLLBCE,St.John'sCollege,Spring2005}
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
�
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Annapolis, Md.
Santa Fe, NM
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The College, Spring 2005
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Volume 31, Issue 2 of The College Magazine. Published in Spring 2005.
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Annapolis, MD
Santa Fe, NM
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2005
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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
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/b6b50290f2bf08b23c0b09a5067e5e85.pdf
74038a96af953c82c5fe4e22a60cafa5
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Text
�On O’Connor
“The writer operates at a peculiar crossroads where time andplace
and eternity somehow meet. His problem is tofind that location. ”
STJOHN’S
College
ANNAPOLIS • SANTA FE
lannery O’Connor’s fiction tends to elicit strong reactions from her
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readers. Some object to the mixture of comedy and pathos (country girl
wooed for her wooden leg) and the blend of the mundane and shocking
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and Santa Fe, NM
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even
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feel
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sociology degree at the Georgia State College for Women, and studied at the Iowa Writer’s
Known office of publication:
Communications Office
St. John’s College
Box 2800
Annapolis, MD 21404-2800
and
discordance
witnesses
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and here
is in her
rightful
corresponded
regularly
witha while
Thomas
Merton,
theshe
Trappist
monk
who place.
shared her love of writing
along with her deep faith. She suffered from lupus, the wasting disease that killed her father
when she was 15. (It left her near death in 1950.) She was proud of being a Southerner and loved
many aspects of the quiet rural life she was forced to live in Milledgeville because her illness left
her dependent on her mother’s care. On the family’s dairy farm, she raised peafowl that dined on
her mother’s Herbert Hoover roses. She wrote, she explained, because she had a gift lor it.
O’Connor wa.s often amused by those critics who tried to label her. She argued eloquently
with those who insisted that something “socially uplifting’’ must come from fiction: “The
novelist must be characterized not by his function but by his vision, and we must remember that
his vision has to be transmitted and that the limitations and blind spots of his audience will very
definitely affect the way he is able to show what he sees” {Mystery and Manners}.
The focus of this issue, “Revelation,” was one of her last stories, published a few months
before she died on Aug. 3,196/,. We know from her letters that the story was inspired by a visit
to the doctor’s office and that she wasn’t making fun of her protagonist or offering her up for
scorn: “I like Mrs. Turpin as well as Mary Grace. You got to be a very big woman to shout at the
Lord across a hogjten” {The Habit ofBeingY O’Connor made her first appearance on the Read
ing List of St. John’s College in 1989 with “Everything that Rises Must Converge.” Throughout
the years, the standard reading has been “Parker’s Back.”
In addition to paying homage to a favorite Program author. The College accomplishes
another important goal in this issue by showing off the tutors and the interesting things they
have to say when we give them a chance. We posed a question about the short story “Revela
tion” to a group of tutors from both campuses, and they approached it with zeal. (Advancement
vice president Barbara Goyette, A73, wa.s inspired by a church sermon to contribute an essay.)
To get the most from this feature, read or revisit “Revelation” before exploring these essays.
-RH
Send address
changes to The College
Magazine, Communications
Office, St. John’s College,
Box 2800, Annapolis, MD
21404-2800.
postmaster:
Annapolis
410-626-2539
reharty@sjca.edu
Rosemary Harty, editor
Sussan Borden, managing editor
Jennifer Behrens, art director
Advisory Board
John Christensen
Harvey Flaumenhaft
Roberta Gable
Barbara Goyette
Kathryn Heines
Pamela Kraus
Joseph Macfarland
Jo Ann Mattson
Eric Salem
Brother Robert Smith
Santa Fe
505-984-6104
alumni@sjcsf.edu
John Hartnett, Santa Fe editor
Advisory Board
Michael Franco
David Levine
Andra Maguran
Margaret Odell
Roxanne Seagraves
Mark St. John
Magazine design by
Claude Skelton Design
�"I “I v„.
College
The
ZINE
FOR
Alumni
of
t
St. John’s College
Annapolis •
{Contents}
PAGE
JO
DEPARTMENTS
Revelations
a
FROM THE BELL TOWERS
A routine visit to a doctor’s office ends in
a painful revelation for a self-satisfied
farmer’s wife. But what is really being
revealed? Pondering Flannery
O’Connor’s “Revelation.”
•
•
•
•
•
•
Santa Fe Initiative invests in student life.
A new Web site debuts.
Johnnies and Journalism
Mids and Johnnies on Thoreau
Middle States affirms accreditation.
Wine, art, and conversation
PAGE 2izj.
9
LETTERS
The Habit oe Writing
PAGE la
Chris Lynch (A87) on Machiavelli’s
Art of War
A GI alumna considers the lost art and
missed opportunities of letter writing.
PAGE
30 BIBLIOFILE
35 ALUMNI NOTES
2i6
PROFILES
31 Tias Little (EC98) brings Eastern
classics to yoga.
34 Ben Bloom (A97) finds fame.
38 Owen Kelley (A93) pursues monster
hurricanes.
The Mind in Winter
The challenges of the examined life keep
Johnnies young.
PAGE
Zj.6
41 STUDENT VOICES
Summer at Stag’s Leap
Is wanting good grades a bad thing for
Johnnies?
Fine wine, good company, and seminars
make a traditional Northern Cahfornia
chapter event a popular summer
tradition.
44 ALUMNI ASSOCIATION NEWS
48 ST. John’s forever
PAGE 46
ON THE COVER
Flannery O 'Connor
Illustration by David Johnson
�{From
the
Bell Towers}
The Santa Fe Initiative
Concerned by the toll deferred
maintenance was beginning to
take on the Santa Fe campus,
the college’s Management
Committee came up with a
comprehensive plan: the
Santa Fe Initiative, a $4.5
miUion investment in buildings
and grounds, improved staffing
in the areas of student life, and
immediate upgrades to two of
the campus’ six laboratories.
When he unveiled the commit
tee’s initiative to the college’s
Board of Visitors and Gover
nors, Annapolis President
Christopher Nelson, interim
president in Santa Fe, received
a standing ovation from the
board. The reception from
tutors at a Santa Fe faculty
meeting was equally
enthusiastic.
For Nelson, serving as
interim president of the Santa
Fe campus in addition to his
regular duties in Annapolis, the
need for an immediate injection
of capital to the Western cam
pus was apparent. Even as the
college plans a Capital Cam
paign to fund a strategic plan of
long-needed initiatives such as
raising faculty salaries, Santa
Fe’s needs couldn’t wait. Nelson
had already seen what could
happen to a campus during lean
years: the Annapolis campus
found it expensive and time
consuming to catch up on main
tenance deferred when funding
for improvements was unavail
able in the early 1990s.
“With the Santa Fe initiative
we are jump-starting a program
of improving opportunities for
students outside the classroom
and for the improvement of
buildings and grounds,” says
Nelson. “This is just the start of
what we need to do over an
annual or intermittent basis
over a period of a decade or
more. We’ve invested about $35
million in the Annapolis physi
cal plant over the last 13 years.
We don’t want to see Santa Fe’s
physical plant deteriorate to the
level that Annapolis was.”
The purpose of the plan is
to make the kind of improve
ments that will encourage
student retention and enable
the admissions office to attract
a larger pool of qualified appli
cants to Santa Fe. Thus the
initiative focuses on areas that
affect student life, the appear
ance of the campus, and the
operation of the admissions and
financial aid offices.
At the same time, the college
will provide funding for an
internship program similar to
the Annapolis program funded
by The Hodson Trust while the
college seeks long-term grant
support for internships.
Costs for the Santa Fe Initia
tive will represent a a percent
''This isjust the
start ofwhat we
need to do over
an annual or
intermittent
basis... ”
Christopher Nelson,
Annapolis President
increase in the operating budg
et each year. The funds for the
initiative will come from unre
stricted endowment funds and
early unrestricted gifts to the
college’s Capital Campaign,
expected to officially begin in
June 2005,
Improvements that affect stu
dent life include funding for
additional staff in the Assistant
Dean’s office.
Career Services
office. Security,
and Student
Activities office.
Facilities
improvements
include renovat
ing the laborato
ries; resurfacing
all roadways and
parking lots,
curbs, and cen
trally located
walkways; adding
a new parking
lot; replacing
After 40 years,
THE Santa Fe
CAMPUS IS SHOW
ING SIGNS OF AGE.
{The College-
St. John’s College • Spring 2004 }
hardscape between the upper
dorms and Peterson Student
Center; repairing concrete
walls and steps; installing
uniform campus lighting;
installing patios for outdoor
study and social fife; and adding
attractive signs and a security
kiosk at a more formal campus
entrance. Some funding for a
director of buildings and
grounds and an additional
maintenance staff member is
also included.
While it will mean significant
short-term improvements in
Santa Fe, Nelson emphasizes
that the initiative is just a start
ing point: “The campus needs
an investment of about $30
million over time: new dormi
tories, a home for the Graduate
Institute and a new lecture hall,
renovations of the Evans
Science Laboratory, plus
additional renovations
campus-wide. For so many
years, we’ve sacrificed every
thing else to the Program.
We’re on a slow, steady plan of
improvement that requires
investments to make up for
deferred maintenance, for
poor salaries, and insufficient
student services-it’s time to
turn our attention to them with
out taking anything away from
the Program.”
To oversee the implementa
tion of the initiative, Annapolis
treasurer H. Fred “Bud” Billups
(HA03) will assume a new
college-wide position as special
assistant to the chair of the
Management Committee
(a position that alternates
between the two campus presi
dents). Billups will split his time
between the Annapolis and
Santa Fe campuses, providing
oversight over the two admis
sions offices, the two financial
aid offices, and the college-wide
Information Technology office.
He will prepare a college-wide
budget that will allocate annual
operating funds between the
campuses. 4^-Rosemary Harty
�{From
the
Bell Towers}
3
One College, One Web
Ifyou can make the time to
search all of the 4,285,199,774
Web pages available through the
search engine Google, let us
know ifyou find another college
with a Web site like St. John’swhere the dominant image is of a
chair and the valuable center real
estate is not a shot of smihng stu
dents or the beautiful campus,
but ofwords: the names of great
book authors.
On March i, after two years
of planning and gathering
comments from as wide a sector
of the St. John’s community as
possible, the college launched
the new site: www.stjohnscollege.edu. Previously, the col
lege’s student-designed site
diverged into two separate
paths for the Santa Fe and
Annapolis campuses right after
the home page. This new site
was designed from the start to
present St. John’s as one college
with two campuses. Thus what
is emphasized is the common
curriculum and the prevailing
Johnnie culture.
The front-page tour is also a
departure. The links in this
Web tour introduce Johnnies
and their wide range of reasons
for attending the college, the
unique and lively community of
learners, the Santa Fe and
Annapolis communities, and
the chair thing. Alert visitors
will also find surprises-“Easter
eggs” in Web lingo-on the
front page.
The new Web site was
designed to introduce the college
to prospective students and to
better serve alumni, current stu
dents, parents, faculty and staff,
and the communities of Annapo
lis and Santa Fe. The alumni sec
tion, developed with extensive
input from Alumni Association
president Glenda Eoyang and a
team of alumni testers, offers
something particularly useful: a
secure, password-protected
online Alumni Register.
Previously, the college issued
a printed directory of alumni
every five years. With support
and guidance from the associa
tion, the college now offers this
directory online. The search for
mat allows alumni to look up
classmates, find alumni in a new
city, or identify a group of alum
ni working in a particular field.
Like many areas of the Web site,
the directory is a work in
progress. Information in the
Register is drawn from two
separate databases, and the
program the college uses to
“marry” the data often falls
short of the ideal. The college’s
Information Technology and
advancement staffs are working
to remedy this. The more alumni
who use the database to update
their records, the more accurate
the register will be.
A few caveats: to protect
alumni privacy and restrict the
directory to alumni, the system
currently requires the college to
authenticate each user who
attempts to log
in. Once an
alumnus regis
ters, it will take
college staff
about two busi
ness days to pro
vide a password
that will grant
access. Similarly,
any changes
made to an indi
vidual record will
take a few days to
appear. Alumni
can choose at any
time to restrict
their information
to “name only”
or to not appear
in the Register.
If you encounter any
difficulty with the Register or
the Alumni section, or have
thoughts about how the Web
site can better serve alumni,
contact either of the alumni
directors: in Annapolis, Jo Ann
Mattson at 410-626-2531; in
Santa Fe, Roxanne Seagraves at
505-984-6103.
Diving with Sharks in South Africa
OR Wrestling with Plato in Santa Fe?
Along with articles about
pumping iron and healthy eat
ing, the April edition of Men’s
Health listed Santa Fe’s Sum
mer Classics among its “25
Greatest Getaways for Men.”
“We’ve found the best places
you’ve never been,” the article
begins-“high-point adventures
you can plan right now and
brag about for years.” The fea
ture lists opportunities such as
climbing the sand dunes of
Namibia, cage-diving with
Great White sharks in South
Africa, and piloting a subma
rine in Mexico. Studying the
classics at St. John’s sounds
pretty cool, too: “Do you really
want to check out of this life
without having known what
Shakespeare, Mozart, and Tol
stoy were going on about? Take
{The College-
a crash course in the human
experience-and spend a sab
batical summer to rememberby registering at St. John’s Col
lege, where laymen are invited
to delve into the great works of
man in small classes....”
This year’s Summer Classics
offerings are luxuriously eclec
tic, combining classics of the
East and West with modern
fiction and a generous serving
of music.
The first week, July rr-i6,
features Joseph Conrad and
Henry James, Xenophon, and
Freud in the morning; in the
afternoon participants take on
the stories and short novels of
Dostoevsky and Gregorian
Chant,
During week two, July 18-23,
morning session participants
St. John’s College ■ Spring 2004 }
can choose from Mozart or Lao
Tzu, or Jane Austen paired with
Shakespeare. Afternoon partic
ipants can take on Copernican
meditations, the short stories
of Thomas Mann, or the
Platonic dialogues Laches,
Charminides, otEuthyphro.
The third week, July 25-30,
features a.m, offerings of
Mahler, the Yoga Visitha, and
Spinoza. In the afternoon par
ticipants can study Maurice
Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenolo
gy ofPerception, Montaigne
essays, or Faulkner’s Absalom!
Absalom!
The full schedule of seminars
and tutors are available on the
college Web site: www.sqohnscollege.edu.
�{From the Bell Towers}
Journalistic Johnnies
The
Gadfly
What Dfcl You Do During the Hurricane?
The Moon ^z/z^/The Gadfly/
Politics, Poetry, Punditry
Of the four individuals who
edited the student newspapers in
Annapolis and Santa Fe this past
academic year, not one has the
shghtest interest in pursuing a
journahsm career. Yes, it had
crossed their minds at one point
or another, hut they have all
talked themselves out of it.
Cathy Keene, a rising junior
in Annapolis who helped edit
The Gadfly for two years, admits
to being a deadhne junkie and
loves being in the know on
controversies or breaking news.
But one summer spent working
at a magazine convinced her
she should consider another
way to make a living. “Too
much stress,” she explains.
Ian McCracken, her co-editor
this year, is graduating and head
ing to law school. Santa Fe Moon
co-editor Jonathan Morgan,
a senior, is more interested in
biotechnology; senior Margaret
Garry is now leaning toward law
school and politics.
So, if it’s not a career goal that
tethers these individuals to to to
12 hours a week of writing, edit
ing, and production headacheson top ofwork-study jobs and
all the regular rigors of the
Program- what is it?
“1 have no idea why 1 do it,”
Keene admits. “We’re all
friends at The Gadfly, and it’s
really fun getting it out every
week. It gives me a real connec
tion to the Polity.”
“We get to produce this little
snapshot of St. John’s,” says
Garry. “And it’s really cool
seeing the Moon come together,
from somebody’s idea to
publication.”
The two periodicals differ
significantly in graphic style,
content, and tone. The Gadfly is
heavy on politics and Polity
issues; fiction and poetry are
more hkely to turn up in the
Moon (though it doesn’t shy
away from hard news either).
The Gadfly savors the backand-forth of intellectual argu
ments between two people
j
that can span several issues.
In the Moon, the “campus
moralist” expounds on issues
of student conduct; The Gad
fly has “You Make the Gall,”
athletic director Leo Pickens’
regular sports rules quiz.
Consider some of the offer
ings in Volume 8, Issue 4, of the
Moon', an opinion piece honor
ing military veterans; a feature
on the Web site bartcop.com, a
first-person parody of a seminar
on The Runaway Bunny, an
explanation of the Student
Review Board, a think piece
about the value of studying clas
sical languages, an investigative
report on problems concerning a
Common Room, and a science
fiction fantasy offering on
“Poster Wars.”
And Volume 25, Issue 20, of
The Gadfly: of review of tutors’
performance of The Birds', an
extensive piece on a cover-up by
the liberal media, three-and-ahalf pages of letters to the edi
tors, a review of Mr. Grenke’s
Friday-night lecture on Kant,
and “Why 1 Hate George W.
Bush, the Final Installment,”
including the author’s offer of a
cup of coffee for those who
would sit down and talk with him
about their opposing views.
Both publications attracted
controversy this year. The Gad
fly was delayed when assistant
dean Judith Seeger and student
services director Joy Kaplan
decided two stories should not
run. One included potentially
libelous material, the other con
fidential college information.
Seeger doesn’t see her role as
a watchdog; she reviews the
publication with an eye to
{The College-
protecting the college from law
suits. “We have occasionally
seen things that we think are
sometimes cruel, and we’ll
say ‘do you really want to put
that in your paper?’ And some
times they have listened and
reconsidered.”
The Gadfly was also blasted
for running a sham review
submitted by two students on a
movie they called “Tough Jew.”
“What really got people mad was
the photo we ran with it-Leo
Strauss. The cutline was: ‘Leo
Strauss: tough?’ One tutor wrote
in and said, basically, ‘how dare
you?’ We were totally blown
away by the response. We
defended ourselves, and then
we learned the movie was a
fake-we looked even stupider.
It was a learning experience,”
Keene says.
The Moon editors also had a
learning experience in the
Santa Fe campus response to
the newspaper’s “2003 Dirty
Poetry Contest” issue last fall.
The issue included photographs
of female students that some in
the campus community consid
ered racy; others considered
them degrading.
“There were several different
objections to the issue from
faculty members, the administra
tion, even a couple of students,”
Morgan says. “I think the most
valid point is that showing
certain students in that frame
work contributed to kind of an
uncomfortable classroom
environment. I hadn’t really
St. John’s College • Spring 2004 }
thought it was that immense of a
deal. People have bodies.”
After Morgan and Garry sent a
letter to the faculty apologizing
for the issue, and promising to
be more responsive in the
future, a proposed resolution
condemning the Moon turned
into a resolution supporting the
newspaper. “I regret that we
offended some people, but I
still think it was a great issue
because it got people’s atten
tion,” he says.
While both publications
accept advertisements, they’re
not self-supporting and, like
other student groups, get fund
ing allocated by the college.
McCracken believes the publica
tions might be better if they were
independent and funded by ad
revenue. “Given all the guidefines, I sometimes think it would
be easier if we weren’t affiliated
with the school. I know of people
who would write more things if
they knew their copy wasn’t
going to be reviewed by the
administration first,” he says.
Morgan hopes future Moon
editors work to maintain the
publication as a voice for
students. “I like that the Moon
doesn’t have a strict focus,
that we can have poetry and
artwork, a commentary on
Dante’s Inferno or the Iliad,
philosophical pieces and funny
pieces,” he says. “I like the
creativity. ”4-Rosemary Harty
�{From the Bell Towers}
5
A Meeting of Mids: Students Launch
Joint Seminars with the Naval Academy
The Johnnies wore
jeans and t-shirts
and lounged
comfortably at the
seminar table. Bolt
upright in their
chairs, white caps
set neatly in front of
them on the table,
the midshipmen
were clad in their
dark uniforms and
polished shoes.
As they spoke, they
looked to the semi
nar leaders, tutor
Louis Miller and
Naval Academy
Professor Lt. David
Bonfili, and resisted
the urge to raise
their hands.
The text before
the group of to students was
Thoreau’s “On Civil Disobedi
ence.” Miller’s opening ques
tion drew from Thoreau’s
words: “Can there not be a
government in which
majorities do not virtually
decide right and wrong,
but conscience?-in which
majorities decide only those
questions to which the rule of
expediency is applicable?”
For two hours, students
grappled with the text not as
students from a military
academy or liberal arts
college, but as intelligent,
self-directed individuals eager
to grasp the heart of an idea.
The discussion quickly drew
out strong responses, but it
didn’t evolve into a debate
between students from the two
institutions. Thoreau’s stance
on not paying taxes and his
views about resisting an unjust
government were seen by
some of the midshipmen as
ideological luxuries. One
midshipman was distinctly
annoyed by what he described
as Thoreau’s “arrogant” ideal
Junior Rachel Hall
AND Midshipman
David Buck
ism. “He’d like to be a martyr,
but he’s not,” said a midship
man who pointed out that
Thoreau did not resist when
his friends bailed him out of
jail. And several studentsJohnnies and mids alikedisagreed with Thoreau’s
stance that it was not his
“business” to petition the
government to remedy what
he viewed as unjust laws.
Saida Johnnie, “Thoreau
believes that we won’t need gov
ernment if we’re enlightened.”
Enlightenment is a fine
thing, a midshipman coun
tered. But who will build the
roads? Can we convene a
government just when we need
one to accomplish some
particular goal? Can we call
up a military force only when
under attack?
One of the midshipmen said
that governments do make bad
decisions and meddle in per
sonal liberty; citizens should
protest when a government’s
actions are unjust. “There are
people who don’t have any
thing to do with me making
{The College.
decisions about how I live my
life,” she said.
“Not all of us,” said another
midshipman, “can be Martin
Luther King or Gandhi. If
everyone stopped supporting
the government, I don’t know
where we’d be today.”
After the seminar, the
group gathered in the Great
Hall with the participants of
the five other seminars, about
70 in total. Midshipman David
Buck attended all three semi
nars, partly out of interest in
the readings, but also because
his girlfriend, St. John’s junior
Rachel Hall, helped to organ
ize them. Hall hit on the idea
when she began reading Sun
Tsu’s The Art of War last year
and found she wanted to dis
cuss it with a group of people.
She brought the idea to Navy
Professor David Garren, and
Garren helped recruit Navy
co-leaders and organize the
seminars. “He was very enthu
siastic about it,” said Hall,
who found St. John’s tutors
were also pleased to partici
pate. The first seminar, in
St. Jo hn’s College ■ Spring 2004 }
January 2003, was
on Sun Tsu’s The Art
of War. Johnnies
went to the Naval
Academy to discuss
Plato’s Crito last fall.
Jacob Thomas,
a junior, found the
Thoreau seminar the
best of the three so
far, because mid
shipmen had caught
on to the dynamic of
seminar. In discus
sion of Sun Tsu,
their superior
military knowledge
tended to lead them
to dominate the conversations,
he said.
“But this time, they really
became involved in the discus
sion and in Thoreau’s ideas,
which was wonderful,” said
Thomas.
“It’s good for our students to
be exposed to each other,” said
Lt. Bonfili, a political science
professor. “I see the diversity
of opinions coming out.”
Having encountered John
nies during waltz parties,
croquet, and Reality, Buck
has been impressed with the
intellectual side of St. John’s.
Still, he added, “Johnnies are
crazier than mids.”
Like croquet, the joint
seminars seem to have become
another tradition, says junior
Mark Ingham, who helped
organize the seminars. “The
more you talk with the mid
shipmen, the less intimidated
you are by the uniform,”
he said.
-Rosemary Harty
�{From the Bell Towers}
6
News and
Announce
and in Santa Fe from 1989-96
before she came to Annapolis
in 1997-
ments
Steve Linhard, assistant
Appointments
In the Graduate Institutes,
effective June i: Tutor
Krishnan Venkatesh
becomes director in Santa Fe;
tutor Joan Silver the director
in Annapolis. Venkatesh has
been a tutor since 1989. He
earned a bachelor’s in English
from Magdalene College,
Cambridge. He spent more
than three years conducting
postdoctoral research in
Shakespeare and Renaissance
English at the University of
Muenster, West Germany, and
later taught at Shanxi Universi
ty, People’s Republic of China,
where he helped develop an
ESL curriculum.
Silver earned her bachelor’s
degree from the State Univer
sity of New York, College at
Old Westbury, a master’s from
St. John’s, and a doctorate in
Theology and the Arts from
Graduate Theological Union.
She was a tutor in Annapolis
from 1974-77, a tutor for several
summers beginning in 1985,
Middle States Review
Annapolis Appointment
St. John’s in Annapolis has earned a lo-year reaccreditation
from the Middle States Commission on Higher Education.
The college’s accreditation was reaffirmed at the March
meeting of the commission and followed a review of the
college’s extensive self-study.
A report from the evaluation team affirmed that St. John’s
is carrying out its educational objectives. The college
community found its opening words most gratifying:
“St. John’s College (SJC) deserves its reputation as one of
the best and most distinctive institutions in the United States,
indeed the world. The College has a long and unswerving
history of commitment to a single ideal: the life of the mind
as principally represented in the great books of the Western
tradition. Everything in the educational program evolves from
this ideal and it has worn well over many years. By design,
change occurs slowly at SJC and this deliberateness buffers the
College from the swings of fad and momentary diversions that
often plague other sectors of higher education.”
The college this year also sought accreditation from the
American Academy for Liberal Education; a decision from the
AALE is pending.
treasurer in Annapolis, will fill
the position of treasurer on the
recommendation of St. John’s
President Christopher Nelson
and the campus faculty. The
college’s board approved the
appointment. Linhard came
to the college in 1997 as con
troller. Prior, he was the
accounting manager/
controller for the Chesapeake
Bay Foundation.
New Staff
in
Santa Fe
Doug Single joins the college
as director for college-wide
major gifts. He brings
extensive fund-raising and
management experience to
the new position. After earn
ing bachelor’s and master’s
degrees in political science
from Stanford University,
Single became associate
director of athletics and
assistant football coach at
Stanford; he also served as
athletic director at Southern
Methodist and Northwestern
universities. Single recently
served as chief executive
officer of the David Douglas
Marketing Group in San
Francisco.
John Hartnett (SF83) has
been named communications
director. Hartnett attended
the Santa Fe campus before
going on to earn undergradu
ate degrees in philosophy and
economics from the University
of Illinois. He also holds a
master’s degree in writing
from Hamline University in
St. Paul, Minn. Most recently,
he was the president of his
own marketing communica
tions company. 4"
Consider Consolidating
Alumni with student loans may
want to look into consolidating
them into one fixed-rate loan,
the college’s Financial Aid
offices advise. Student-loan
consolidation involves paying
off current federal education
loans in full and creating a new
loan with a new interest rate
and repayment term up to 30
years. Federal Stafford and
PLUS loans charge variable
rates that are set by formulas
based on the last auction of 91day U.S. Treasury bills in May.
Federal consolidation loans,
however, carry fixed rates that
are based on the rates of the
loans being consolidated.
In recent years, the variable
student loan rate, determined
by the government, has been
at record lows (3.4 percent
on Stafford loans in May), but
interest rates are expected to
rise this year. Parents of college
students who have taken out
PLUS loans may also consoli
date these loans at current
rates.
There’s another reason to act
quickly, says Caroline Chris
tensen, financial aid director in
Annapolis. Legislation expected
{The College -Sf.
to come before Congress as part
of its renewal of the Higher
Education Act this year could
turn that low fixed rate into a
variable rate in the future.
Proponents of the bill say the
government is losing millions
in subsidies it pays to lenders
and want the savings directed
to other aid programs for
currently-enrolled students.
However, new alumni face
complications. “Ifyou consoli
date during your six-month
grace period, you lock in at the
in-school rate, currently 2.82
percent,” Christensen says.
John ’5 College ■ Spring 2004 }
“What ifyou lock in at 2.82 per
cent, then rates drop on June
30? You’ll have a higher rate for
the fife of your loan, in addition
to losing remaining months of
interest-free grace period when
you consolidate. So you want to
wait until very close to the end
of your grace period.”
Contact your lender or the
Financial Aid office on either
campus: in Annapolis,
410-626-2503; in Santa Fe,
505-984-6058. Information on
researching and comparing
loan programs is available at
www.estudent.com.
�{From
the
Bell Towers}
Board Approves Polity Amendments
Among the many actions it took
at its quarterly meeting in April,
the college’s Board of Visitors
and Governors approved a
change to the college Polity,
the governing document for
St. John’s College.
The Management Committee-which oversees non-aca
demic policy and coordinates
administration of the two campuses-was made a permanent
part of the St. John’s governing
structure. The Management
Committee was established in
3000 and included as an addi
tion to the Polity with a five-year
sunset clause. The board voted
to delete the sunset clause, thus
continuing the committee.
This action represents the
culmination of a several-year
review of the Pohty, which also
resulted in a rewording to reflect
gender-neutral language and
10 amendments being passed in
April 3003. One of these amendments-the addition of sexual
orientation to the college’s
non-discrimination poUcy-had
been controversial a decade ago.
During a review of the Polity in
r993, the board failed to adopt
an amendment that specifically
prohibited discrimination on
the basis of sexual orientation.
Five years later, in 1998, the
issue was not even raised.
“The first time it came up, it
was so bitter, so divisive, that
people were afraid to bring it
up again,” said Jean FitzSimon
(A73), a lawyer who served on
the board committee that took
up the most recent review of
the document. Original resist
ance to adding to the document
was centered on the belief that
discrimination based on sexual
orientation was covered by
other laws, and therefore did
not need to be spelled out,
FitzSimon said.
FitzSimon and other commit
tee members believed other
wise: “Even if it [discrimination]
isn’t happening at the college,
the Pohty is the Polity. We talked
about the public nature of this
document, and we felt that this
was something that had to be
speUed out,” FitzSimon said.
This time around the Polity
Review Committee, led by Greg
Curtis, did bring up the issue as
it began to work through possi
ble revisions in 3003. This com
mittee recommended, and the
Board adopted, a revised
non-discrimination clause:
“There shall be no discrimi
nation at St. John’s College in
appointments, conditions of
employment, admissions,
educational policy, financial aid
programs, athletics, or other
activities, on the basis of race,
religion, age, sex, national
origin, color, disabiUty and/or
physical handicap, sexual orien
tation, or other characteristic
protected by any applicable
federal, state or local law.”
In the Nick of Time
A TRAFFIC STOP ON THEIR WAY TO THE PRESIDENT’S HOUSE NEARLY MADE THIS GROUP OF AnNAPOLIS SENIORS
MISS THE MIDNIGHT DEADLINE FOR TURNING IN THEIR SENIOR ESSAYS. (ThE POLICE OFFICER WAS UNIMPRESSED
WITH THE students’ PLEAS TO LET THEM GO ON THEIR WAY.) FrOM LEFT TO RIGHT ARE DeAN HaRVEY
Flaumenhaft, Justin Berrier, Hayden Brockett, Melissa Thomas, and Joseph Method. A rattled
Thomas is more than ready to hand over copies of her essay, “Reconciling Faith with Action.”
{The College
■ St. Jo hn ’5 College ■ Spring 2004 }
7
Taxing
Bachelors
As Maryland’s legislators grap
pled this spring with measures
to raise money for the state’s
coffers, word of an innovative
approach from the past-a tax on
bachelors-reached The College,
thanks to Richard Israel, retired
Maryland assistant attorney
general.
While browsing through pages
of General Assembly proceed
ings, Israel found that in 1761
legislators issued a series of
proposals for funding a college
that eventually resulted in
St. John’s. The “batchelor’s tax”
was expected to have a value of
500 pounds or more, according
to a bill aimed at acquiring
Bladen’s Folly, now McDowell
Hall. Listed also were 600
pounds to be raised through
licenses for public ordinaries
(pubs), 150 pounds from taxes
on wheel carriages, and 90
pounds through fees on card
and billiard tables.
The idea wasn’t just to raise
money, but also to encourage
single men to settle down, as
Israel found in the Acts of the
General Assembly, 1755-56:
“Forasmuch as Divine Institu
tions ought to be strictly
observed in every well-regulated
Government, and as that in
Regard to the entering into the
holy Estate of Matrimony may
tend to the more orderly Propa
gation of Mankind, it ought, not
only in a rehgious, but pohtical
View, to be promoted, and the
continuing in a State of Gehbacy
discountenanced, especially in
every Infant Country.”
The measure, however, was
never signed into law. After
several subsequent attempts,
St. John’s was chartered as a
college in 1784, soon after the
end of the Revolutionary War.
The charter provided that the
college would be financed by the
revenue from several different
taxes.
— Rebecca Wilson
(AGI82)
�{From the Bell Towers}
8
Fun-Raising, East and West
Art, Wine, and Good Conversation Brighten Winter's Dark Nights
Two events in January show that alumni and other college support
ers won’t pass up a chance for self-improvement along with the
opportunity to stay connected to St. John’s. Fine wine and good
food can’t hurt, either.
In Santa Fe, Larry Turley (SF69) brought the extraordinary
wines of Turley Wine Cellars to a benefit hosted by the Philos
Society-a group of local patrons of the college. The event had
wine-lovers buzzing over Turley’s hard-to-find wines, paired with
gourmet food.
Philos Society Event
Features Turley Wines
“Wine is the glass ofthe mind. ’’-Erasmus
A wine dinner hosted by the
Philos Society of St. John’s
College brought too people
from the Santa Fe community
to the rooftop garden room of
La Fonda Hotel in January.
While the opportunity to learn
more about St. John’s College
and fine wines attracted many,
it was clear that the main
attractions were the Napa
Valley wines provided by Larry
Turley (SF69). After all,
there’s a two-year waiting list
for Turley’s coveted wines,
such as a aooi bottle of The
White Coat. The event was
limited to 100, and the tickets,
at $125 apiece, sold out well in
advance.
Now the owner of Turley
Wine Cellars, Turley earned a
medical degree and became an
emergency-room physician
after leaving St. John’s.
He co-founded the Frog’s Leap
Winery in 1981, and then
moved on to open Turley Wine
In Baltimore, Philanthropia (the Alumni Development
Council) and President Christopher Nelson hosted a “Conversa
tion About the State of the College’’ at the Baltimore Museum of
Art. Wintry weather in December cancelled the first attempt at
the BMA event, but the rescheduled event was well-attendedencouraging Philanthropia to plan future stimulating occasions
to keep Johnnies informed and involved in the college.
Cellars with his sister,
Helen (A67).
The hotel’s wine
experts and chefs
worked to create the
night’s dinner menu.
The White Coat was
paired with appetizers;
langostino and goat
cheese empanadas with
toasted pinon-green
apple slaw. Next came
the duck confit on
greens tossed with chile
cascabel-basil vinai
grette, served with a
aooi Pesenti Vineyard
Zinfandel. Paired with
the third course
(pan-roasted chicken
breast with white truffle
demi-roasted garlic
mashed potatoes and sauteed
spaghetti squash) was a aooi
Hayne Vineyard Zinfandel.
A aooi Library Vineyard
Petite Syrah accompanied
cheese and fruit.
The event raised $6,500 for
the college’s Annual Fund.
Left: Philos board member
Charmay Allred shares her
APPRECIATION FOR LaRRY
Turley’s wine.
Above: Richard Morris,
A PAST BOARD MEMBER OF THE
COLLEGE, AND
JeFF BiSHOP
(HA96), VICE PRESIDENT FOR
COLLEGEWIDE ADVANCEMENT,
PERUSE SILENT AUCTION
OFFERINGS.
{The College.
John’s College ■ Spring 2004 }
Turley donated some of the
wine for the event and provided
the rest at cost. In his holo tie
and denim shirt, he circulated
among the guests, talking
about wine and wine-making
and graciously accepting
compliments from wine lovers
grateful for a chance to experi
ence something extraordinary.
The Philos Society of
St. John’s College was founded
to foster and enhance commu
nication, understanding, and
joint activities between the
college and its community.
Co-chairs of the board are
Donn Duncan, M.D., and
Robert Zone, M.D.
�{From the Bell Towers}
9
Friday at the BMA
WITH Chris
Thanks to Philanthropia (the Alumni Development Council)
and Annapolis President Christopher Nelson, BaltimoreWashington alumni had an opportunity to enjoy a private viewing
of the Baltimore Museum of Art’s Cone Collection. Afterwards,
the 82 alumni gathered for conversation, refreshments catered by
The Classic Catering People, owned by Harriet Dopkin (A77), and
an update on the college by the president.
The sights and sounds of the evening echoed the style of the
Cone Collection, creating an impressionistic tableau of delights
for the eyes, treats for the tongue, fellowship for the soul, and
ample food for thought. Thus, as an homage to the Cone
Collection, The College offers its report in the style of the
impressionists.
The Art
time in Paris among the expatriates. It was as though he had memo
rized all the accompanying notes on the walls. It was great fun hstening to him-he completed the experience for me. I’m not sure going
through the Cone Collection will ever be the same.
“Although I didn’t ask a question of Chris Nelson, I liked hear
ing what he had to say, and I know that people felt free to ask him
anything about the college. I was reminded that I still don’t know
very much about the Santa Fe campus and what its financial needs
are, or what those needs grow out of.”
Matisse, Purple Robe and Anemones, Interior, Flowers, and
Parakeets
Picasso, Mother and Child
Cezanne, Mont Sainte-Victoire Seenfrom theBibemus Quarry
Monet, Waterloo Bridge
Van Gogh, Landscape With Figures
Fete avec Biere et Vin
Caprese skewers of pesto-rubbed grape tomatoes, baby mozzarella,
and kalamata olives
Dried fig, walnut, and goat cheese tapenade
Tenderloin roulades with spinach and portobello mushrooms
Jumbo lump crab fondue with a hint of dry sherry and old bay
Miniature fruit tarts, petite brownies, raspberry almond bars, and
fresh strawberries
DeGroen’s micro brew. Banrock Station wine, coffee, tea
Report of the President
Applicant pool up, attrition down.
Graduate Institute-healthy.
A new dormitory with water view is being built for 48 students.
The Santa Fe Initiative invests $4.5 million in the campus and
student life.
Gratitude for The Hodson Trust’s
$10 million grant, which funded
the Mellon renovation and new
dormitory.
Two or three additional major gifts
this year: a possibility.
The help and support of aU alumni
at all levels of giving: priceless.
President Christopher Nelson with Mark Lindley (A67).
Stacey Andersen (AGI93): “While we were wandering through the
Cone Collection, we noticed it was noisy: not normal museum
behavior. Yet we were expected to talk. There’s a commonality
we’ve run into with people who’ve gone to St. John’s. There’s a
shared dialogue. It’s a tone that was set and carried throughout
the evening. I think that’s what led to the discussion that contin
ued after Chris Nelson gave his introductory talk. We thought the
venue for an alumni function was fantastic. Is there abetter place
to unleash a group of Johnnies than in a museum? Thank you for
giving us the text! ”
- SUS3AN Borden, A87
The Reviews
Sara Stuart (Ago): “Mark Lindley
(A67) must have gone through the
Cone Collection before Brad (A89)
and I arrived. He was able to teU us
about all of the paintings and art
objects, and about the Cone sisters’
Above: The feast
Right: Sara Larson Stuart (Ago),
Brad Stuart (A89), and Philanthropia
EVENT CHAIR Steph Takacs (A8g)
{The College.
5t. John’s College ■ Spring 2004 }
�{Letters}
Febbie Question Answered
Wendell Finner’s account of his query
concerning SJC’s lack of Eastern authors
(Winter 2004) brought back a memory of
Douglas Allenbrook that 1 cherish more as
political correctness continues to elimi
nate free speech.
During convocation for the Febbie 1980
class, one student asked about the lack of
Eastern authors. Without hesitation, and
with a charming smile, Mr. Alienbrook
replied “...the only thing good that has
come out of the East was the Sun.” Memo
ries like these convince me that St. John’s
College is more important than ever to
liberal education and free thought.
Steven D. Brower
(A83)
The Lost Languages
It was a joy and consolation to read the
article about the intensive Latin summer
classes in the Fall 2003 issue of
The College. It made up for the allegation
by a recent commencement speaker that
the students in front of him were lucky to
have the best education: liberal arts,
i.e. trivium and quadrivium-or, as my
Munich editor explained to colleagues at
the Beck publishing house, the “Septem
Artes”'we did at this interesting college in
America. Yes, the liberal arts, all seven of
them, and four foreign languages, the
commencement speaker said: Greek
and Latin and German and French.
The graduates kept a straight face.
Latin had already been dropped from the
curriculum when I joined St. John’s in
i960. German survived another couple of
years; then it, too, was gone. I taught one
of the last classes. It was a pleasure, and a
profitable one. We read bits of the Luther
translation of the Bible, the beginning of
Genesis and the opening of the Gospel of
John, and the juniors recalled some of the
Greek New Testament. We read Lessing
and a little Kant (with the surprising
earthiness of his vocabulary); we read
some Goethe; some of the rhymed caution
ary tales of Heinrich Hoffmann...and stuck
to texts that seemed more memorable and
discussable.
There was a young man in that class, Jim
Forrester (A62). He took the very first
[translation], six weeks into the first
semester. I was amazed at the result, which
included a perfect translation of a page
from Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy. He
translated it into real English, not translaterese, and showed an astonishing feel
''Yes, sing ye and
chant id andyou il learn to
speak and read it.. ”
Beate Ruh m von Oppen
for nuances. Next time the class met I
asked Mr. Forrester if he had been a begin
ner when we began six weeks ago. He said:
“Yes”-and after a moment’s reflection he
added: “I’d sung some Bach.”
Bach makes the language, especially
the biblical language, Luther’s German,
memorable. It sticks in the mind-even
as some of Picander’s poetry in the
St. Matthew Passion does, or perhaps just
first words like “Buss undReuf though
the Gospel of Matthew itself is more
memorable, e.g., “Der Geist ist willig,
aber das Fletsch ist schwach ” quotable
and even usable in daily life...
That remark by Jim Forrester taught me
that singing is the best way to learn a
language. Perhaps poetry, anything that
scans is the next best. So we now leave
German (and Latin) to the freshman
chorus and the other, voluntary singing
groups. Yes, sing ye and chant it! - and
you’ll learn to speak and read it...
Beate Ruhm von Oppen
Tutor Emerita
Thailand’s War on Drugs
I wanted to address something that [Tiitor
Linda] Weiner said in describing her
summer in Thailand (Winter 2004).
Ms. Weiner suggested that Thailand
benefits from an “enlightened monarch”
and described the king’s policy of replac
ing opium farms with organic farms.
While the king may be enlightened, Thai
land’s Prime Minister and police force are
not. In Thailand’s own war on drugs, 2,245
people were killed in an anti-drug cam
paign from February to April 2003. The
police admitted to killing 50 themselves,
and many others were killed as they
returned from police stations. Thai
officials have neglected to investigate or
prosecute the killings. In August Prime
Minister Thaksin said, in reference to drug
smugglers crossing from Myanmar to
Thailand, “From now on if their trafficking
{The College-
St. John’s College • Spring 2004 }
caravans enter our soil, we won’t waste our
time arresting them, but we will simply kill
them.” This and other policy statements of
the Prime Minister suggest that more extra
judicial killings will come.
The international community, including
the U.N. Special Rapporteur on extrajudi
cial, summary or arbitrary executions;
Amnesty International; and the Drug
Policy Alliance, have expressed outrage
over the human rights abuses stemming
from Thailand’s war on drugs. I would hate
for Johnnies to get the impression that the
program described by Ms. Wiener is
indicative of Thai drug policy. More
information can be found in the Amnesty
International report “Thailand-Grave
Developments-Killings and Other
Abuses” available atwww.amnesty.org
Renate Lunn
Room
for
(A96)
Gauss
Doing year-end cleaning I chanced upon
Sheri McMahon’s letter in the Spring 2003
issue of The College. I guess it’s a recurring
topic among alumni who reflect upon the
mathematics tutorial.
I personally have often thought it a pity
not to pursue geometry a little further.
I always felt a historical approach to
Gauss’s Theorema Eregiurn on curved sur
faces or something like that might be pos
sible. Michael Spivak does something
along these lines in his Comprehensive
Introduction to Differential Geometry.
I always felt there was no greater figure left
out of the program than Gauss, that there
was a route to some of his work in geome
try that would be accessible to seniors, that
it was the perfect context for glimpses of
non-Euclidean geometry and general
relativity that were offered in the tutorial
(nearly three decades ago!), that it has a
perfect antecedent in the spherical
geometry of Ptolemy.
Mark Copper
(SF76)
Words and Deeds
Thank you for the article in the Winter
2004 issue on Santa Fe’s martial artists.
The Annapolis campus has also enjoyed the
Asian martial traditions over the years.
In 1977 tutor David Starr persuaded one of
his former philosophy students from the
University of Rhode Island, a prodigiously
talented gentleman named Robert Galeone, to move to Annapolis to teach the
Okinawan system of Uechi-ryu karatedo.
continued on nextpage
�{Letters}
I was Mr, Galeone’s first student at the col
lege club, which met in one of the handball
courts in Iglehart Hall on Tuesday and
Wednesday evenings, and Saturday morn
ings. Mr. Galeone, a 5th-degree black belt,
produced quite a few serious students over
the seven years that he led the dojo....
Today, Annapolis students interested in
aikido may join the U.S. Naval Academy’s
Aikido Club, which holds classes on both
the Naval Academy campus and in Iglehart
Hall. (For more information, see
http://www.geocities.com/navyaikido/.)
It seems to me that study and practice of
the martial arts, whether from Asia or the
West, is essential to the development of a
free citizen. Whether the pen is mightier
than the sword is not the right question.
Rather, why should the study of one pre
clude the study of the other? To paraphrase
a Japanese proverb, in the hands of an
educated individual, the sword and the pen
are one. Unfortunately, it is too easy for a
student of the liberal arts to acquire a great
and unjustified faith in the power of speech,
along with an all-too-ready skepticism
concerning action. Words need the support
of deeds. As Mr. Galeone once said, “The
body remembers what it does, and not what
you tell it.” Martial arts training provides
the student with the framework to become
as proficient in the world of action as he or
she is in the world of reason, by teaching
balance, grace, and poise, all while facing
an adversary. I hope that students on both
campuses will take advantage of the
opportunities to pursue these disciplines.
Jim Sorrentino (A8o)
Calendar Mysteries Revealed
I was quite amazed to open the 2004
calendar and find a photo of my high
school math teacher (February 2004).
He is Thomas Yoon (A58), and he taught
me trigonometry and led a philosophy
seminar at Scarborough School, in
Scarborough, N.Y. My guess is that it
was 1967. He was an inspiring teacher with
a great sense of humor, and was the one
who told me about St. John’s College.
Pippi Ellison
few lists I have. The whole scene was
contrived, which is why there is a smirk on
the face of the guy front center and guy
left. Girl center was trying to look serious
and guy rear was told to pose in an
awkward position. The people at the end of
the table were told to look at each other.
No one has the same book. The photos
were intended for a catalog redesign, or a
flyer for the admissions office.
I was the student aide for Marsha Drennon, then admissions director, and helped
find the students and arrange the furni
ture. Notice how there aren’t any empty
chairs? We did have a blast doing the series
of pictures around the campus.
Michael David
(SF87)
Dumping Concerns
While I found the “Night Crawlers” letter
(Winter 2004) somewhat amusing as a
piece of black humor, I was taken aback
that there was no editorial note as to the
state of affairs since the dumping
occurred. Has all that stuff been leaching
into the ground and water and possibly the
creek ever since with nothing being done,
or was it cleaned up at some later date?
If not, I think [the college] is morally, and
perhaps legally, bound to address the prob
lem. Surely, SJC is not so philosophically
preoccupied that it doesn’t care what it
does to our environment?
Natalie Chambliss (class
of
1964)
Editor’s Note:
Steve Linhard, treasurer on the Annapolis
campus, says thatfor an undetermined
period oftime, a dumping ground was sited
on the college’s back campus. When the
college investigated severalyears ago, it
uncovered bricks, broken china, bottles.
(Aya)
The May 2004 photo of students at a table
on the dining hall balcony was taken in
June or July 1985. It was a PR photo from a
whole set of photos taken that day all over
the campus. The students in the photo are
mostly January freshmen, though I can’t
remember or find their names in any of the
{The College-
St. John’s College ■ Spring 2004 }
cans, kitchen utensils, and similar domestic
refuse. “'Testpits were dug by an outside
survey company three summers ago, and
nothing ofany chemical nature was
found,” Linhard says. “In addition, core
samples were taken by a geological testing
firm to examine the soil contentforfeasibil
ityfor thermal conductivityfor the geother
mal heating systemfor the new dormitory.
These samples were examined and nothing
hazardous was discovered. ”
Errata
An article in the Fall 2003 issue stated that
Hans von Briesen attended and taught at
Stanford and the University of Rochester.
He attended the universities, but did not
teach at them.
The reading list on St. John’s history that
accompanied an article on the attempted
Navy takeover of St. John’s (Winter 2003)
should have included these works by
Charlotte Fletcher (HA69), former
librarian at the Annapolis campus: Cato's
Mirania: A Life ofProvost Smith, and
“St. John’s ‘For Ever’: Five Essays on the
History of King William’s School and
St. John’s College,” published in the
St. John'sReview (1990-91).
The College welcomes letters on issues of
interest to readers. Letters maybe edited
for clarity and/or length. Those under
500 words have a better chance of being
printed in their entirety.
Please address letters to: The College
Magazine, St. John’s College, Box 2800,
Annapolis, MD 21404 or The College
Magazine, Public Relations Office,
St. John’s College, 1160 Camino Cruz
Blanca, Santa Fe, NM
87505-4599Letters can also be
sent via e-mail to:
rosemary.harty
@sjca.edu.
�{Revelation}
la
REVELATION
and
REDEMPTION
hat is the revelation in Flannery
O’Connor’s “Revelation”?
That was the question
The College asked of a group of
tutors and others in the St. John’s
College community. The short
essays that follow are presented as thoughtful responses to
a question posed in search of gaining more insight into a
puzzling and multi-layered short story. If you have not read
“Revelation,” or read it long ago, put this feature aside
until you can.
W
Ripe for Revelation
by Joan Silver
Lastfall I received a letter from a stu
dent who said she would be “graciously
appreciative” if I would tell her “just
what enlightenment” I expected her to
getfrom each ofmy stories. Isuspect she
had apaper to write. I wrote her back to
forget about the enlightenment andjust
try to enjoy them. I knew that was the
most unsatisfactory answer I could
have givenbecause, ofcourse, shedidnt
want to enjoy them, shejust wanted to
figure them out.
In most English classes the short story
has become a kind of literary specimen
{The College -John’s
College ■ Spring 2004 }
to be dissected. Every time a story of
mine appears in a Ereshman anthology,
I have a vision ofit, with its little organs
laid open, like afrog in a bottle.
I realize that a certain amount ofthis
what-is-the-significance has to go on,
but I think somethinghas gone wrong in
theprocess when, for so many students,
the story becomes simply a problem to
be solved, something which you evapo
rate to get Instant Enlightenment.
A story isn I really very good unless it
successfully resistsparaphrase, unless it
hangs on and expands in the mind.
Properly, you analyze to enjoy, but ids
equally true that to analyze with any
discrimination, you have to have
enjoyed already.. ..”
Flannery O’Connor, Mystery and Manners.
I will assume that all who have read
Flannery O’Connor’s story, “Revela
tion,” have enjoyed it. We enjoy the
story, and her remarks above, somehow
as wholes, and also in their humorous
and penetrating details. In the spirit of
the above remarks, I would like to notice
numerous revelations which spring from
�{The Colleges?.
John’s College ■ Spring 2004 }
�14
{Revelation}
''In a crucial moment
ofthat vision, she
finds her own kind
bringing up the rear... ’
this story, which calls itself “Revelation” in
the singular. I hope that together they may
“hang on and expand in the mind.”
Perhaps the key revelation in the story is
the return to Mrs. Turpin of the enraged
question she asks of God, “‘Who do you
think you are?’”: “The question carried
over the pasture and across the highway
and the cotton field and returned to her
clearly like an answer from heyond the
wood.” This answer is a distillation of the
revelation already embedded in her earlier
questions: “‘How am I a hog and me both?
How am I saved and from hell too?’” At this
reply, Mrs. Turpin’s mouth opens (is it in
wonder or in understanding?), and she
does not speak. But this revelation is not
the end of the story.
Other revelations follow, mediated by a moment in which
she imagines the death of her husband, his truck hit by anoth
er, his “brains all over the road.” Seeing his truck return, she
herself begins to move, “hke a monumental statue coming to
life.” Only now do initial events of the story receive their
answering revelations.
An early revelation in the story is that “living demonstra
tions” are present in the world. When the story begins Mrs.
Turpin (who is “very large”) is entering the “very small”
waiting room of a doctor’s office; she is said to be a “living
demonstration that the room was inadequate and ridicu
lous.” As the story goes on, of course, we see that the waiting
room is exactly the right size for the events which take place
in it. A later echo which replies to this apparent “living
demonstration” immediately follows Mrs. Turpin’s “coming
to hfe.” The “old sow” and young hogs, above whose “pig
parlor” she confronts God, find their places in their “waiting
room” with ease: “They had settled all in one corner around
the old sow who was grunting softly. A red glow suffused
them. They appeared to pant with a secret hfe.” It is the sow
and the other pigs who become a real “living demonstra
tion” for Mrs. Turpin and for the reader. Her earher “glow
ering down” at the hogs and disdaining of others has become
a “gazing down”; she “remained there with her gaze bent to
them as if she were absorbing some abysmal life-giving
knowledge.”
{The College -
Two more echoes follow. The first is a
revelation and echo for Mrs. Turpin and
the reader alike; the second, for the read
er alone. Early on, Mrs. Turpin’s charac
ter is revealed by one of her inner
“games.” In one, she lies awake at night
“naming the classes of people.” She sep
arates and tries to rank human beings by
certain combinations of race and proper
ty, but the real people of her acquain
tance will not stay put in the places that
she gives them: “Usually by the time she
had fallen asleep all the classes of people
were moiling and roiling around in her
head, and she would dream they were all
crammed in together in a box car, being
ridden off to be put in a gas oven.” The
impulse from which such grading and judging spring leads
ultimately to the gas chamber-to spiritual and physical
death for all. This dream is echoed and transformed at the
end by Mrs. Turpin’s vision of the “vast horde of souls
rumbling toward heaven” in which all classes and kinds
are present. In a crucial moment of that vision, she finds
her own kind bringing up the rear: “she could see by their
shocked and altered faces that even their virtues were
being burned away.” Not the fire which makes the gas
chamber, but the fire of purgatory is needed. Note, too,
that hogs are easier to clean than humans; for pigs, only
water is needed.
The final echo is concerned with seeing (and with size).
Mrs. Turpin’s eyes were initially described as “little
bright black eyes . . . [that] sized up the seating situation”
and all else around her. After the vision just mentioned,
O’Connor tells us that her eyes are “small but fixed
unbfinkingiy on what lay ahead.” We may need to ask just
what is intended by “what lay ahead,” but, in this changed
description, we receive the revelation both that a kind of
steadfast looking is necessary for us, and that a transfor
mation of one’s manner of seeing in the world is possible,
(and that size-at least relative human size-does not
matter).
Among the many other revelations in the story, two
seem worthy of note in the context of the ones mentioned
above. The first concerns the catalyst for revelation, the
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�{Revelation}
second the capacity to receive it. The story shows revelation-or the beginning of it-coming from the strangest
source: Mary Grace. The suffering of one human being,
her anger and anguish, gives birth to grace for another.
And in Ruby Turpin the story shows inquiry, linked with
sin, as a potential path to revelation and grace. Mrs.
Turpin’s inner “games” embody inquiry in a strange form:
who might I have been if not myself; what is my place with
in all of humanity? They also, of course, reveal pride mas
querading as gratitude. This picture remains a revelation,
if a comic one, of what can make one ripe for revelation.
Joan Silver is a tutor and incoming director ofthe Graduate
Institute in Annapolis.
In the Eye
of
15
Judgment Day
by Pamela Kraus
Ruby Turpin knows what should be and does her part to
make it so. She notices every instance of the messy, dirty,
unregulated world. She has her faults, she knows that, but
she’s a respectable, church-going woman who always tries to
make things right. She keeps pigs-just a few of the preemi
nent unclean animal-but she’s built them a concrete pen, a
“pig-parlor,” to keep them from wallowing in mud and slop,
and she hoses them down regularly. On the day of this story
Ruby accompanies her husband Claud to the doctor and sizes
up the waiting room: it’s small and dirty and filled with
slovenly, careless people. To counter the disorder she exer
cises the best force she can, her good disposition generously
Since the emergency, a wrathful Mrs. Turpin has been
demanding why Mary Grace called her an old wart hog from
hell. Mrs. Turpin is convinced that Jesus sent her the mes
sage and, though she has negotiated with him before, for
once, she finds that defense is futile. She has no one to turn
to. She doesn’t trust the cotton-pickers, whose comments
she finds intolerable and full of flattery. She can’t confide in
Claud (whose name sounds like “clod,” and who can’t shore
up her failing faith). She shouts defiantly to Jesus, “Who do
you think you are?”
The sight of the sun setting in the back pasture, “looking
over the paling of trees like a farmer inspecting his own
hogs,” triggers the collapse of her carefully-tended beliefs.
She inspects her own hogs, who are glowing rosy in the cor
ner of the pig parlor, and takes in the “abysmal life-giving
knowledge” from them-sees, I think, that though there is
no one out there measuring each person for a future crown,
yet we have the present life. There is no doctor behind the
waiting-room door, about to call our names. Mrs. Turpin
sees the vast parade of people, carried to heaven on the pur
ple bridge shouting hallelujah. She knows, for the moment
at least, that this is nothing but a dream.
Heaven
by Basia Miller
Mrs. Turpin’s revelation is pretty dark. She has experienced
the dark before-at the end of her dreams, everyone is
crammed in a boxcar and sent off to a gas oven. Today when
she and Claud enter their own dirt road on the way back from
the doctor’s, she is ready to see her home destroyed, “a burnt
wound between two blackened chimneys.” A few moments
before the end, she imagines the pickup truck being crushed
and her husband’s and the fieldhands’ brains oozing out on the
road. Her final revelation seems, too, to be of a world
destroyed, a kind of apocalypse that nevertheless offers “life
giving knowledge.”
First, Mrs. Turpin’s vision was affected in the waiting room.
When Mary Grace sent the book flying at her head, Mrs.
Turpin saw things smaller first, then she saw everything larg
er. The impact was particularly powerful because Mrs. Turpin
sensed that the girl had a deep, timeless knowledge of her,
perhaps of her soul. We who have heard Mrs. Turpin talking
incessantly, all afternoon, about her own goodness have to
ask if much of this talk isn’t inspired by self-doubt. She’s con
verted everyone’s gestures, everyone’s shoes, green stamps, Basia Miller is a Santa Fe tutor.
and traces of snuff into material for affirming her worth in the
eye of heaven, like a person feeding an insatiable hunger.
{The College-
St. John’s College • Spring 2004 }
�i6
{Revelation}
''Thepurgatorial
vision reveals
all manner of
sinners lined up
ingroups...
bestowed, a veneer of nice manners and char
•
itable platitudes barely covering harsh judg
ments. This is her way of following the com
mandment Love Thy Neighbor. Both her
justice and her mercy are superficial rather
than utterly misplaced. They are poor imita
tions of the divine, not complete aberrations.
Yet they are not harmless: they hold her fast
in easygoing self-righteousness and could
forever blind her to herself.
Mary Grace is the only occupant of the wait
ing room who won’t submit to Ruby’s intru
sive geniality. An ugly, cranky, even mean
young woman, Mary Grace sees a deeper dis
order than Ruby sees, and her penetrating
eye is right on Ruby Thrpin. Mary Grace
waits in the waiting room but is sickened by
the world that surrounds her, as if she has
taken in its ugliness. She is most revolted at
Ruby, its banal and self-satisfied leading citi
zen. Seemingly lost to charity, or too bur
dened for it, she freely offers this world
her scorn.
Each of these judges is drawn to the other
from the first as to a perfect enemy. Mary
Grace rebuffs Ruby’s attempts at cordial
small talk, even when not directed to her, by making
grotesque faces. The affronts enliven Ruby’s insistence on
the virtue of good-naturedness. The garrulous, prettied-up
world of Ruby’s waiting room advances upon the stark,
friendless one defended by Mary Grace. When Ruby’s enthu
siasm reaches its peak, she bursts out in praise: “Thank you,
Jesus, for making everything the way it is! ” Mary Grace retal
iates. She launches her book at Ruby and goes for her throat.
Both fall in this battle. Mary Grace inflicts the blows, yet
she is the one sedated and removed to a hospital. The purple
swelling above Ruby’s eye and the marks on her throat are on
the surface; deeper is a more grievous wound. Not the book,
not the hands clenched around her throat, but the words
Mary Grace whispers as the two lock eyes hit home: “Go back
to hell where you came from, you old wart hog.” These words
“brooked no repudiation.” They strike Ruby’s center of grav
ity, confusing her sight and toppling her confidence. Ruby is
turned, readied for revelation; Mary Grace, an inadvertent
{The College-
cause of grace, goes to a fate we do not know.
The vision of an ugly wart hog besets Ruby
all afternoon. Driven by anger, confusion,
and need, she spills her story almost in spite
of herself to the Black cotton workers in her
employ. This veiled plea for compassion is
met with highly spirited but superficial concern-the kind of concern Ruby has been so
proud of and good at herself, especially with
the Blacks-and it angers her to receive it
from those she has considered so far beneath
her. She goes to her pig-parlor seething as
intensely as Mary Grace in the waiting room,
turns the hose on the pigs, and, like a comic
Job, thrusts question after question at God.
The questions begin in a forceful whisper,
“How am 1 a hog and me both?”, and reach a
summit of fury: “Who do you think you
are?”, the fundamental question to which a
vision is the mysterious answer.
The purgatorial vision reveals all manner
of sinners hned up in groups, each rejoicing
in its distinctive way, and puts Ruby in
her place. Ahead in line are the leapers
and rollickers; she, Claud, and the other
respectable people are last in the procession,
their virtues the sins being burned away. The vision is a
reminder of our essential unfitness to understand and follow
the commandment to love even when we desire to and a reve
lation of God’s inscrutable, comic ways. As Ruby stands gaz
ing upon “what lay ahead” and hearing at the crickets’ chirps
hallelujahs of praise, we wonder in what world Ruby now
is and whether it may embrace the edge that Mary Grace
inhabits.
99
Pamela Kraus, a tutor in Annapolis, also serves as editor of
the St. John’s Review.
The Private Hell
of
Ruby Turpin
by Cary Stickney
Without rereading the story, 1 want to say that the primary
revelation is what the girl in the doctor’s office says that
St. John’s College ■ Spring 2004 }
�{Revelation}
wounds Mrs. Turpin so: “You are a warthog from Hell!”
Ruby Turpin cannot forget it, and it brings on a kind of crisis
of faith, I presume because on some level Mrs. Turpin
acknowledges its truth. It is at least in part-the warthog
part-an inevitable consequence of existing as a creature in
the same cosmos with an infinitely good Creator. In this
sense I suppose even archangels are warthogs, compared to
the beauty of God. That the warthog is from Hell seems to me
to say that we have each taken the finite beauty and goodness
we might have had and thrown it away. That is, we are sin
ners, and we make a kind of hell for ourselves.
Looking back at the story I see that the girl in the waiting
room says, “Go back to Hell where you came from, you old
warthog!” Mrs. Thrpin had been revealing by her conversa
tion with the girl’s mother that she lives in a world of careful
ly maintained distinctions, and that she compensates herself
for the efforts she makes to be good by looking down on all
those who seem not to try as hard. She would not describe her
own world as a hell. But I see something hellish in the dream
we are told she sometimes has, in which her struggles to
17
maintain the picture of a well-ordered hierarchy of human
virtue and vice correlated with property ownership and
worth ancestry, to say nothing of skin color, give way to a
vision of a cattle-car crowded with every kind of human on
the way to a gas oven. In her waking hours, she sees a world
in which good people are the exception and things are get
tingworse. To be “saved,” as she believes she is, requires that
she think better of things than that, at least in an ultimate
sense, but it looks as if she has reduced God to a scorekeeper
and that her gratitude to have been created as the one we see
is dependent at least on her fear of and contempt for others.
The Wellesley girl, Mary Grace, may see that, and may mean
that she is far from heaven and fairly close to hell, so that it
would be easy to just go back. Of course being an effective
messenger may not require that the aptly named Mary Grace
fully understand the message she delivers.
Both the aspects of the revelation, that she is a warthog and
that she came from Hell, carry with them a redeeming and
mysterious grace: namely that in spite of our vanishingly
small claim to significance or beauty or even to being at all.
{The College -St John’s
College • Spring 2004 }
�i8
{Revelation}
we somehow do exist in the same cosmos with infinite beauty
and heing-God has made room for us and wants us to be.
That turns out to involve, in the Christian understanding,
that He has moreover forgiven us the waste of our time and
gifts, the pettiness and cruelty we might have avoided, and
that He offers us His love. What Mrs. Turpin demands to
know, namely how she can be herself and a hog too, or saved
and at the same time from hell, is the mystery that requires a
further revelation, or a deeper view of the one she has been
given.
In the story, Mrs. Turpin is hosing out the hog pen and
shaking her fist at God when the shape of the stream of water
momentarily comes to resemble a snake. She is at that
moment complaining to God that she might as well have
never tried to lead a good life at all, if she can be so insulted
and feel it so deeply; if, in a word, she is still just a warthog: in
spite of all her efforts still essentially no better than the worst
of sinners, the most lazy and wicked. This is a form of the
temptation to think that she should. Godlike, be able to make
herself, to accomphsh her own goodness and merit by her
unaided efforts, and thus, implicitly, to know good and evil:
to have the right to judge and condemn others presumably
less industrious or tasteful than herself. For if it does not ulti
mately matter what she does, and all saving power remains
with God, why has she troubled herself all these years? “Why
should we not sin the more, that Grace may abound?” asks
Paul, before repudiating the question.
The mystery and the final aspect of the revelation, granted
in her sunset vision, is that it does and does not matter. It
does: before she sees the highway into heaven she has seen
the setting sun like a farmer looking over the fence of the
treetops at his hogs, and she has seen her own hogs, clean
now and gathered around the old sow, the source of their
hves, and one kind of image of herself. She gazes “as if
through the very heart ofmystery,” and again, “as if she were
absorbing some abysmal, life-giving knowledge.” It is a
knowledge set off both by the previous sight of her husband’s
truck going down the road no bigger than a toy, liable at any
moment to be smashed, and by the fact of sunset itself. Even
without accident we are not here long. From the abyss, the
depths at greatest distance from God, she absorbs the knowl
edge that life-finite, particular, hog-ugly hfe-precisely in its
finitude, is beautiful, is full of God, its secret source. If those
hogs are beautiful, then so is she; it is right that she is who she
{The College-
is. But then it is equally right that others are who they are.
Her struggles to do right have not made her superior. When
she sees the horde of ascending souls, led by the crazy, lazy,
crippled, and off-key, she sees she had to make the efforts she
made to be who she is, not because God would not love her
otherwise, but because there must be all kinds of saved sin
ners, and it is a divine gift to be whatever kind you are.
It does not matter: the very virtues of the decent and
upright like herself are being burned away in the purging
fires of the ascent; that is, even their virtues are small and
small-minded in the hght of God’s love. That God’s love is not
hmited by human wickedness and yet does not annihilate the
significance of an individual life is part of the same revelation
as that an infinite being should make room for finitude to
begin with. Greation and redemption are revealed to be at
one.
Carey Stickney (A75) is a tutor in Santa Fe.
The Presence
of
Evil
by George Russell
Flannery O’Gonnor did not write about the lives of the
great, but the lives of the ordinary and the lowly. By conse
quence, the situations and actions of her characters are
most often the stuff of comic and not tragic report. One
finds himself laughing spontaneously at the human beings
in her stories. Nevertheless, she is not condescending to
her characters. She takes them seriously, holding them
accountable for their weaknesses and transgressions. They
may be ridiculous in the smallness of their views and
desires, but they suffer nonetheless for their sins, and one
is brought to feel for them in their sufferings and in the
realizations that their sufferings allow.
“Revelation” is a story about a day in the life of Ruby
Turpin, a farming woman who, as far as she knows, is
“saved” (“And wona these days I know I’ll we-era a
crown.”) and who, in her own words is “a respectable, hard
working, church-going woman.” From the first we are told
that Ruby Turpin is a woman, big in size (“I wish I could
reduce...”), blessed with a “good disposition” and “a little
of everything,” with the emphasis on “everything.” In the
story, we see her settled conclusions about the world
St. John’s College • Spring 2004 }
�{Revelation}
around her and her place and identity in that world and in
the divine plan come under an unexpected and jarring
attack during a visit with her husband to the doctor’s
office; and we witness a recovery which is as remarkable as
the fall.
A story with two distinct parts, “Revelation” in its first
part takes place in the waiting room of a doctor’s office.
The waiting room is emblematic of the shared human
condition. Human beings are susceptible to injury and
sickness. And their susceptibility is real; they get injured;
they get sick. However that maybe the case, the story is less
about bodily injury and illness than it is about another abo
riginal susceptibility, the proneness to sin and especially to
pride. It reminds one of the passage in the Bible from
On
the
Road to Damascus
by Michael Dink
The revelation that comes to Ruby, in the form of a book
thrown by Mary Grace that knocks her off her chair in the
doctor’s office, is in essence identical to that which came
to Saul, in the form of a flash of light that knocked him to
the ground on the road to Damascus. Prior to the revela
tion, Ruby and Saul shared a sense of their superiority to
certain other human beings, a superiority achieved by reg
ulating their conduct according to certain precepts and
recognized in the eyes of God. In Ruby this sense takes the
form of a self-congratulating condescension, in which she
sees herself as kind and tolerant to those inferiors, while
in Saul it took the more aggressive form of trying to pun
ish or reform those who had strayed from the right path.
When Ruby is called “a wart hog from hell” and Saul is
asked, “Why do you persecute me?” they are confronted
with the claim that they are sinners, certainly no better
than those they had despised, and perhaps even worse,
precisely because of the claim to righteousness implicit in
their despising, a claim that Saul, reborn as Paul, denies
that any human being can truthfully make.
Ruby struggles valiantly to deny this message, “But the
denial had no force.” She resents its being directed to her,
“a respectable, hard-working, church-going woman,”
19
Proverbs, “Pride goeth before destruction, and haughty
spirit before a fall.” The central dramatic incident that
takes place in the first part of the story occurs in the con
text of a conversation between three women, Mrs. Turpin,
a poor white woman, and the mother of a college student
named Mary Grace. The conversation of the women, taken
together with the reports of the narrator, reveals the pride
of the three women and of Mary Grace, but especially that
of Ruby Turpin.
About Mrs. Turpin we learn early on, that when she is
restless and unable to sleep, she has two nocturnal occupa
tions. In one, she seems to be acutely aware of the contin
gent character of her present life. Like Eve, who is tempted
by an alternative vision of the world, Mrs. Turpin’s imagi-
“though there was trash in the room to whom it might
justly have been applied.” A kiss from her husband and
flattery from the black womenfolk of their hired help fail
to assuage her resentment.
When she goes to the pig parlor and tries to cleanse the
pigs, she speaks out her resentment, evidently to God,
indicating that she does recognize the source of the reve
lation, despite her resistance to it. She continues to justify
herself, to defend her innocence, her charity, her superi
ority to lower orders of people. Her fury bursts forth in a
defiant challenge, “Gall me a hog again. From hell. Gall
me a wart hog from hell. Put that bottom rail on top.
There’ll still be a top and bottom.”
After seeing her husband’s truck in the distance as tiny
and vulnerable, she gazes at the hogs for a long time, “as if
she were absorbing some abysmal life-giving knowledge.”
Then she has a vision of a procession of souls marching
toward heaven. Leading the way are “the bottom rail,” all
the kinds of people she despised, “shouting and clapping
and leaping like frogs.” Behind them, with “great dignity”
but with “shocked and altered faces,” come people like
herself and Glaude, and she sees that “even their virtues
are being burned away.” In this final vision, she at last sees
how she is “saved and from hell too.”
Michael Dink fAyjJ is an Annapolis tutor.
{The College -5f. John ’5
College ■ Spring 2004 }
�ao
{Revelation}
Priestess and Visionary
by Elizabeth Engel
Mrs. Turpin’s revelation builds from the first face the girl
makes at her through Mrs. Turpin’s wonderful defiant
questions to God as she stands at the pig parlor; “What
do you send me a message like that for?” “How am I a hog
and me both? How am I saved and from hell too?” The set
ting sun, now far more mysterious than when Mrs. Turpin
saw it, hke her, “looking over the paling of trees like a
farmer inspecting his own hogs,” transforms everything.
Mrs. Turpin, ignoring the transformation, dares God again
and ends with roaring “who do you think you are?” An
echo comes back at her “like an answer from beyond the
wood.” God answers her by questioning her and her pride,
with far more right than she had to question him.
Mrs. Turpin begins to see who she really is as she sees the
fragility of human life in Claud’s tiny truck, which from her
position looks like a child’s toy: “At any moment a bigger
truck might smash into it and scatter Claud’s and the nig
gers’ brains all over the road.” When she has seen the truck
home safe, she turns to the pig parlor: “Then, hke a monu
mental statue coming to life, she bent her head slowly and
gazed as if through the very heart of mystery, down into the
pig parlor at the hogs. They had settled all in one corner
nation brings her to envision the world other than it is. She
wonders how things would have gone “If Jesus had said to
her before he made her...You can either be a nigger or
white-trash.” Her preference, she decides, is for Jesus to
have made her “a neat clean respectable Negro woman,
herself but black,” changed but still saved, sidestepping the
lowly. In her other nocturnal activity, Mrs. Turpin is said to
have “occupied herself at night naming the classes of peo
ple.” She lies awake at night trying to sort out the people in
her world into classes, in accordance with their material
and social standing in the world. She assumes blindly that
she possesses the standard and judgment for the task of sav
ing and condemning. However, the fluctuations in the for
tunes of the human beings that she would rank make such a
jumble of her very attempts to rank them, that she finally
falls off to sleep, imagining them all condemned, (“she
would dream they were all crammed together in a box car,
being ridden off to be put in a gas oven.”). Her virtues
notwithstanding, Mrs. Turpin remains prey to these temp
tations, and we see her assailed by them too in the light of
{The College.
around the old sow who was grunting softly. A red glow suf
fused them. They appeared to pant with a secret life.” The
hogs have become beautiful gathered around the maternal
and musical old sow, a vision of animal life filled by grace.
This is how we can be both hogs and ourselves too.
Mrs. Turpin is herself transformed by gazing at the hogs;
she becomes a sort of priestess, raising her hands “in a ges
ture hieratic and profound.” Her transformation allows her
final vision, the bridge over which souls are marching
towards Paradise. The most respectable, the group she
thinks she belongs to, come last, and “even their virtues
were beings burned away.” In relation to salvation, virtue
doesn’t matter, nor does top and bottom, dignity and luna
cy, white and black. This, I think, completes Mrs. Turpin’s
revelation. O’Connor says, “she lowered her hands and
gripped the rail of the hog pen, her eyes small but fixed
unbhnkingly on what lay ahead.” We see what she sees, and
we see her seeing it, pig-like, with her small eyes, and still
as priestess and visionary. Is this our revelation? Our judg
ment of her has become irrelevant, just as have her judg
ments of other people. We turn with Mrs. Ihrpin back onto
the darkening path-surely O’Connor intends us to think of
Dante-and with her we hear “the voices of the souls climb
ing upward into the starry field and shouting hallelujah.”
Elizabeth (Litzi) Engel is a tutor in Santa Fe.
day. Mrs. Turpin feeds her false pride by imagining the infe
rior world or worlds that might have been. Those imagina
tions of worlds inferior to her world feature the lowly ones
of the here and now whom she judges so severely.
As Mrs. Turpin’s prideful attitudes leak out in the waiting
room conversation, they become contagious. In the chief
exchange in the waiting room, an exchange about the
Turpin farm, Mrs. Turpin and Mary Grace’s mother silent
ly join together against the opinions of the “white-trash
woman.” The two women form an alliance inasmuch as
“...both understood that you had to have certain things
before you could know certain things.” An antagonism
erupts between the poor white woman and Mrs. Turpin
regarding their differing opinions about the possessions
and associations that Mrs. Turpin has; Mrs. Turpin raises
pigs and associates with black people. According to
Mrs. Turpin, the Turpins have “a couple acres of cotton and
a few hogs and chickens and just enough white-face that
Gland can look after them himself.” That report elicits a
retort from the white-trash woman that she doesn’t want
St. John ’5 College ■ Spring 2004 }
�{Revelation}
''The corruptive
power ofpride takes
its toll once more.''
anything to do with hogs: “Hogs. Nasty
stinking things, a-gruntin and a-rootin all
over the place.” It does not matter to her
that the Turpins have a “pig-parlor” a con
crete-floored pen where the pigs are raised
and where “Claud scoots them down with
the hose every afternoon and washes off
the floor.”
The poor woman wouldn’t stoop to
“scoot down no hog with no hose.” And as
to the black people that the Turpins hire
(“butter up”) to pick their cotton, the
“white-trash woman” is equally as
adamant: “Two thangs I ain’t going to do:
love no niggers or scoot down no hog with
no hose.” As far above the “white-trash
woman” as Mrs. Turpin seems to place
herself, the “white-trash woman” places
herself above hogs and “niggers.” The
corruptive power of pride takes its toll
once more.
In the doctor’s office, then, we witness
Mrs. Turpin’s awareness of the contingent
character of her life (“When I think who
all I could have been besides myself and
what all I got...It could have been different!”) and how that
awareness contributes to her false pride and a lack of
understanding both of who she is and of the true character
of her world. Behind her “good disposition,” we see her
judgment on the world as it is given to her. Despite the fact
that her virtue has no positive ground, she imagines that
her goodness is sufficient both to judge and re-order the
world and to do that without any assistance: “It’s no use in
having more than you can handle yourself with help like it
is.” Hers is not a position where she needs help, and she
doesn’t ask for any. She divides her world into those like
herself and Mary Grace’s mother, who don’t need help, and
those like the poor white woman. Of the latter, she thinks,
“Help them you must, but help them you couldn’t,” even
though, “To help anybody out that needed it was her philos
ophy of life.” Mrs. Turpin is saved and she is a would-be sav
ior. From that vantage point of self-sufficiency, hers is a posi
tion of gratitude. (“Oh, thank you, Jesus, Jesus, thank you!”)
But she is more grateful for what she is not than for what she
is, perhaps grateful even that she is child
less. What she does not seem to acknowl
edge is that bad things and evil itself can
not be relegated to what is not or to
absence, and for that reason in part, no one
is completely “saved” in this world, cer
tainly not by dint of one’s own efforts
alone, from the power of temptation and
malevolence.
It is in the context of her ignorance of
the forces of evil in the world that Mrs.
Turpin comes to consider Mary Grace
(“Why, girl, I don’t even know you...”),
who gives up her reading and bears wit
ness to the display of pride. She takes up
her station, staring relentlessly at Mrs.
Turpin and making ugly faces at her until
she feels the need to defend herself. But
most importantly, at the point where Mrs.
Turpin claims not to know Mary Grace,
she thinks that Mary Grace, “was looking
at her as if she had known and disliked her
all her life-all of Mrs. Turpin’s hfe, it
seemed too, not just the girl’s life.” What
there was to be known all of her hfe is
nothing but the susceptibility to temptation and the
depredations of evil which are coeval with the garden and
human existence.
Mary Grace, possessed of money, family, education, is a
real puzzle for Mrs. Turpin. So obviously lacking in grace,
she is loaded with the worldly goods by which Mrs. Turpin
partially takes her bearings. It does not make sense to her
that Mary Grace with all of her books could be possessed of a
false pride dwarfing that of her and the others. (“The girl
looked as if she would like to hurl them all through the plate
glass window.”) It does not make sense to her that Mary
Grace as Mary Grace could be a source of evil. Mary Grace
would open her eyes though, and so she throws the book at
her. The incongruity of first being silently intimidated, and
then being assaulted with a book by someone such as Mary
Grace, convinces Mrs. Turpin that there is more to the situa
tion than meets the eye. And so she seeks out Mary Grace,
“What you got to say to me?” And she receives the retorted
command, “Go back to hell where you came from, you old
{The Colleges?. John’s
College ■ Spring 2004 }
�aa
{Revelation}
wart hog.” When Mary Grace tells Mrs. Turpin to go to heU,
Mrs. Turpin does not understand what she means, does not
accept the evil that confronts her. She thinks that God is
telhng her that she is not saved. The second part of the story
addresses that mistake and achieves in a way a resolution to
the story.
The shift in the story from the doctor’s office to the farm
marks a shift from pride to humility, the doctor’s office hav
ing pride of place. Mrs. Turpin is so convinced that God has
abandoned her, that when she and Claud drive home, and she
looks for their house, “She would not have been startled to
see a burnt wound between two blackened chimneys.” She
and Claud he down, but she cannot escape what had hap
pened or the image of her that had been deposited in her
soul. “She had been singled out for the message.” In her feel
ing of sohtude, she cries, but when her tears dry, “Her eyes
began to burn with wrath”: she is “a respectable, hard-work
ing, church-going woman.”
When her self-pity turns to anger, Mrs. Turpin turns to
the farm community, which she rules for affirmation and
assurance of who she is. In a sense, she wants the message
to be overruled by her loved ones, her husband, her black
field hands, and her hogs. But the fact of her rule presents
a problem for her, because now she needs help. She turns to
Claud for solace-(“‘Listen here,’ she said.” ‘“What?”’
“‘Kiss me.’”)-and Claud obliges her, as he does through
out the story, “as if he was accustomed to doing what she
told him to,” but nothing happens. She turns to the black
workers, but the workers think that Mrs. Turpin is beyond
anything bad happening to her, as if “she were protected in
some special way by Divine Providence.” When Mrs.
Turpin leaves the black workers, she goes down to the pig
parlor and takes the hose from Claud; on the farm, she is
“the right size woman to command the arena before her.”
When he goes off, Mrs. Turpin begins speaking to God,
raising her questions, wanting to know how she is herself
and a hog both and how she is “saved and from hell too.” In
a final display of pride, hosing down her hogs, she rants and
raves at God until she comes to the more general form of
her question, “Who do you think you are?” the question
echoing back to her.
The humihty on the farm appears to be the antidote to the
diseased pride infesting the doctor’s office. There Mrs.
Turpin comes face to face with someone “above” her, who is
{The College.
not thankful to Jesus, who does not “read from the same
book” as she does and who takes her bearings from what
Mrs. Turpin ostensibly is, a fat, indulgent, prideful woman,
who, just like Mary Grace, “complains and criticizes all day
long.” The evil in Mary Grace would claim Mrs. Turpin for
itself; hence, the condemnation. But because Mrs. Turpin
thinks that she is saved, she thinks that evil is somehow
warded off, existing in some imaginary alternative world;
and so, she mistakenly interprets what Mary Grace says.
Mrs. Turpin mistakenly thinks that God is turning away
from her because evil makes its presence known to her and
even as having a root in her; she thinks that she is no longer
one of the saved.
But to say that God is not turning away from Mrs. Turpin
is not to say that God was not working through the force of
evil. O’Connor clearly beheves that God does work through
evil, and that He is able to do such work just because of the
inroads that evil has made in the souls of human beings. God
was not turning away from her, but turning her so that she
might face the reality of her continual need for salvation. On
the farm, in her rant, Mrs. Turpin would fight God with her
pride-until she hears herself. Then it is that the day’s lesson
begins to come clear to her, the lesson about the world and
the serpent and the lesson of Job and God and the Adver
sary. Then she sees Claud’s truck, looking “like a toy,” and
sees the downside of that technological marvel, that it could
be smashed by a bigger truck and everyone in it destroyed.
Then Ruby turns to her hogs gathered around the sow,
where “A red glow suffused them;” they were God’s crea
tures, panting “with a secret life.” Her acknowledgement of
the presence of evil in this world and of the goodness of
God’s creation even in the lowly allows her to have a vision
of a new order marching to salvation; in that order the lowly
are entering first.
It is hardly accidental that the setting of the first part of
the story is in a doctor’s office, that there is even a black den
tist in town, or that the book that Mary Grace throws at Mrs.
Turpin was titled Human Development. Today, many people
have a difficult time talking about good and evil, preferring
instead to talking about health and sickness. But O’Connor’s
character, Mrs. Turpin, when she is in need of help, does not
want the doctor’s help. What is aihng her is a matter of the
spirit. Of course, the terms in which she understands the
“classes of people” and herself belong to the contemporary
John’s College • Spring 2004 }
�{Revelation}
^3
revelation is not a
quiet Inull...
•
United States South, where the old
notions of rank based on land owner
ship and breeding issue in such cate
gories as “good blood” and “white
trash” and “niggers.” She is a stock
character in O’Connor’s repertoire of
stories, each one having its place as in
a series of echoes originating in and
echoing from a single homeland,
O’Connor’s powerful imaginative
intellect. O’Connor is a Catholic
writer from the South, for her, the
land of the humble and the humbled.
Persisting in her faith and her South
ern roots and in allusions to the Holo
caust and the dark sides of technolog
ical life, O’Connor helps us navigate
our own darkness and locate the beau
tiful in lowly and humble lives. On
that account, in the aist century, she
is a writer whose meanings are not
only important but urgently needed.
George Russell is a tutor in Annapolis.
The Message-Bearers
by Barbara Goyette
Perhaps this story is not only about a revelation but about
revelation itself, the nature of a mysterious occurrence
that serves as a link between our everyday world (or the
somewhat off-kilter but nevertheless recognizably every
day world of Flannery O’Connor’s South) and some deeper
reality.
Revelation involves drama and it involves some kind of
truth or disclosure about something that wasn’t realized or
known before. In a theological sense, revelation involves a
manifestation of the divine will. A revelation is not a quiet
truth: Mary Grace hurls a textbook at Mrs. Turpin and then
pronounces her verdict, “You are a wart hog from Hell.”
The black field-hand ladies also tell her the truth: “ ‘Ain’t
nothing bad happen to you! ’ the old woman said. She said
it as if they all knew that Mrs. Turpin was protected in some
{The College.
7
99
special way by Divine Providence.”
This truth infuriates Mrs. Turpin; she
fervently hopes that it is as false as
Mary Grace’s revelation. And then
there’s the wild and wooly vision of the
souls marching up to heaven, violent
in its intensity and in its absolute nega
tion of all that Mrs. Turpin thinks she
believes to be right and just.
Revelation does not need proof. It
can’t be arrived at by logic, and one
can’t be persuaded to it. Revelation
suggests someone or something as the
medium of higher truth or another
level of reality. In this story, the irony
of the message-bearers-a disaffected,
angry, acne-scarred intellectual; a
troop of respectable, sycophantic field
workers; and the pigs, hosed off to spot
lessness from their naturally filthy
state-reinforces the disjunction that is
at the root of Mrs. Turpin’s sinful view.
Her sin is that of not seeing, not understanding the most
fundamental fact of grace-that it applies to everyone at all
times, no matter what their level of receptiveness or worthi
ness. Mrs. Turpin fails just as we aU fail, by virtue of being
human. The last shall be first and the first shall be last. In the
beatitudes, the unhappy are blessed and the happy are
cursed (this complementary “woe to...” set of pronounce
ments is often ignored in our recollection of the beatitudes—
it’s not only that the downtrodden have a special place in
God’s consideration, it’s that those who are successful do
not, at least not insofar as they are successful). Our measures
of success, those that Mrs. Turpin admires and with which
she measures the worthiness of others, are worse than mean
ingless. They get in the way of our understanding that we are
all in need of grace. Revelation is a gift, presented to
Mrs. Turpin and to us. It’s there every day for all of us, and
everyone around us is a messenger.
Barbara Goyette (A’^g) is vice presidentfor advancement in
Annapolis.
John’s College • Spring 2004 }
�24
{Alumni Voices}
THE HABIT OF
WRITING
BY Brigid K. Byrne, AGI03
hen I open my mailbox to find an
ingly [reflects] the object, the being, which [specifies] it.”
envelope addressed in a bold, careful
Studying O’Connor’s letters, I decided that Fitzgerald had
script and bearing an Iowa City post
given the collection the perfect name. O’Connor offered
mark, mixed in among bills and cata
her correspondents thoughts about everything: her pet
logs, I feel a small thrill, an excite
peacocks, her writing habits, and her peculiar interpreta
ment that there is something meant especially
It
tion offor
theme.
Catholic
faith. Her letters to friends, fans, pub
seems strange that finding a personal letterlishers,
in my mailbox
and fellow writers reveal a woman who wrote them
gives me so much joy. Yet, how often do we get a letter from
not only to maintain her connection to those she loved, but
someone we know and love? How often do we take the time
also to explore and reveal the parts of herself which the
to write to others? Most of the written communication we
intended recipient had the power to bring out.
send and receive are hasty e-mails, typed quickly, in lan
I was most struck by O’Connor’s correspondence with
guage created to speed up the time spent composing mes
Cecil Dawkins, a college professor who introduced herself
sages. While e-mail has perhaps kept us closer to those we
to O’Connor in a letter. Dawkins challenged O’Connor by
may otherwise have drifted apart from, our brief electron
asking her advice in matters concerning her career, her
ic conversations lack the richness and intimacy that are
desire to write, and her faith. In a response to a question
vital parts of human relationships. We compose our mes
Dawkins raised about the effectiveness of the Catholic
sages so quickly that we forfeit the benefits of self-reflec
Church, O’Connor wrote, “You don’t serve God by saying:
tion and personal growth that we can gain when we write
the Church is ineffective. I’ll have none of it. Your pain at
letters to others. The flow of thoughts seems better suited
its lack of effectiveness is a sign of your nearness to God.
to the flow of ink from the pen than to the pecking of
We help overcome this lack of effectiveness simply by suf
fingers on a plastic keyboard, and the act of sealing an enve
fering on account of it.” Reading this unusually lengthy
lope much more satisfying than hitting the “send” button.
response, I realized that Dawkins had asked a question that
I felt the loss of the art of letter writing poignantly as I
O’Connor herself struggled with and wondered if O’Con
recently revisited The Habit ofBeing, Sally Fitzgerald’s col
nor was speaking more to Dawkins or to herself.
lection of Flannery O’Connor’s letters. Fitzgerald titled
In her introduction to the book, Fitzgerald notes that “on
her collection The Habit ofBeing because she saw that the
the whole, [O’Connor’s] correspondence was an enrichment
writer’s correspondence reflected the attainment of that
of her life, to say nothing of the lives of her correspondents”
habit, which she defines as “an excellence not only of
and that “almost all of her close friendships were sustained
action but of interior disposition and activity that increas
through the post.”
W
{The College-
St. John’s College ■ Spring 2004 }
�{Alumni Voices}
As I reread
O’Connor’s let
ters, I realized
that my own
habit of letter
writing
has
enriched my life.
1 was not much
of a letter writer
until about five
years ago when
I began corre
sponding with
Sandra, an honors student from Iowa, whom I met while
interning at the U.S. Department of Education. After rais
ing her children, Sandra enrolled in a community college
near her home and was so successful in her studies that she
gained an internship through Phi Theta Kappa. Over that
summer, Sandra and I had many conversations, and I
learned much from her about courage and faith. When our
internships ended, Sandra and I exchanged addresses in the
way parting people do, intending to keep in touch, but
doubtful whether such a brief acquaintance would with
stand time and distance.
I returned to college that fall, but I could not forget San
dra. I pulled out the scrap of paper on which she had care
fully printed her address and wrote her a letter. Thus began
years of correspondence that have led me to question and
contemplate many of my ideas, choices, and beliefs. When I
first began writing to Sandra, I was feeling uncertain about
my faith. Having been raised Catholic and force-marched to
Mass, I purposefully spent each Sunday of my first few years
away at college lingering over breakfast in the dining hall,
ignoring the bells chiming at St. Paul’s, just a few hundred
yards away. I was torn between rebelling against my parents
and discovering my own sense of faith. In writing to Sandra,
I found that I could wrestle with my doubts and hesitations.
Through my letters to her, I came to recognize my struggle
was not between me and God, but one of becoming an adult.
{The College-
25
learning to make
choices for my
self. Sandra’s res
ponses, resonat
ing with her faith
in God, even in
the face of hard
ship and sorrow,
gave me the
strength to travel
my own spiritual
road. Without
Sandra as my
audience, I am not sure that I would have found that part
of myself.
While my relationship with Sandra has led me to a deeper
sense of faith, having a variety of correspondents challenges
me to look at many sides of myself. One of my favorite audi
ences is my friend Sally, who lives in Atlanta. Although Sally
and I talk on the phone frequently and see each other occa
sionally, letter writing is still an important part of our
friendship. We enjoy what Shakespeare might term “a mar
riage of true minds,” as our thoughts, interests, and experi
ences run uncannily parallel. Writing to Sally is almost like
writing to myself, except that I wait in anticipation for her
honest replies, replies that demand that I look into myself
more alertly.
In my day-to-day habit of living, running from job to job,
eating in my car, I have little time for reflection and clarity.
I have come to see this habit of living, which requires me to
direct so much energy away from myself, as distinctly differ
ent from the habit of being, which allows me to spend time
inside, listening only to myself. Like O’Connor, I have
found that I can practice my habit of being most effectively
as I sit down to write. So I will find time today to retreat
from the habit of living and write to my friend and fellow
St. John’s alumna, Sarah. I can’t wait to see what my letter
will reveal.
St. John’s College ■ Spring 2004 }
�{Johnnies
2,6
on
Aging}
THE MIND IN
WINTER
Living an ExaminedLife in Later Years
wi Sus3AN Borden, A87
would lose meaning and she knew that there have even
been suicides [among older people]. To provide meaning
to their lives, she endowed the institute, which provides
high-quality, exciting courses for seniors. The faculty,
illiam Butler Yeats
Institute, where he explores the world -W
from
a classroom.
from neighborhood universities and the U.C. Medical
“Hannah Fromm was worried that the life of retired people
Center, are also mostly seniors,” explains Brunn, who has
ohn Brunn (class of 1947) is no Magellan, no
studied history, literature, science, and music at the insti
Columbus, no Ernest Shackleford or Neil
tute since his retirement.
Armstrong, but in an important way, he has
Brunn’s explorations are important to an aging mind,
remained true to his childhood ambition to
says Helen Hobart (class of 1964). Hobart works with
become an explorer. “I thought of it then as
older people who are experiencing dementia, and she’s a
physical exploration,” he says of the ambition
true believer in the adage “use it or lose it.” “The more
that has become increasingly intellectual as he
we exercise our minds, the more protection we have from
has aged. “When I first came to California,
the effects of dementia,” says Hobart. “People who com
I fell in love with the Sierra and have spent
plete loth grade have five more years of protection from
vacations exploring the mountains, at first with friends
theand
effects of Alzheimer’s than those who don’t. You may
later with my wife. With increasing age-I have turned
be 77showing signs of the disease neurologically, but symp
that has become difficult. Most of my learning istomatically,
now
you’ve got enough other brain connections
indoors, but I am still curious about the world.”
that function because you’ve stimulated their growth, so
the assault of Alzheimer’s won’t show up.”
While keeping the mind active slows the effects of
aging, Hobart encourages us to recognize that, with the
loss of cognitive ability, other strengths can come into
Life moves out ofa redflare ofdreams
Into a common light ofcommon hours.
Brunn is fortunate to live in San Francisco, not just for
Until
old age and
brings
the but
redflare
the mountains
the city,
also foragain.
the Hannah Fromm
J
{The College -Sr. John’s
College ■ Spring 2004 }
�27
{Johnnies on Aging}
play. “Roughly half
of people over 85
have Alzheimer’s
and we’re aU hving
longer,” she says.
“So it behooves
us to consider
what it means to
be human in addi
tion to our cogni
tive functions. I’ve
seen a lot of suffer
ing because people
feel they’re no
longer worthwhile
because their memoryis failing or they can’t figure out how to do something
that they used to do. But there are so many wonderful
ways of being in relationship with the world and other
people. The epidemic of dementia as we grow older really
invites us to consider our humanity, our affections, our
spirituality, our art, our love of music. All these things
can thrive, even flourish, if our cognitive functioning
{The College -St
Playing the piano is
JUST ONE RETIREMENT
PURSUIT FOR
Carolyn Banks
Leeuwenburgh .
gets out of our way
a little.”
Carolyn Banks
Leeuwenburgh
(class of 1955) has
yet to notice a drop
in her cognitive
abilities. She’s an
avid reader, an
insightful conversationalist, and a freelance teacher of
English as a foreign language. She also pursues a number
of interests that will serve her well if cognition begins to
fail. A retired opera singer, she is still involved with the
arts, maintaining subscriptions at the McCarter Theater
in Princeton in drama, dance, and music. She’s also an
avid movie-goer and a fairly active practitioner of several
John’s College ■ Spring 2004 }
�2,8
{JohnniesonAging}
experiences mostly loss. Although
arts: “I paint, very poorly, but I
only 46, Nick Giacona (SFGI98) is
paint,” she says. “I play the piano
now facing the physical effects of
poorly. I still can sing and I still sing
'Tve always believed
age as he cares for his 8i-year-old
publicly.” Leeuwenburg performs in a
thatpeople older than
mother, Betty, who moved in with
small cafe just outside of Princeton,
him and his family last spring. “My
singing mainly popular music, blues,
mepossessed some
mom is a retired schoolteacher with
and torch songs.
wisdom.
Pre
always
an alert mind and a body that’s fail
Music has been the saving grace for
ing.
She has very bad arthritis and is
many older people, even those whose
felt they were worth
pretty much confined to an electric
other faculties are deteriorating, says
working with and
wheelchair. Yet her mind is still very
Hobart. “It’s fantastic to watch people
active. She goes on the computer,
start playing the piano again. The
learninp^from, worth
does e-mail. She’s a voracious read
parts of the brain formed when we’re
sharing with.
er and we have great theological,
younger last the longest, so the capac
spiritual, and political discus
ity to play the piano can come back,”
sions,” he says.
she says. There may be no ability to
Philip Valley (SFGI75)
Giacona sees first-hand the trials
make a coherent sentence, but the
of life in an aging body. “I’m learn
reward and beauty of making music
ing day by day with her and I really
can persist for a long time.”
admire how she’s handling it,” he says. “It’s hard and
There are other compensations to counter deteriorat
frustrating for her to do the little things we take for grant
ing cognitive ability, according to Virginia Seegers Harri
ed, even something as simple as making herself a meal.
son (class of 1964), a geriatric case manager. “Over time
Yet
she’s handling that with grace and courage.”
you learn to tune out nonsense more quickly,” she says.
A discussion on aging that former Santa Fe campus
“The experience you’ve had in life makes it easier to say,
president John Agresto gave years ago left an impression
‘uh-huh, right.’ From observation and personal experi
on Giacona. “He said that our culture doesn’t really pre
ence, I would consider that a real advantage.”
pare
us for aging and death. I thought he was so wise. He
She describes the benefits that come in later years as we
said that death and aging should be the culmination of a
grow to accept our lives. “You can bring your mind to
well-lived life, an examined life,” recalls Giacona. “While
bear more easily on what is actually accessible, doable.
my mom didn’t have a St. John’s education, I’ve turned
You learn to pick your battles. You learn to pare down and
her on to the Apology and the Crito and the Tibetan Book
be satisfied. There’s a feeling in youth and middle age,
of the Dead."
‘this world is out there-where do I start?’ When some
Giacona says that his mother seems prepared for her
options have closed behind you, there can be a sense of
own death: “We’ve already discussed the whole memorial
liberation. That may be what makes working with elders
service. She wants to be cremated and have her ashes
so sweet, so affirming, for people in middle age who are
scattered where my father’s ashes were scattered. She’s
still struggling to be greater than they ever will be. When
even decided what songs we’re going to sing. If she died
people accept themselves and their lives, that in a sense is
tomorrow, she would feel that she had a good life.”
where life really begins.”
When his mother’s life does end, Giacona will consider
Harrison underscores her point with a joke: “A retired
himself lucky for the time that he and his family spent
woman is listening to several young mothers talking
with her. “My wife, Keiko, is so great and supportive. She
about when life begins. One says at conception. Another
helped convince my mom to stay with us. My mom had
says, no, it begins when the fetus quickens. A third says,
concerns about moving in and invading the family, but
‘I think life begins at birth.’ Finally, the retired woman
Keiko told her that when she was a kid her grandfather
leans over and says, ‘Listen, I’ll tell you when life begins.
lived with her family and she appreciated the time she
Life begins when the kids leave home and the dog dies.’”
spent with him.”
While it’s comforting to know that the mind enjoys
gains to offset its losses, a sad fact of aging is that the body
{The College -Sf. John’s
College - Spring 2004 }
�{JohnniesonAging}
ag
Although she’s a young
Giacona’s own chil7a, Leeuwenburg knows
dren-Sarah, 13, and
Kyle, ii-respond to his
she has some tough times
mother in different
ahead. “Many years ago I
ways. “My son is outgo
heard Bette Davis say
that getting older is not
ing and loves to hug
her and sit and talk to
for sissies,” she says. “As
her. My daughter’s really
you get older you aren’t
shy, so it’s harder for
really aware of getting
her. She appreciates hav
older, but you are aware
ing her there, but she
that you don’t do the
shows it in a different
same things you used to
way. It’s so rewarding to
do physically. There are
have three generations
times when I get out of
in one house.”
bed in the morning and I
don’t think I can move
Philip Valley (SFGI75)
runs day programs in
and other times I’m
New Hampshire for
fine.”
Leeuwenburg swims
adults over 55 with
nearly every day, but a
developmental disabili
recent cancer scare
ties. He says that sharing
revealed
her true attitude
time across the genera
Nick Giacona and his mother, Betty, are
tions is rewarding even for people LEARNING TOGETHER ABOUT AGING.
about exercise. “I was thinking, ‘hell,
who are not related. “Maggie Kuhn,
if I’m going to die. I’m certainly not
going to swim,”’ she says. “This is
head of the Gray Panthers, once
not something I’m doing for the
gave a talk where she told the audi
'She s a voracious reader sheer pleasure of it. At my age your
ence, ‘We are not wrinkled babies,
metabolism gets so slow that, even if
we are elders of the tribe.’ I’ve
and we have great
you do all your cleaning, all your gar
always believed that people older
theological, spiritual,
dening, you still have to exercise.”
than me possessed some wisdom.
Leeuwenburgh has not reached
I’ve always felt they were worth
andpolitical
working with and learning from,
the point where she feels encum
worth sharing with.”
bered by aging, but she has begun to
discussions.
ponder her own mortality. “I don’t
Harrison, the case manager, has
NickGiacona (SFGI98)
think anyone ever really comes to
nothing but scorn for those who
grips with the reality of their own
subscribe to the “wrinkled babies”
death. When we view ourselves, we
view of seniors. “Many people who
work in nursing facilities call the elderly ‘baby.’ That’s
view a disembodied creature. Chronologically, I’m 7a
absolutely not right,” she says. But she’s also disturbed by
years old. I’m at the point where I know I’m not going to
a subtler form of infantilizing. “Even older people who
be here in 20 years. Yet there’s a part of me that you could
are quite cogent are pretty much treated like they have to
stand up and say, ‘Caroline, you’re getting old,’ and I
be fed, clothed, and then amused. I really have trouble
would say, ‘I am?’”
with that. Yes, it takes time to go at the slower pace and
hear someone tell his story, but it’s usually extremely
worthwhile. I would encourage anybody to start to talk to
people over 75. Ask them about their lives. Ask them what
they remember.”
{The College* St. John ’5 College ■ Spring 2004 }
�30
{Bibliofile}
Approaching
Machiavelli’s
Art OF War
Art of War
Niccolo Machiavelli, translated, edited,
and with a commentary by
Christopher Lynch
University of Chicago Press, 2004
hris Lynch (A87) traces the
origins of his newlypubhshed translation of
Machiavelli’s Art of War to
the questions posed hy what
is known in the academic
throats. As I studied him more, I realized that
world as the ancient/modern split.
Lynch says
Machiavelli
’s emphasis on the bellicose
that Johnnies have a more intimate
relation
aspect
of human
beings, an aspect acknowl
ship with the split, and rephrases its essence
edged but not emphasized by the ancient
for the SJC crowd: “Why was everything so
philsophers, was part of his overall goal to
much fun sophomore year and why did
transform the terms in which human life is
everyone get so depressed junior year?”
generally understood.”
Lynch arrived at the University of
Fortunately for Lynch, his academic inter
Chicago’s Committee on Social Thought in
ests dovetailed with a hole in Machiavelli
the fall of 1988 with this question (in its grad
scholarship. Of Machiavelli’s four major
school expression) very much on his mind:
vtorks—Prince, Discourses on Livy, Florentine
What is the end of human hfe? Is man natu
Histories, and Art q/' UAr-almost no one had
rally social or essentially alone? What is the
seriously studied Art of War. Lynch threw
purpose of philosophy? As he pursued these
himself into that text and, seven years (and a
questions, Lynch came to see Machiavelli as
Ph.D.) later, emerged with an impressive
the pivotal writer in the transformation
between the ancient and modern worlds.
“The most sahent aspects of the transfor
mation that Machiavelli tried to affect were,
first, to change the general climate of opinion
“Controversy abounds as to what caused
and discourse such that human hfe would no
the dizzying military changes during
longer be understood in terms of its ultimate
Machiavelli’s day. Also debated is
goal or purpose but instead in terms of its
whether these changes constituted a
origins and roots,” says Lynch. “The second
full-blown military revolution or instead
is the attempt to bring about in this world the
represented a particular moment in a
best regime human beings can come up with,
long-term evolution. In considering
the best way of living together, instead of
these questions, it is important to
leaving it to chance hke Plato. And the third
remember that the sense at the time was
is really a corollary of the first, to get subse
that tumultuous change was indeed
quent thinkers to be primarily concerned
afoot, but not rapid change in a single
with human freedom and independence as
direction driven by gunpowder technol
opposed to virtue as understood as obhgation
ogy. On the tactical level especially,
and duty to something higher.”
each of the battles that occurred on the
These issues gave Lynch a clear direction
Italian peninsula, from the battle of
for his graduate work. “The more I saw
Fornovo in 1495 to that of Pavia in 1525,
Machiavelli as the key figure in the
seemed to offer a new lesson to be
ancient/modern spht, the more I wanted to
learned, a new innovation that trans
figure out what was on his mind,” Lynch says.
formed the ways armies ought to be
“I started to see war as central to his thought,
armed, ordered, led and used.”
to understand that for Machiavelli, humans
- Christopher Lynch
are not social beings, but at each others’
C
Excerpt:
{The College -Sf.
John’s College ■ Spring 2004 }
pubheation to his credit: a translation of the
text with an introduction, interpretive essay,
and (he points out with the pride of a Johnnie
who’s successfully negotiated secondary
sources) more than 600 notes.
Lynch originally wrote the translation for
himself, “blasting through it” in just a few
months, he says. “I wrote the initial transla
tion as a way to study it carefully. I translated
it as literally as I could so I could think about
it the way we do with readings in language
class, as a tool for closer reading,” he says.
Over several years. Lynch returned to the
translation, making changes after improving
his Italian by translating works by Machiavelh’s predecessors, including Dante and
Boccaccio. Later, when he decided to submit
a proposal to the University of Chicago Press
to turn his translation into a book, he first
reworked a portion of the text to see if he
could make it valuable to other readers.
Once the proposal was accepted. Lynch
had to rewrite the entire translation several
times. In the process, he discovered a practi
cal approach to translation that satisfactorily
answered for him the issues that arise in
discussions about translation in St. John’s
language tutorials: “You start off as literal
and as consistent as you can, then you puU the
translation back toward understandabihty,
readability and accuracy,” he says, “In the
next phase, you forget about the Italian and
ask what the passages mean in Enghsh and
how they sound. If it’s not in readable
English, you pull the Itahan out again and
start thinking about changes.”
Lynch notes that this is not the process for
most non-Johnnie or non-Strauss-influenced
translators. “They think about how it sounds
right away,” he explains. “But I think that
puts too much emphasis on the translator and
makes him think he is a sort of god mediating
between two languages with full omniscience
of what the author intended. I think it’s better
to approach it humbly, to cleave to the hteral
andonlybepushed toward readabi 1 i ty when
it’s clearly necessary.”
With the time and energy Lynch lavished
on Art of War, you’d think he’d be a fierce
Machiavellian, but that’s hardly the case.
“Machiavelli presents himself as the
ultimate antagonist to the basic understand
ings that I’m inclined to-ancient, philosoph
ic, and religious,” Lynch says. “However, I
think he’s also the most trenchant critic of
ancient thought, both philosophic and rehgious, and therefore I see him as the person
to understand if I’m going to understand the
truth about the big questions at stake in the
quarrel between ancients and moderns.”
-SUS3AN Borden
�{Alumni Profile}
31
Tias Little, EC98
Santa Fe Yogi Combines Wisdom with Practice
BY Andra Maguran
such as the Upanishads, the Yoga Sutra and
he word “yoga” once con
Bhagavad-Gita, along with studying San
jured images of health nuts
skrit or ancient Chinese in order to read
contorting their bodies in
works in their original language.
impossible, seemingly
Reared in Amherst, Mass., Little attend
painful positions. Now
ed Amherst College, where he earned a
women, men, even children
bachelor
are flocking in droves to yoga. An
estimat’s degree in English. Inspired by
mother,
who also taught yoga. Little
ed 15 million Americans say theyhis
have
a
began his studies in the Iyengar system in
regular practice; more than double that
the early 1980s, and continued his study in
number say they expect to try yoga in the
Mysore, India. Frequent trips to visit his
next year, according to a Harris poll. The
grandfather, a Presbyterian minister who
reasons for yoga’s newfound popularity are
served on the board of directors at
many: stress reduction, improved strength
Abiquiu’s Ghost Ranch, fed Little’s love for
and flexibility, and heightened concentra
New Mexico. He moved to Santa Fe in 1991
tion are among the many benefits linked to
to teach yoga, and in January aooo, he
this 5,ooo-year-old practice.
opened Yoga Source with his wife, Surya.
Inside Yoga Source, a small studio
Little began hearing about the Eastern
tucked into a Santa Fe shopping center,
Classics program at Santa Fe, established
studio founder Tias Little {EC98) walks
in 1994, from others in the Santa Fe yoga
among the students after his morning
community. Friend and fellow yoga teacher
class, preternaturally serene, his voice as
Nicolai Bachman (EC96) persuaded him
soft as a temple bell. Like yoga teachers
that the fledgling program was worth
everywhere. Little is benefiting from the
pursuing. “I was very enthusiastic [about
wave of yoga popularity-his studio sched
Eastern Classics] from the first day,” says
ules more than 40 classes every week,
Bachman, who now leads workshops across
many of them packed. The Santa Fe
the country in Sanskrit, Ayurveda (healing
New Mexican recently described Little
as “one of the emerging stars
of the yoga phenomenon.” He
leads classes for yoga teachers,
writes articles and serves as an
expert for a leading yoga
magazine, holds clinics all over
the country, and offers yoga
retreats in venues such as
Costa Rica.
But even if the craze wanes
and the numbers drop. Little
believes that people will con
tinue to seek out something
beyond yoga’s physical
benefits. His own devotion to
the practice, he says, was
informed and deepened by
intense study of the works in
the St. John’s Eastern Classics
program, a yearlong program
in which students read works
T
Tias Little’s yoga practice is
INFORMED BY HIS STUDY OF
Eastern classics.
{The College.
St. John’s College ■ Spring 2004 }
arts), and the Yoga Sutra. “I knew it would
be a great chance for Tias to deepen his
understanding of the Indian, as well as
Chinese and Japanese, traditions.”
Little began by auditing a seminar on the
Upanishads, after which he applied to the
program in full. After 15 years of practice.
Little hoped to find a solid foundation in
the original texts for his own philosophy
toward yoga, the Mahayana Buddhist
“middle way” teachings that are pertinent
to living in the world today. He had previ
ously read the Bhagavad-Gita and Yoga
Sutra on his own, but the formalism and
structure of a discussion-based graduate
program offered a key to deeper learning,
he says.
“The texts are complex and philosophi
cal,” Little says. “It would have required
an intense practice and austerity to have
read the works on my own and gained as
much insight and understanding of them.
The dialogue that the classroom setting
encourages is far superior to simply
reading alone.”
For Little, the Eastern Classics program
afforded a marriage oiprajna (wisdom)
andsadhana (practice).
Wisdom training comes
through study of scriptures
that are the historical backdrop of the practice. “Just as
scholarship feeds the practice
of yoga, so the practice feeds
the scholarship. To me, just
reading can become very eso
teric if one tries to cognitively
grasp the teachings one needs
to embody, or engage through
psycho-spiritual discipline.
The two modes of understand
ing are cooperative, but not
interchangeable. ”
Little encourages yoga
teachers-in-training to enroll
in Eastern Classics; already,
two Yoga Source instructors,
Wendelin Scott (EC03) and
Lynsey Rubin (ECoa), have
completed the graduate
program.
�{AlumniNotes}
3^
1935
and dance to a caUer. Will any of
the class of 1944 be at our 60th
anniversary?”
“I’m in my goth year,” writes
Melville L. Bisgyer. “My beloved
wife, Pauline, passed away a few
years ago. I now make my home
comfortably in a retirement home
named Signature Pointe. Many of
my children, including the normal,
the grand, and the great, live near
by. I shall never forget St. John’s.
I spent four very happy years there.
I wish good luck and much happi
ness to all my fellow Johnnies.”
1937
“Just a word from the Class of’37Bob Snibbe alive and well-will be
91 in April. Still playing golf and
still publishing small shirt-pocket
handbooks. One on ‘Our Flag,’ the
story of Old Glory... sold in large
quantities to big companies for
sales promotion purposes. I call
Harry Fahrig (Class of ’37) from
time to time. He is very sick and in
a nursing assisted living facility.
His wife, Frannie, was a former
model for Ponds-‘she’s lovely, she
uses Ponds’- ads in the ’30s and
’40s. They live in Jupiter, Fla. Also
call Alan Pike (’37 too). He’s also
in an assisted living facility with
his wife in Deland, Fla. And my
brother Dick, class of’39, lives in
Arlington, Mass. He’s also in an
assisted living facility recuperating
from a stroke. Have fond memories
of days in Crabtown. Football and
lacrosse. B.C. great books.”
1944
John Davis Hill writes that he and
his wife, Dorothy Murdock Hill,
spent the winter in Southern
California attending four Elder
hostel programs sponsored by the
University of Judaism at Camp
Ramah in Ojai and at their Bel Air
campus. “We like to sing folk songs
1947
Changes for Stephen Benedict:
“Three years ago, I pulled up
stakes in New York City after
40 years and moved 125 miles north
to the hamlet of Spencertown in
Columbia County. After prowling
the area, I bought an old farmhouse-type structure, whose earli
est segment dates to about 1750.
It’s said to be the second- or thirdoldest house in the area. The
transition from city life turned out
to be seamless. Time, of which
there’s never enough, is variously
allocated to work on family and
personal archives, the nearby cul
tural center, the local Democratic
Party, and play—the piano, tennis,
and cats. Then there’s always fixery
to be done on my ancient structure.
I do maintain one interest in NYC,
the Theatre Development Fund,
which I helped found 37 years ago.
Watch for the new half-price booth
in Times Square. Drop by if you’re
up this way: 518-392-0487;
stevebenedict@taconic.net.”
1949
Frederick P. Davis sends news
from California: “Since last report
ing from this always sunny and
warm southwest corner of the
‘lower 48,’ we ‘3-Ds’ (Fred, Rita,
and son David) are still holding
the line as ‘Mr. Outside’ and
‘Mrs. Inside’ (the house). David
recovers from infections of both
legs and feet resulting from badly
broken legs of late aooo. But
things are looking up. David, after
over a year at a Riverside City Con
valescent home, should soon come
home. He is now equipped with a
motorized wheelchair, enabling
him to be on his own to go out to
see docs.”
David B. Weinstein has retired
from the practice of medicine and
is living with his wife, Stella, in
Atlanta to be near his daughter and
her family. “Attending senior class
es at Mercer University and learn
ing to play the recorder to keep the
gray cells and fingers limber.”
do’s top was the thrill of a lifetime,
along with riding through a city
rainforest to get there. Anticipat
ing my trip to Alaska in July.”
i960
Peter J. Ruel sends in a book
1955
With a July production of
La Traviata, Harold Bauer will
conclude a 27-year tenure as music
director of New Philharmonic and
DuPage Opera in Chicago’s west
suburban region. His 42 years as a
conductor include the music
directorship of six orchestras in
the U.S. and numerous guest
concerts in this country, Canada,
and Europe. What’s next? More
reading, traveling, painting (oil
and watercolor), golf, composing,
and, of course, some guest con
ducting. He looks forward to the
50th reunion of his class in 2005.
1957
News from Joan Cole: “I am
continuing to enjoy my retirement.
With friends, I attend the Metro
politan Opera and work with the
New York Black Librarians Cau
cus, raising funds for scholarships.
Am also enjoying my vacations-in
September 2003,1 went to Rio de
Janeiro, Brazil. Viewing the Christ
the Redeemer statue on Corcova
recommendation: “Thomas Cahill
has written an insightful history of
the ancient Greeks, printed 11/03:
Sailing the Wine Dark Sea: Why
the Greeks Matter.”
1961
Harrison Sheppard has been a
regular columnist for San
Francisco Attorney Magazine.
the quarterly journal of the Bar
Association of San Francisco.
“The regular title of the column is
‘Law and Justice,’ with a subtitle
relating to the particular column
subject. For the most recent col
umn (Winter 2004), the subtitle is
‘Law and Privacy: The Right To Be
Let Alone.’”
1962
JusTiNA Davis Hayden sends in
good news: Justina and Luci, her
partner of ig years, were married
in San Francisco on February 19.
A magical day! They are living in
San Diego now, having sold their
Startup to Success
(class of 1956) is now
general manager of Word Web Vocabulary, a new
curriculum for grades 5-10. “From a startup last
year we are now in 55 school districts in 16 states
plus Barbados. Word Web is a paperworkbook
system based on root words, prefixes, and suffixes,
all of which are Greek and Latin in origin. Grant Wiggins
{A72) thinks it’s an excellent way to approach vocabulary.”
ASQUALE L. POLILLO
P
{The College -St John’s
College • Spring 2004 }
�{Alumni Notes}
33
Mark Bernstein (A) writes; “Linda
(Bernstein, nee Torcaso, A69) and
I are looking forward to our last
child graduating high school and
going off to college. I’m a judge in
Philadelphia court doing class
actions and about to finish a book
on Pennsylvania evidence. Linda is
also a judge of the Social Security
Administration.”
Courtesy of The Moon, Santa Fe students and hobbes
house in Berkeley. Luci is an artist
whose work from recycled materi
als may be seen at CorrugatedArt.
com. Justina designed and main
tains the web site. She is enrolled
in a certificate program in Finan
cial Planning and is having fun
with investing.
practicing law in Washington,
D.C., and is writing for the local
newspaper in her spare time.
“Am looking forward to the next
reunion of the Class of’65.”
“Niece Megan Drolet, daughter of
Melissa Kaplan (SF72) and Ray
Drolet (SF69) will be coming to
Annapolis this fall, continuing the
Kaplan/Drolet tradition,” writes
1963
Bart L. Kaplan.
Charles B. Watson (A) writes that
Madeline Rui Koster writes:
“I was very much looking forward
to attending the 2003 40th class
reunion, since as a Californian I
have not been back to Annapolis in
40 years. A sudden change in my
teaching assignment (high school)
from all algebra to algebra and
ceramics, in September, led me to
change my plans. I was a potter and
ceramic sculptor for 20 years
before becoming a full-time
teacher in the Bos. I look forward
to another Homecoming. As time
goes on, I value the St. John’s edu
cation more than ever, and greatly
enjoy reading The College.'"
Michael Trusty attended
Homecoming 2003 in Annapolis
and had a great time: “I’m
married, living in New Mexico, and
ride horses with my 12-year-olddaughter.”
1965
Grace Logerfo Bateman is
married, is the mother of four chil
dren (mostly out of college), is
Nyssa Episcopal Church, San Fran
cisco, the inaugural Distinguished
Alumni Award for “unique and
distinguished ministry in the
church and especially pioneering
contributions to liturgical
practice.” The church’s Web site,
www.saintgregorys.org, docu
ments this practice (and theory)
with extensive photos and articles.
Rev. Schell is a 1971 graduate of
General Seminary; his co-rector, a
1970 graduate.
1968
“Finally finished my B.A. in 1999only 30 years late-at Thomas
Edison State College,” writes
Megan Beaumont (A, formerly
Anne Beaumont Reid). “Received
an M.A. in Spiritual Psychology
2001. Nowadays I am an ordained
non-denominational clergy person
and spend my time leading person
al growth workshops, teaching
manifestation and self-forgiveness,
and officiating at marriages,
memorial services, and most
recently at an un-handfasting-a
spiritual ceremony to honor and
complete the severing of ties after
a civil divorce. My husband has
retired, and we are enjoying the
blessings of good health and happy
travel.”
“I’m somehow still in Britian!”
writes Deborah Rodman
Lawther (SF).
The General Theological Seminary
Alumni Association awarded
Donald Schell (SF) and Richard
Fabian, co-rectors of St. Gregory of
{The College.
he was sorry to miss the 35th
reunion of the Class of 1968 last
year, but he enjoyed e-mail and
pictures. “Spring has finally come
and our family looks forward to
visiting our Martha’s Vineyard
home again. Happy to say that we
are all well and enjoying diverse
pursuits. Would come to SJC more
often but we are far away...”
News from Bob Wycoff (A) and
Maya Hasegawa (A), first from
Bob: “Bob’s computer system
support job is going to India and
Bob has enrolled in Berklee College
of Music as a full-time undergradu
ate to pursue a B.A. in music,
starting in September. Four
grandchildren and still counting;
number five is due in August.
See you in October! ” And from
Maya: “Maya is now working as
compliance manager for the City of
Boston’s Department of Neighbor
hood Development. DND builds
affordable housing, finances
rehabs, and helps small businesses.
The satisfaction comes from seeing
formerly vacant lots with houses on
them. Spare time is spent practic
ing tai chi and researching a
Methodist deaconess named
Hattie B. Cooper.”
1970
Isaac Block (SFGI) writes:
1969
High praise for tutor Steve Van
Luchene’s second Tecolote
colloquium for K-12 teachers from
Elizabeth Aiello (SFGI), who
found it “even more gratifying and
professionally stimulating than the
first one. It inspired me to expand
my Great Books class by offering
two more sections. Each section
has 12 students, all enthusiastically
participating in meaningful
dialogue related to meaningful
text. I have been honored as a ‘Los
Alamos Living Treasure’ in recog
nition of my 14 continuous years as
‘the Great Books Instructor.’”
St. John’s College ■ Spring 2004 }
“My wife, Mamerza Delos Reyes
Block, has published her book.
The Price ofFreedom: The Story of
a Courageous Manila JournaHst."
Last fall, Theda Braddock Fowler
(A) published her second book.
Wetland Regulation: Case Law,
Interpretation, and Commentary.
After an illustrious career with the
Postal Service and World Bank
(over 30 years and 83 foreign coun
tries), Juan Ianni (A) has decided
that it’s time to hang up his spurs.
classnotes continued on page 36
�{Alumni Profile}
34
Rich and Famous
Ben Bloom, Aq7, Finds Fame, Fortune—and Something Even More Important.
vi Sus3Aw Borden, A87
embers of the
Annapolis class of
1997 may not be
surprised to learn
that classmate
Ben Bloom (A97)
has achieved a degree of celebrity. He was
certainly well known as a student, and his
jump-head-hrst approach to life revealed a
boom-or-bust attitude that leads those who
meet him to believe that he is not destined
for an ordinary life.
Indeed, he is not. Today, seven years
after graduation, he has won a measure of
fame in three categories: Scrabble, poetry,
and table tennis.
Bloom was already a skilled Scrabble
player when he arrived at St. John’s, but
since graduating, he has played in tourna
ments in Italy, Israel (his home for much of
his life), Turkey, Norway, Reno, San Diego,
Tennessee, and Florida. Although his cur
rent rating is 1428, at the height of his play
in March 2003, he was rated 1649 (a rating
over 1600 is considered expert).
Bloom learned of his Scrabble-world
celebrity in 2003 when he was flying to
Reno for the National Scrabble Champi
onships. “I had to fly via O’Hare airport in
Chicago. There were several players there,
wearing their typical Scrabble t-shirts,” he
recalls. “In the airport lounge, I saw a bald
guy in his early 4os-black pants, white
t-shirt, and two red braces with which he
was continually fiddling. I recognized him
as Joel Sherman, the 2002 National Cham
pion and one of the top three players in the
world. I got up the courage to ask him if I
was correct in identifying him. He said,
‘Yes, and you are Ben Bloom.’”
Stefan Fatsis, a Wall Street Journal
reporter and author of Word Freak, a New
York Times bestseller about Scrabble, also
knew who Bloom was before the two were
paired in an expert match in the 2002
he read from his thesis at Books & Books, a
finals in San Diego. Bloom beat him and
prominent Miami bookstore.
walked away from the match with a signed
As for table tennis. Bloom has been prac
copy of his book.
In the world of poetry. Bloom is complet ticing for years. He was an aggressive play
er at St. John’s and shared the Annapolis
ing his final semester at the University of
campus titles in men’s doubles and mixed
Miami, where he received his master’s
doubles in 1996. When he lived in Israel,
degree in poetry in May. His 15 minutes of
he played in the National League for the
poetry fame took place on March 31, when
M
{The College -St. John’s
College ■ Spring 2004 }
For the poet in Ben Bloom, words have
GREAT MEANING. FoR THE SCRABBLE PLAYER,
they’re just part of the game.
�{Alumni profile}
suggestion: “During my late teens I was
disabled (he has cerebral palsy). After
graduation, he took his game on the road,
still in denial with regards to my CP. I
wanted to fit in with other students and
coming in third at the European Disabled
was ashamed of being different. This feel
Championships in Budapest in 1998 and
winning the silver medal at the World
ing turned into anger and resentment. I
Games for CP athletes in 2001.
wanted nothing to do with other people
Thus accounts for the fame. The fortune
with CP as I felt this would be letting go of
my aspirations, a stupid concept which I
is a different matter. It stems from the con
look back on and thank God I have come so
ditions of Bloom’s birth, which are both
far in the last decade.”
tragic and miraculous. The short version is
Bloom has indeed come far. He is calm
this: Ben was born brain dead. The attend
ing nurses thought he
and relaxed, accepting
was stillborn. His par
and tolerant. He has
grown into a man with a
ents asked the hospital
strong, healthy sense of
staff to do all they
himself. It would be
could so they put him
in an incubator. After
impossible to recount
all that went into that
72 hours, he came to
growth, but Bloom cites
life. The staff said that
a particularly transfor
if he survived a week it
mative experience he
would be a miracle.
had during the World
The price of that
Games for CP athletes.
miracle is cerebral
“While there I felt
palsy, the condition
like never before,” he
that Bloom has lived
says. “I made friends
with-and struggled
with other CP athletes
against-his entire life.
from Russia and France.
In 1999, after a nineI speak French well, so
year legal battle.
-Ben Bloom
it was easy to break the
Bloom settled out of
ice with them. Many
court with the hospi
athletes had more
tal. A profile of Bloom
severe CP than me, and were very hard to
by Sam Orbaum, Web-published in 2000,
understand. We communicated through
sums up his situation: “He is now, in the
other means; the bond that we shared, of
most grotesquely literal sense, a self-made
being equal, made for a wonderful feeling.
millionaire.”
At the end of the Games, we had a party
Bloom’s cerebral palsy makes him hard
to understand, contorts his face, and gives
with Karaoke. All of us moved the same
him a peculiar, dragging walk. But it’s not
way. All of us had the same unclear voice.
just his speech, gait, and appearance that
There was an intense feeling of cama
raderie and equality.”
CP has disfigured. His condition has also
Bloom is now finishing his thesis-a col
affected his sense of self.
lection of 50 poems that reveal much about
Bloom has a history of buoying up his
him and the way his world is shaped by
challenged sense of self with humor. The
cerebral palsy. His poem, “Jane Fonda’s
Orbaum article quoted some of his witti
(pain in the) Neck Workout” describes the
cisms: “Hey, you know what happens when
mechanics of dealing with a stranger’s
I have a few beers?” Bloom asks. “I talk
insults. “Special Olympics” describes a
clear and walk straight.” He describes giv
night out for eight people with CP. In the
ing his own brand of speech therapy to a
crowd: “I make them repeat the alphabet
poem, the group tries to order drinks:
“Two Heinekens, two Carlsbergs, two
after me, with all 26 letters sounding
Guinness and two Everclears./Five min
exactly the same.”
utes trying to communicate, then we settle
Humor, of course, does not heal all
for eight domestic beers.”
wounds, and Bloom has not always known
In “The Extremities Of A Line Are
how to salve them. When he first arrived at
Points,” Bloom describes the obstacles,
St. John’s, several people unwittingly
both interior and exterior, of everyday
found themselves on his bad side by sug
events. The poem reveals Bloom’s writing
gesting he get to know Santa Fe tutor
for all it is: story, insight, therapy, balm,
Robert Sacks, who also has CP. An older
and wiser Bloom recalls why he hated that
''All ofus moved the
same way. All ofus
had the same
unclear voice.
There was an
intensefeeling of
camaraderie and
equality.
{The College -St John’s
College • Spring 2004 }
35
The Extremities Oe
A Line Are Points
-Euclid, Elements., Book i. Definition
3
Standing in line
Motionless
Passing glances from strangers
Maybe three-quarters of a second
longer than normal
Nothing to get upset about.
“Next!”
Four steps to reach the desk
One-two-three-four
People have other things on their
minds
They’re here for a reason
They’re all adults
They’re not going to stare.
“Next!”
They want to rush me
No, it’s not me
Don’t be oversensitive
Do other people have these inner
dialogs?
Am I Socrates or his interlocutor?
“Hi. I'm here to... ”
Said too much
She’s been working all day
No patience for me
No patience for my voice
Fuck it
Can’t stop now.
“For my appointment. ”
Confusion. Disappointment. Disgust.
Pity.
The myriad of facial expressions tell a
familiar story
The patented neck strain won’t be too
far away
Yup, here it comes
In answer to your next question, “I’m
here alone.”
“Is anyone responsiblefor
this... guy?”
Should I look around?
Should I glare at the people behind
me?
No point. One day they’ll read about it.
In a poem.
They can wait.
“Next!”
�{AlumniNotes}
36
et al.), ‘What constitutes scientific
proof?’ Very fun.”
1971
In April, pediatrician Linda
Belgrade Friehling (SF71)
embarked on a trek to Everest Base
Camp to raise funds for Himalayan
Health Care, serving the people of
rural Nepal. In a fund-raising letter
she sent along, she described the
trek and its mission: “We will cover
lao miles on foot and attain an
elevation of 18,500 feet. The funds
raised will support the completion
of a project sponsored by
Himalayan Health Care. Himalayan
Health Care is a small non-govern
mental organization founded
approximately a decade ago by a
Nepalese and an American to
promote better health and life in
remote rural areas of Nepal. With a
dedicated group of volunteers,
including physicians, dentists,
nurses, and other professionals,
this small organization has facilitat
ed impressive improvements in pre
natal care, infant mortality, dental
hygiene, and overall health for over
40,000 people. Learn more by
visiting the Web site: (Himalayanhealthcare.org)...One of the things
that has impressed me most about
Himalayan Health Care, is the
forward-looking approach that
emphasizes educating the Nepalese
team to carry out on a day-to-day
basis vastly improved health prac
tices. In a country that currently
has one doctor to 32,000 people,
I feel this is the only way to make a
substantive difference.” For more
information, e-mail her at:
tlofftrax@aol.com.
From Colorado, Michael
ViCTOROFF (A) writes: “After
nearly five years as medical
director for Aetna, I left to work
as an investigator for the Depart
ment of Toxicology at the Universi
ty of Colorado Medical School.
Officially, I’m a private detective.
Our group has M.D.s and Ph.D.
toxicologists. We investigate
medical claims of inquiry from
environmental chemicals. Sort of
like Erin Brockovich-only we use
science. Much of the most difficult
work is philosophical (Karl Popper
1972
Wesley Sasaki-Uemura (A) writes,
“On December i, 2003, we
finalized the adoption of Melina
Mei (Xin Yi) Sasaki-Uemura. She
was born October of 2002 in
Jiangxi province, China. She has
‘smiling eyes.’”
IleneLee (A) reports: “McKee
(A72) and Ilene’s daughter, Mollie,
now 25, is completing her first year
at Yale Law School after a summer
South American tour that ended
with sailing from Galapagos to
Tahiti on a 37-foot catamaran. Ilene
has a busy play therapy practice in
the San Francisco area, specializing
in autism and consulting with
schools.”
1973
Jose F. Grave de Peralta (A) is
taking a group of art and architec
ture students from the University of
Miami to Florence, Italy, for six
weeks to learn fresco painting and
restoration. Side trips include
Assisi, Rome, and Pompeii to view
fresco sites in those places as well.
1976
Jonathan Mark (A) was a recent
William Malloy (SF) writes that
he took early retirement in Decem
ber 2003 for health reasons. “Now
I have the opportunity to work four
mornings a week holding prema
ture babies and to concentrate on
improving my health. Additionally,
I am a volunteer reporter for KPFT
(Keep People Free, Thinking), the
local Pacifica station in Houston.
Not only can I put up a couple of
alumni who may be passing
through Houston, I am also accept
ing invitations to visit alumni.
Particular consideration will he
given to those invitations that are
accompanied by a prepaid airhne
ticket. Kidding? No, really, I mean
it!”
David Pex (SF) is “working hard as
contributor to Popular Science
magazine and built an off-road
course for Toyota in San Antonio.
From Steven and Melissa Sedlis
(both A): “Our daughter Elizabeth
is a first-year medical student at
Columbia College of Physicians
and Surgeons. Our daughter
Jennifer will graduate in May from
Scripps College, Claremont, Calif.”
1974
From California, Gerard (A) and
Daphne Kapolka write: “Daphne
(nee Greene, A76) retired from the
Navy in July. She is now a senior
lecturer in physics at the Naval
Postgraduate School in Monterey.
Gerry continues to teach English at
Santa Catalina School in Monterey.
Basia Kapolka (Aoi) is studying
acting in New York City.”
John Rees (A) is working hard as a
tele-neuroradiologist: “I live for my
work and my family. I greatly enjoy
participating in a small seminar
group of old SJC friends!”
{The College.
1975
is not yet completely comfortable
with the “Transgender Club” and
similar organizations constituting
student life today-but he’s trying.
He is feehng very old these days.
A career change for Idell KesselMAN (AGI): “After more than 20
years of teaching college composi
tion, literature, and other related
courses, followed by two years as a
vocational rehabilitation counselor,
I am working as a psychotherapist
at a nonprofit agency in Phoenix
operating under a managed care
system. In July I begin a one-year
residency in Dialectical Behavior
Therapy, a cognitive approach to
helping individuals with Borderline
Personality Disorder. My daughter
Bisa, nearly 25, is completing her
master’s in education this June,
with several years of elementary
teaching already completed. We
live in our separate apartments in
Phoenix, with our own cats and
habits. It helps us to keep our
friendship strong. I’d enjoy hearing
from old friends and tutors:
ideleyz@earthlink.net.”
1977
Brad Davidson (A) still lives in
Annapolis with his wife, Lynne, and
children Teddy and Lucy. He’s been
taking Teddy on college visits and
St. John’s College ■ Spring 2004 }
the finance director at Ecos Con
sulting, which implements energy
efficiency programs for electric and
gas utility companies. Write me at
dpcx@qwest.net.”
Carla S. Schick (A) won an
honorable mention in the Barbara
Mandigo Kelly Peace Poetry Award.
The poem, “The End of the
Words,” can be found at www.
wagingpeace.org.
Marlene Strong (A) has news:
“After a year of being a lady of
leisure, which I spent fixing up my
new house and garden in Boise, I’m
starting work at a therapy center,
so I’ll finally get to use my hardearned MET (Marriage and Family
Therapist) license. Life in Idaho is
calmer; Boise is small enough that
you know your neighbors, but large
enough to have plenty of culture,
and the mountains are beautiful.
Any classmates are invited to stop
by if you’re in the neighborhood-if
not, see you for our 30th reunion.”
�{Alumni Notes}
1978
Robert McMahan (SFGI) reports
that he is now full professor at The
College of New Jersey and has given
many recent concerts both as per
former and composer. His wife,
Anne, continues to teach at the
Pennington School, working with
West African drumming. Renais
sance recorder, and Native
American music.
An invitation from Lawrence
Ostrovsky (A); “I see a lot of gray
haired people in the summer who
come up here to visit Alaska. So
I’m sure there must be someone
from the class of ’78. If you find
yourself up this way, please give me
a ring.”
1980
Leanne J. Pembvrn (A) writes:
“After five years of planning and
hard work, Mark and I have com
pleted phase I of home building in
our woods. Next phase will be straw
bale-all help is very welcome for
the bale raising. Contact me via
e-mail: leanne@pemburn.com.”
Tom G. Palmer (A) sends a quick
update: “I was in Iraq in February
under the auspices of the Ministry
of Education and the American
Federation of Teachers for a
conference for educators on civic
education and have been working
to get a lot of important books
translated into Arabic and pub
lished. In addition. I’m helping
Iraqi libertarian friends to set up a
think tank there, for the purposes
of educating people in the princi
ples of classical liberalism and
producing policy studies for the
new Iraqi government on how to
reform the judiciary to secure the
rule of law and the protection of
the rights to life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness, how to priva
tize state-owned industries, and so
forth. I’m leaving this Wednesday
for the European meeting of the
Mont Pelerin Society in Hamburg
(Free Trade from the Hanseatic
League to the EU) and from there
to Moscow to give a paper, ‘The
Role of Law and Institutions in
Economic Development’ at a
conference, ‘A Liberal Agenda for
the New Century: A Global
Perspective.’ I hope to be back in
Iraq in May and July to set up a
series of seminars for students,
some of which will involve SJC-like
seminars and discussions, as well as
lectures.
I’ve recently published a few
items, including a monograph,
‘Globalization and Culture:
Homogeneity, Diversity, Identity,
Liberty’ (published by the Liberales
Institut in Berlin for worldwide
distribution through the many
offices of the Friedrich-Naumann
Stiftung) and a paper, ‘Globaliza
tion, Cosmopolitanism, and
Personal Identity in the Italian
journal Etica e Politica. ’ I’ve got
a few other items in the works,
as well.
All in all. I’m keeping busy and
off the streets.”
37
Susan Read (SFGI) writes that her
1986
“Greetings, SJC,” writes Clayton
DeKorne (A). “I live now half time
in Burlington, Vermont, with my
daughters, Cecilia (16) and Helen
(14), and halftime in Brooklyn,
N.Y., with my new wife, Robin
Michals. I work as a full-time free
lance writer with regular assign
ments at The New York Times
Learning Network and a steady
stream of multi-media production
work from a handful of education
media companies. I would love to
hear from old friends and any John
nies interested in the brave new
world of online learning:
cdekorne@verizon.net. ”
son, Harry, is a thriving 8-year-old.
“We have just bought the house of
our dreams. I continue to enjoy
teaching English at Wooster
School.”
1988
Juliet Burch (A) writes from
Boston: “David (Vermette, A85)
and I are still happily impoverished
in Boston. I am apprenticing to be a
film projectionist and he is
researching Franco-American and
Quebec history alongside an edito
rial job. We continue to use our
St. John’s education for good
instead of evil, vigilantly keeping
cocktail party conversations away
from portfolio talk and on track
with suitable topics like ‘what is
color, anyway?’”
About the Tattoos
1982
Geoffrey Henebry (SF) writes:
“Ana and I and our brood of seven
(Patrick, Claudia, Gus, Thomas,
Isabel, Maria, and Tessie) continue
to enjoy the Good Life here in
Lincoln, Neb. My research over the
past five years has been diverse:
from modeling the ranges of native
vertebrate species in Nebraska to
analyzing the consequences of the
collapse of the Soviet Union on the
annual cycle of greenness in
Kazakhstan.”
1983
Theodore Zenzinger (A) just had a
daughter: Sophia Anne Zenzinger,
born in April.
{The College-
to have passed in a flash. Sophia is a fearless, joyful, lively
child, and she infinitely enriches our lives. She doesn’t have
any tattoos yet, but I was able to locate some black clothing in
her size. Our families and friends helped us adjust to parent
hood, but we are especially grateful to my classmate Ken Hom
(A80). Ken has logged thousands of hours in Babylon with us.
If Sophia develops a taste for good music and a knack for pool,
she will owe it all to him. I continue to practice the Japanese
martial art of aikido, in which I currently hold the rank of 4thdegree black belt. Since 1999,1 have been the chief instructor
at Aikido of Northern Virginia. I have about 75 students, any
30 of whom may show up for a given class. You may visit the
dojo’s website at http://www.aikido-nova.org. I’m still a
bureaucrat in the Department of Housing and Urban Develop
ment. For the past two years. I’ve been working as a housing
program policy specialist in the Office of Lender Activities and
Program Compliance. We spank mortgage lenders when
they’ve been bad. People may reach me at
Jim_Sorrentino@hud.gov.”
St. John’s College ■ Spring 2004 }
�38
{Alumni Profile}
Looking for the “Monster”
Owen Kelley, Agg, Finds a Clue to Why Hurricanes Intensify
BY
Rosemary Harty
Before investigating hurri
omputer models can often
canes, Kelley had entered a
make accurate predictions
doctoral program in compu
of where a hurricane will
tational science immediately
wander. But no one has yet
found an accurate method to after graduating from
predict how intense a hurri
St. John’s. He ended up
cashing
out his credits for a
cane’s damaging winds win hecome.
Grapmaster(A93)
’s degree in physics
pling with this question, Owen Kelley
because he worried that he
asks, “Why does one hurricane become a
“wasn’t smart enough to be a
monster and another one doesn’t?”
As a scientist with George Mason Univer
Ph.D. scientist.” After honing
sity, Kelley is part of a team that works at
his skills at NASA for six years
NASA’s Goddard Space Fhght Center to
and feeling a growing desire to
study satellite data gathered by the Tropical
“ask the big questions,” he
Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM). The
decided last year to continue
TRMM satelhte is a joint effort between
where he left off with his
NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration
doctoral studies.
Agency, and its data are being analyzed by
When Kelley began his
scientists around the world. For most of the
hurricane research last year,
past six years, Kelley created graphics and
he did not immediately think
software for other researchers. Through this
to look for hot towers. “Erich Stocker, my
work, Kelley met Joanne Simpson and
project manager at NASA, came in my
learned of her pioneering hurricane
office one day and saw me poring over my
research. Back in the 1950s, Simpson
hurricanes pictures, getting nowhere. He
proposed that short-hved “hot towers”
told me to pick one thing to study, and that
sustain a tropical cyclone, allowing it to
made all the difference. I had in the back of
travel a thousand miles in a week. But with
my mind how Joanne Simpson would talk
out computers or satellites, Simpson’s hot
passionately about hot towers, so I looked
tower hypothesis was difficult to prove.
up one of her articles and then taught my
Hot towers are rain clouds that reach at
computer how to find towers. It turns out
least to the top of the troposphere, which is
that the only instrument in space that can
nine miles above the earth and four miles
clearly see hot towers is the radar that’s
higher than the rest of a hurricane. The tow
onboard the TRMM satellite. This radar
ers are called “hot” because heat released by gives us ‘x-ray’ vision. It doesn’t look at just
water condensing allows these towers to rise
the upper surface of a hurricane-it sees into
higher.
the heart of the storm.”
Once Kelley began pondering the myster
ies of hot towers, his training at St. John’sparticularly his fondness for a question that
begins with “what is?”-began to pay off.
“Freshman year, I was horrified when we
started Euchd and my class argued for an
hour about the definition of a point. By the
time I graduated, I appreciated the power of
simple questions. Instead of becoming lost
in the data, I repeatedly asked the simple
question, ‘What is a hot tower?’ Every paper
I found seemed to use a slightly different
definition of hot tower. Eventually, I settled
on a precise definition and my persistence
C
Kelley’s computer models show hot towers
RISING FROM HURRICANES.
{The Colleges;, John’s
College ■ Spring 2004 }
As A SCIENTIST,
Owen Kelley appreciates
THE POWER OF SIMPLE QUESTIONS.
led me to patterns that other scientists failed
to notice in this same dataset.
“It took my breath away when I first
examined my statistical summary and I saw
that hot towers appear often in the intensify
ing hurricanes, but rarely in the ones that
are not intensifying,” says Kelley. A good
example of an intensifying hurricane with a
hot tower is Hurricane Bonnie in August
1998, as the storm intensified a few days
before striking North Carohna.
Kelley cautions, “We still can’t predict
which hurricanes will become monsters,
but perhaps we are now one step closer to
an answer.” Kelley’s results suggest that
seeing a hot tower near the hurricane’s eye
is a clue that the hurricane is twice as likely
to intensify than it would be otherwise.
In January, Kelley flew to Seattle to
present his findings at the annual meeting
of the American Meteorological Society.
He was not prepared for the media atten
tion that resulted when NASA issued a press
release about his findings on the day that he
presented them. While answering journal
ists’ questions, he had to learn how to
describe his research in a few words. In the
end, more than 80 Web sites, newspapers,
continued on nextpage
�{Alumni Notes}
Shannon May Lavery (A) and her
husband, JOHN (A87), celebrated
the eight-month birthday of daugh
ter Aurora (A2025) in Healdsburg,
Calif., where they recently relocat
ed with their first-born dog, (Vizla)
Lucius. All are well and peaceful.
“Fellow Oenophiles and Tahoebound schussers and ski rats pass
ing through should get in touch.
We are local and down to the
ground. Hookenzababy!”
Kim Paffenroth (A) has published
another book. In Praise of Wisdom:
Literary and Theological Reflec
tions on Faith and Reason (New
York and London: Continuum
International Publishing, 2004). In
it he traces the Biblical image of
wisdom as it unfolds in Dostoevsky,
Shakespeare, Augustine, Goethe,
Pascal, and Melville.
1990
Rebecca Ashe (SF) writes:
“I’m turning 40 this year and going
back to the UK for my high school
class reunion in June. Still happily
married to Steve Simmer with three
gorgeous and interesting daughters
(10, 8, and 4-all avid readers).
My beloved Faraday died at age 13.
Lee Whiting (SF89) and I got him
in Santa Fe. I still run daily and am
training for a half-marathon in May.
Also starting a private practice in
West Springfield. Would love to
hear from classmates again:
Rebecca.ashe@the-spa.com.”
“Greetings to all. I hope you are
well. Zip bang,” writes William
Culley (SF).
James Clinton Pittman (SF) writes
1989
After a year in Thailand, Elizabeth
Powers (A) and her husband
returned to Brooklyn in late 2002.
They gave birth to a daughter,
Madehne Josephine Wagner, in
October of 2003.
that younger son Sam just turned
two. “Hope everyone is well. I
need to write a book-anyone know
how to get political commentary
published when you hate Democ
rats and Republicans alike?”
1991
Brad Stuart (A) and Sara Larson
(Ago) are delighted to announce the
birth of their second daughter,
Phoebe. Brad is a software engineer
for General Dynamics in
Westminster, Md.
RonalieMoss (SFGI, EC95) is still
a teacher at Los Alamos High
School, but she looks forward to
retiring soon. “I have had a reward
ing career, but now I am looking
forward to reading great books
again instead of student papers.”
News from Megan Smith (A):
My husband, David Dougherty
(AGI98), and I welcomed our baby
television stations, and radio stations picked
up the story. His hurricane results appeared
in the media from Texas to Canada, Switzer
land, Colombia, Australia, and Japan.
A European Web site has even posted an
Italian translation of the story.
Perhaps the most gratifying attention
came from Simpson, who sent Kelley an
girl. Harper Claret, into our world
on September 2, 2003. She is a
bright and smiling baby with a full
head of spiky hair, just like her
mother’s. We are still living in
Annapolis, and I am working part
time as an optician and trying to
start a career in freelance ad design
for small businesses. David is a Java
programmer with Anne Arundel
County government. We’d love to
hear from any of our old friends.
My e-mail is peanutmom®
comcast.net and David’s is
dsmithdi@comcast.net.”
1992
From London, Victoria Burgess
(SF) writes: “I wish to thank every
one for their kind wishes following
the death of my father. They mean a
great deal to me. I would love to see
any Johnnies passing through the
London area.”
“After almost eightyears at the
Consortium for Oceanographic
Research and Education (CORE),
I will start a new job in April with
the Office of Education and
Sustainable Development at NOAA’s
headquarters in DC,” writes Sarah
ScHOEDiNGER (A). “While this job
won’t shorten my commute from
Annapolis, I am looking forward to
the new professional opportunities
it presents.”
Michael Zinanti (SF) tells us:
“I am an antenna design engineer
for Centurion Wireless Technologies
and have contributed to three anten
na patents with one more pending.
Susan (formerly Switich, SF93) and
I are raising and home-schooling one
e-mail that pointed out weaknesses in his
research, but closed with the statement:
“An old person feels that his/her life has not
been in vain when we see young people
grabbing the ball and running with it.”
This year, Kelley plans to revise the
material he presented at the conference
and submit it to a scholarly journal. Once
(The College.
39
daughter, Anna. We would love to
hear from any Johnnies passing
through the Denver area.”
1993
“Hello, all!”AMYFlack (A) writes.
“Things in South Dakota are going
well. Ministry is an adventure,
harrowing, wonderful, blissful,
wacky, and so many other adjectives
both good and bad.” E-mail:
thiers55@yahoo.com .
1994
Natalie Arnold and William Blais
(both SF) were married in July 2001
and celebrated with a 30-day cross
country train trip. Currently, they
“five in Pittsburgh and are the proud
owners of a happy house in need of a
little TLC. We are happy to provide
bed and breakfast, good conversa
tion, and a warm welcome to any
Johnnie traveling through Pitts
burgh. We are best reached through
e-mail at bill.blais@pobox.eom.”
Larissa Engelman (A) is currently
living in New York after moving
from Washington, D.C., in 2002.
“Working as marketing manager of
the New York office of Covington &
Burhng. As a side project, am look
ing to raise money for an independ
ent film project and would love to be
connected to others who have expe
rience or contacts in that world. My
hellos to the class. Hope to see you
at our lo-year reunion.”
he finishes his doctoral studies, Kelley is
not sure what the future holds. “The
ultimate goal is supposed to be teaching at
a research university and doing ground
breaking research between classes. I just
want to look at data and see things other
people haven’t seen before. I’m not sure
how to make that happen.” -*■
St. John’s College ■ Spring 2004 }
�{Alumni Notes}
40
1995
Joel Ard (A) and his wife Hannah
(A92), announce the birth of their
son, David Frederick Ard, on
September 4, 2003. David made his
first appearance at St. John’s at
Homecoming a week after his birth.
“Remember kids,” writes Chris
Davis (SF), “funk is its own
reward.”
Benjamin “Alex” Ruschell (SF)
has a new baby. George Alexis
Ruschell (8 lbs., 20 in.) was born in
Schweinfurt, Germany, in
December 2003.
Jessica VanDriesen (A) is about to
complete a master’s in education as
part of the New York City Teaching
Fellows. “I have been teaching
math at Wadleigh Secondary School
since 2002. It is a far cry from
explorations of the conic sections or
Minkowskian space-time, but there
are moments. I plan to travel abroad
next year, teaching in an interna
tional school or possibly switching
to ESL. Anyone with suggestions,
please contact me via e-mail:
jvandriesen@hotmail.com.”
Tracy Whitcomb (A) is still in
Vermont and now back in school for
a second bachelor’s degree: in nurs
ing. “I hope everyone else is well! ”
An invitation to adventure from
KiraK. Zielinski (SF). “Anyone
in or passing through Las Vegas,
Nev., I’m now flying the Dam
Helicopter Tours out of a Bell 206
at the Hoover Dam-the tours are
quick, but a ton of fun, so drop by
and fly with me! I just bought a
house and I’ll be here for a year.
Because it’s Vegas, I think I need
to consider modifying my uniform
to sparkly midriff-baring nomex
with rhinestones! My callsign is
Dam Helicopter...too cool...
I’m obviously having a blast with
my new life. Also need to design
more bookshelves to go in the
helicopter...”
business journalism, I moved on to
Moscow. As of March, I have been
here for two years and I’m now writ
ing for a Dutch AIDS charity. I got
aggie Roberts Arnold (A95) writes:
married last summer to Elena
“Late as usual, I am announcing the
Rudykh, a Siberian intellectual
arrival of our son Augustus Bullock
beauty queen. We see ourselves
Roberts (Gus), born on September 16,
moving back to the homeland
2002. Parenthood is a blast! Thanks to Gus
eventually, but in the meantime,
we are frequent visitors to the San Antonio
I hope to see the day when one of
Zoo. (I am expecting the bears to wave to us out of
therecognition
many Marx readings on the
any day now.) We are also frequent visitors to theProgram
McNay isArt
replaced by Bulgakov’s
Museum. As parents we love this enthusiastic rediscovery of
‘Heart of a Dog’ for a modest
the basics: the naming of and conversational focus on ani
injection of reality.”
Rediscovering the Basics
M
mals, shapes, colors, vehicles, body parts, foods, nature (you
name it). I think fondly and frequently of the time I spent on
each campus and wish my contemporaries great happiness
and fulfillment! (And the courage to send in a note!)”
1996
1997
Maya Brennan (SF), formerly
J. Maya Johnson, is in New Jersey:
“I’ve recently moved from Baltimore
to central New Jersey where my
husband. Grandpa of evihobots
.com, found a paying job after his
election-induced unemployment.
I’m working at Princeton University,
compiling and coding data for the
Cultural Policy and the Arts National
Data Archive (CPANDA). Anyone
interested in the cultural pohcy field
will want to check out our free online
data archive atwww.cpanda.org. I’d
love to hear from former classmates,
especially anyone passing through
the central New Jersey to New York
City area. My e-mail address is
mahimsab@yahoo.com. Snail-mail:
501 Raritan Ave., D6,
Highland Park, NJ 08904
Erin N.H. Furby (A) is working as a
massage therapist in Anchorage.
“My husband and I are enjoying our
attempts at balancing middle-class
American fife with the fife of the
mind, and we still love Alaska, even
if it snows five days before April.”
{The College.
Michael Chiantella (A) married
Karen Burgess in Buffalo, N.Y., on
August 2, 2003. “Taffeta Elliott
(SF) gave a reading at the wedding.
Currently almost completed an
LL.M, in Trust and Estate law at
the University of Miami.”
1998
In September 2003, Julie Bayon
(AGI) graduated from Claremont
Graduate University with a Ph.D. in
education. The title of her disserta
tion is “The Neo-Classical Ideal:
Liberal Arts Education for the
Twenty-First Century.” She is
currently assistant professor of
English and chair of General
Education at Washington Bible
College in Lanham, Md.
Jacqueline Camm (A) announces
Shannon Stirman (SF) writes:
“We’re moving from Philadelphia,
where I’ve been studying at Penn,
to San Francisco, where Kelly will
begin working for a new software
company. Henry turned 2 in August
and we’re trying to keep up with
him. I’m finishing up my disserta
tion in psychology and will plan to
start an internship in the fall.
As soon as we figure out exactly
where we’ll be hving, visitors wifi
be welcome!”
“I think the last time I appeared
here, just after graduation, I was
rather optimistic about saving the
world through economics,” writes
David Veazey (A). “Well, since then,
I got my M.A. at Fordham but
stopped just before I had to start on
my dissertation. Over the years I had
become disenchanted with the
inherent inabihty of economics to
solve any meaningful problems.
Then later, after becoming an expert
in maximizing my unemployment
checks and dabbhng in health and
St. John’s College . Spring 2004 }
her marriage to Robert Travis
(a 1998 graduate of Columbia
University) on February 8, 2003, in
the Cathedral Church of St. Luke,
Orlando, Fla. The Rt. Rev. John
Howe, bishop of the Episcopal
Diocese of Central Florida,
presided. Amy (Norman) Morgan
(A96) and her husband Bill provided
music for the ceremony. Writes
Jacquehne: “We moved to
Tennessee in August for Rob to
attend seminary. We also purchased
our first home with the help of
Milk Klim (A02) of Columbia
National Mortgage. If anyone
would like to reach us, or is passing
through Tennessee, please send us
an e-mail: jacquelinecamm@
hotmail.com.”
Method-acting studies for Stephen
Conn (SF) finally hit Hollywood
gold! Look for him this summer in
Troy, he plays the third spear from
the left in that big battle scene
towards the middle. “Brad was a
dream to work with,” Steve adds.
�{Alumni Notes}
Christopher Pagan Nelson (SF)
Grateful for Phlogiston
reports: “Right now. I’m living in
Texas and concentrating on my
turbo-gangster country band. The
drian Lucia (SFoo) writes: “After living in
Foggy Mountain Cop Killin’ Boys.
Philadelphia and Chicago for three years. I’m
College didn’t really prepare me for
pursuing a master’s degree in library and infor
the scads of fame and money I’m
mation science at the University of Illinois,
receiving, but it was cool anyway. I
Familiarity with the theory of phlogiston has
would love to hear what other John
never been so helpful. I plan to flee the Mid
nies are doing, so please e-mail me
west in basically any direction when I finish this program.
Any
at donkeytown@hotmail.com
.
A
Johnnie librarians out there?”
James Petcoff (SFGI) is teaching:
a college administrator for the
University of Chicago’s economics
department, serves as president of
the Chicago chapter of the Society
of Architectural Historians, and is a
member of Chicago’s Caxton Club
(for bibliofiles): “I collect 16thcentury Aristotle texts.”
“I recently left my job as a mental
health counselor in Hyannis, Mass.,
and now work for The May Center
for Child Development at The May
School in Chatham, Mass., teach
ing children with developmental
disabilities. I recently moved to
Wellfleet, Cape Cod, from
Yarmouthport. When I am not
involved in the above, I play with
my jazz, folk, blues rocka-billy band: Skeeter and the Buz
ztones. I would love to communi
cate with fellow Johnnies in the
area.”
1999
Benjamin Closs (A) is serving at
the Marine Corps Air Station in
Miramar, Calif. “I may go overseas
for a while this fall, but Pacific
Beach isn’t bad until then.”
from Philadelphia to Frederick,
Md., a year and a half ago to live
with Vince Baker (AgsJ-yes, that
Vince Baker. We’re now engaged,
we’ve just bought a house and are
planning an October wedding. I’m
working for a biotech company,
while Vince is an editor. We have a
bit of a menagerie with the cats
Apollo & Artemis, and our recently
acquired blue-fronted Amazon par
rot, Pancho, the Bird of Mass
Destruction. We’d love to hear
from anyone in the D.G. metro
area: cinderlou@peoplepc.com and
oldmarley@hotmail.com.”
announce the birth of their son.
Mason, on February 14, 2003.
“We’d love to hear from our former
classmates at ShannonandKerry@
earthlink.net.”
Mike and Abby Soejoto (both A)
are pleased to announce the birth
of their first child, Lucila Adele.
Lucy was born on September 30 in
Los Angeles, where Mike is begin
ning his second year as an attorney
in the tax department of O’Melveny
& Myers. Abby recently finished the
post-baccalaureate program in
classics at UCLA. They’d love to
hear from anyone, especially those
in or passing through Southern
California (asoejoto@cs.com or
323-572-0343).
Nevin Young (A) writes: “I am now
Mauricio Rojas in August. “Also I
am currently teaching in Prince
George’s County. I got my certifica
tion through their Resident
Teacher Program and would be
happy to talk to any seniors or
graduates who are looking into
doing the same.”
“Hey all,” writes Jessica Sprout
Morgenstern (A). “Still busy out
here, loving my job, loving the
weather-sunny Santa Barbara. Feel
free to e-mail anytime...anyone
looking for a fun way to get paid to
learn (and teach) dance (ballroom
and social) give me a call!”
{The College.
Christopher “Casey” Vaughan
(A) is living in St. Augustine, Fla.
“Anyone who wants to come surfing
feel free to contact me at cvaughan@flagler.edu.
2001
Katharine Christopher (SF) and
Billy Davis (SF) were married on
December 20, 2003, in a beautiful
traditional ceremony at the Church
of the Holy Faith in Santa Fe.
Katharine reports: “We were
attended by our five sisters as
bridesmaids, and Jackson FrishMAN (SFoi) and Chris Carlisle
(SFoi) as groomsmen. Nikki
Mazzia (SFoi) sang two lovely
solos, and Juliana Corona
Kirmeyer (SF02) read a Scripture
passage. A number of other John
nies also came to celebrate with us,
as well as family and friends from
all over. It was a wonderful day, as
well as the beginning, God willing,
of a long and joyful marriage.”
2000
Lori Beth Kurtyka (AGI) married
Cindy Lutz (A) writes: “I moved
married in Rocky Mount, N.C., and
now live in Indianola, Miss., which
has been my home since gradua
tion. I will be ordained in May and
we are expecting our first child in
November.”
Shannon Rohde and Kerry
O’Boyle (Both AGI) would like to
Robert Herbst (SF) is employed as
A report from Andrew B. Hill (A):
“I’m getting married sometime in
2004 to a tremendous woman who
did not, sadly, attend St. John’s.
I reside in Fort Worth, Texas.
I recently completed an unsuccess
ful bid for the mayorship of my
lovely city, for which I was reward
ed with a whopping 206 votes, as
well as about 60 hours of Digital
Beta footage, which I intend to
convert into something remotely
saleable. Thus, no matter how
vague my connection to the school
may be, I am following in a
tradition of Maverick Johnnie
filmmakers, or at least I think I
am.”
41
finishing my third year in the
evening division at the George
Washington University Law School,
and am working for a lawyer in the
District of Columbia. (I cannot
understand why anyone would not
want to be a lawyer.) I would be
happy to answer any questions from
Johnnies who want to know about
law school in general, or GW.”
“Greetings from the Mississippi
Delta!” writes Paul Spradley (A).
“This past January 1 got married to
Caroline Taylor of Rocky Mount,
N.C. In the wedding party were
Derek Alexander (A99), David
Bohannon (A99), Adam Dawson
(A03), Alan Hudson (A03), and
George O’Keefe (A03). We were
John ’5 College . Spring 2004 }
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
September; deadline for the
alumni notes section is July 15.
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
Public Relations Office
1160 Camino Cruz Blanca
Santa Fe, NM 87505-4599;
alumni@sjcsf.edu
�4a
Katrina Costedio (SF) has finally
decided to use her powers for good
and is heading for law school,
although she isn’t sure which one.
“Also shaping the young minds of
California in various volunteer
positions and as a sub. And on the
weekends I work with an adult who
is learning to read. I’m struggling
with the demands of being a good
citizen. Most of the time I still feel
like I’m pretending, but what’s the
difference really?”
Terence Duvall (A) writes: “I just
returned from my first major trip
since graduating college so I
decided it was about time to send
an update. My lomo and I spent six
stupendous weeks in Slovenia
taking pictures of castles by lakes
for my upcoming art exhibit
‘Reflected Castles.’ In Ljubljana I
met a producer who has offered to
put out a split seven-inch of my
{Alumni Notes}
band. Big Brother, and the Sloven
ian underground rock quartet
Sister City. I think I finally under
stand why you can’t spell Slovenia
without the word ‘love.’ And so in
the immortal words of the poet
Jerry Garcia, ‘What a long strange
trip it’s been.’”
Talley Scroggs (A) moved to
Bennington, Vt., after a half year in
Agen, France, where she assisted
in running The French Kitchen at
Gamont, a 1720s inn. Her friend
Louis Kovacs (A), is in the post
baccalaureate program at
Bennington College. Talley works
at North Shire Booksellers and
plans to start an MBA program
next fall.
An intriguing “heads up” from
Peter Speer (A): “You’re the king
of hearts for four years and then
you come out into the real world
and you’re the two of spades. And
there’s no don rags in your new
office, and no one wants to read
your senior essay. But that girl by
the water cooler is awfully cute,
and she blushes when I quote
Dante, and though she’s never
heard of Virgil she swears it sounds
familiar. So all’s well and I’m
going to Vegas. Feel free to contact
me with lucky numbers.”
2002
Margaret Tobias (A) will be
attending graduate school this fall
at the University of Chicago,
enrolling in the Master of Arts in
Humanities program.
2003
“I am enjoying Eastern Classics
and highly recommend the pro
gram,” writes Allison Webster
(SF).4-
Alek Chance (A) and Iva Ziza
(Aoi) had a daughter, Emma
Katherine Chance. Emma was
born on August 10, 2003, in
St. Johnsburry, Vermont.
{Obituaries}
Diana “Danny” Bell
Herbert Brent Stallings
Diana “Danny” Bell, the wife of Santa Fe
tutor emeritus Charles Bell, died March 24
of pancreatic cancer. She was 80.
She was born and raised in Darlington,
Md., trained as a teacher, and after marry
ing Charles Bell in 1949, lived with her
family in Chicago and Annapolis. She
taught first grade in Annapolis until mov
ing to Santa Fe in 1967. Along with her
husband, she was named one of the city’s
“Living Treasures” in 1996 for contribu
tions to the Santa Fe community.
“Everything she did was in proportion
and infused with order, kindness, and
delight,” her family wrote in her newspa
per obituary. “Whether it was a picnic, or
the peaceful sharing of tea, Danny filled all
with joy and the sense of her unconditional
acceptance of our human foibles.”
The family has arranged for two ways for
friends to remember her: contributions
can be made for the publication of Charles
Bell’s poems through the non-profit
Lumen Books (40 Camino Cielo, Santa Fe,
New Mexico 87506) and also to one of
Danny’s charities. La Luz de Santa Fe Fam
ily Shelter, (2325 Cerrillos Road, Santa Fe,
NM 87505).
Herbert Brent Stallings, class of 1941, died
January 8, 2004, in Cary, N.C. He was 84.
A native of Baltimore, Stallings played on
the college’s football team (nicknamed the
“gallopinggoose-eggs”) before intercolle
giate sports were dropped. His pastor, the
Rev. William Green, remembers Stallings
bringing his family back to the St. John’s
campus several years ago, videotaping his
old dormitory room, and fondly revisiting
his days at St. John’s. When the college
adopted the New Program in r937, Stallings
had the option of sticking with the old pro
gram or starting in the new and spending an
extra year at the college; he chose the New
Program, Green said.
“He has always said that St. John’s really
formed who he was,” said Rev. Green. “He
really loved talking about the college.”
Stallings went on to serve as a lieutenant
in the Navy during World War IL After the
war, he launched a 30-year career in adver
tising with the Baltimore News-American.
He met his wife, Ruth, on a Chesapeake
Bay Cruise. Married for nearly 60 years,
the couple had two children who live in
North Carolina.
{The College-
St. John ’5 College ■ Spring 2004 }
“He was a wonderful man who loved
books,” Green said.
Medora Cockey
Medora Cockey (A03) died January 3, 2003,
after a brief illness. She was 23.
Miss Cockey was born in Baltimore and
moved to Salisbury with her family in 1983.
She attended St. John’s College for two
years, then transferred to Warren Wilson
College in Asheville, N.C., to finish her
studies. She was to have graduated with a
fine arts degree in May.
Miss Cockey was a talented artist. She
loved hard physical farm work, and her
favorite summer job in recent years was
working on organic farms in Virginia and
Georgia. Her sister, Mary, is a member of
the Annapolis class of 2004.
Also noted:
Clayton Davis, class of r938, died Feb. 9,
2004.
John Falencki, (A68), died Dec. 30, 2003.
Merrill Turner (SF79) died March 16,
2004.
Charles T. Westcott, class of 1936, died in
July 2002.
�{Student Voices}
43
On Grades: How Can Genuine
Learning be Measured at St. John’s?
BY loHN Peterson, A05
grades? Do any students complain about
y grades were never
their grades? One can respond to a tutor in
something I worried
a don rag because he is stating observations
too much about. In
and offering suggestions, but how does one
middle school I earned
respond to a B on a piece of paper?
As, but in high schoolThe college’s recent self-study, “Liberal
where I didn’t always
Education
in a Community of Learners,”
do homework or attend class-I
maintained
states
that the college wants students to
a consistent B+, or 90 percent
average.
“work for understanding and not for
These grades were meaningless, I thought,
grades,” but acknowledges that students
because the work that the A-kids were
need transcripts, and therefore grades, for
doing to get their grades was out of propor
life after St. John’s. Grades interfere with
tion to a grade’s value. I scoffed at the arti
the college’s goals of fostering genuine
ficial scale of greatness that accompanied
learning and cultivating freedom, they
the grades: “High Honor Roll,” “Honor
distract students, encourage competition,
Roll,” etc. I beheved that I was wiser than
and are “inadequate as means of evaluating
these students, because while they were
working hard to slave for top grades at their a student’s success in liberal learning,” the
report states. Nevertheless, it says, tutors
college choices, I was heading to a place
take the “fair determination of grades very
where grades didn’t matter and where what
seriously.”
would really be measured after four years
The “Grades and Grading Poficies” sec
would be the true worth of an individual.
tion of the student handbook says that the
When I came to St. John’s College, I
college “does require all tutors to award let
found classes to be radically different from
ter grades to their students at the end of
high school, the teachers much more alive,
each semester...and authorizes them to
the students more interested and interest
decide what elements they will take into
ing. There were no tests and no homeconsideration and in what proportion.”
work-at least not in the high school sense
As opposed to the pre-determined system
of busywork from a textbook. Why, then,
of my high school days, this process is mys
were there still grades?
terious and vague, perhaps even arbitrary.
St. John’s is an egalitarian institution
What are these “elements” that a tutor may
that loves truth and rewards hard work not
or may not take into consideration? Class
with good grades, but with understanding,
room participation, attendance, attitude,
good conversation, and good judgment.
papers, and demonstrations all seem like
Could it possibly be true that with all these
candidates. However, different tutors may
riches around them, students here would
be more interested in different things, and
be worried about their grades, look them
this is something that a proportional grad
up every semester, and work for them, even
ing pohcy, in which various assignments
to the detriment of learning itself?
are given certain weight in a total grade,
During my first semester, I don’t think
is designed to alleviate.
grades ever crossed my mind-I was having
It is unhkely that St. John’s will implement
too much fun. I was worried that I did not
any pohcy such as this in the near future.
talk as much as some of my classmates and
One reason is that the more specific we get
that maybe I did not study enough. In my
about grades, the more it will appear that we
don rag, my tutors were nice to me and
care about them, and as a result, we will care
said some helpful things. This was enough
about them more. If tutors needed to discuss
for me.
grades, they would have to think more about
This year, however, I began to think
grade-giving and less about teaching.
about life after St. John’s and checked my
Students would consequently worry more
grades. This raised a series of troubling
about grade-getting than about learning.
questions about grades and the learning
Competition would inevitably result.
environment at St. John’s: How many other
“It’s a weird situation,” acknowledges
students check their grades? Students dis
Dean Harvey Flaumenhaft. “On the one
cuss don rags all the time-what about
M
{The College.
St. John’s College Spring 2004 }
John Peterson
hand we give [grades], and we don’t want
them to be some kind of secret document
that a student can’t look at, but on the other
hand we don’t report them to the student,
and we try to play it down. I don’t think it’s
hypocritical...It’s trying to foster a commu
nity where people are really concerned
about the depth of each individual student’s
self-education-and it really works.”
With all the debate about how much to
talk about grades, by which standards they
are given, and how much they matter to
students as opposed to how much consider
ation tutors have in giving them, my
inclination is to revert to my old high
school attitude. I begin to suspect that the
behavior of the students around me is
geared toward getting better grades.
I wonder if this or that student has better
grades than I, and if so, why. I become
taken with the feeling that we are all here
to go somewhere else, to get our tickets to
graduate school. I begin to resent my fellow
students and to think only of myself. Worst
of all, I stop all learning and introspection,
adopt an air of superiority, and start to
think about my future.
Only at this point do I realize that the
school knows what it is doing: it has foreseen
these problems, and in its grading pohcy has
tried to circumvent them. It recognizes that
grades can be a potential threat to learning,
but that they are necessary. If a Johnnie is
still worried about the arbitrariness of
grades, he only needs to ask himself,
“Do my grades reflect anything real?” and
he will answer, “More than they did in high
school.” That should be enough, and he
should go back to his studies.
�44
{Alumni Association News}
From the Alumni
Association
President
Greetings!
Your Alumni
Association and
the staff of SJC
have heen hard at
work supporting
the network of
Johnnies. I wish I
could share in
one letter all the
projects and possibilities that are emerging
from our shared work, but we only have
room for three this time. Watch this space
for more in the coming issues.
Part 1 - Reconnect
What ever happened to that interesting
woman in my freshman seminar?
WTio are the Johnnies living in my state?
Is there someone from St. John’s practicing
law in my city?
How many people were in my class?
What is Glenda Holladay’s last name now?
Does my favorite waltz partner have an
e-mail address?
How can I be sure the college has my
correct address and phone number?
Soon you can answer these and many other
questions about alumni around the world.
The Alumni Association and the college
joined forces to put the St. John’s College
Alumni Register online. It will be a great
new tool for you to stay in touch with the
rest of the college community. To use the
Register1. Go towww.stjohnscollege.edu.
2. Select alumni.
3. Select Online Register.
4. Apply for access to the Register.
5. Within a week, you will receive an
e-mail with your username and password
that will give you access.
Then you’ll be searching to your heart’s
content. As you use the new Register, we
strongly urge you to:
• Send your feedback about the Register
and the rest of the Web site to Jo Ann
Mattson (A87) joanne.mattson@sjca.edu
or Roxanne Seagraves (SF83)
roxanne.seagraves@mail.sjcsf.edu.
• Update and/or complete your own
information. The Register is only as
good as the information it holds. Please
make it most useful by keeping your own
data up to date!
• Let the college know if you prefer not
to have your information appear in the
Register. You should have received a
postcard asking if you wanted to opt out.
There are also places online that you can
choose not to have your information
appear.
• Use the Register as a tool to stay in
touch with Johnnies from your era, your
campus, your profession, or your locale.
Part 2 - Come Home
Are you going to Homecoming this year?
Please consider making the trip to Santa Fe
in the summer or Annapolis in the fall. You
will have many reasons to be glad you did.
• Seeing old friends and making new
ones.
• Thanking that tutor who opened your
mind to the books (or the books to your
mind).
• Seeing a rejuvenated campus whether
you’re in the East or the West.
• Watching a Santa Fe sunset over the
mountain or an Annapolis sunset over
the creek.
• Sharing the unique conversational
experience of seminar.
• Dancing as if you were ao again.
• Munching on burritos or crab cakes.
• Welcoming new honorary alumni.
• Gongratulating fellow alumni with
Awards of Merit for their remarkable
lives and work.
• Learning about the current state of
student hfe and the Program.
• Exhibiting and/or observing work of
creative and industrious Johnnies who
have books to sign (Annapolis) or art to
show (Santa Fe).
You will be receiving information and
invitations from classmates, the Alumni
Association, and the college. We look
forward to seeing you!
Partg - Reach Out
The Next Steps Action Team of the Alumni
Association and the Career Services offices
on both campuses support new alumni as
{The College .
St. John’s College ■ Spring 2004 }
they venture out into the world. If you’re
interested in providing support or in get
ting a boost yourself, consider reaching
out. Among the many opportunities and
services:
Virgil Initiative: Juniors who volunteer
are matched with an alumnus mentor.
The two meet periodically and stay in
touch through senior year and beyond.
The purpose of the relationship is to share
experiences and insights about the transi
tions after St. John’s. Career counseling is
not part of the plan, but mentors may have
helpful suggestions and resources for the
job or educational market as well. (Thanks
to Lee Zlotoff (A74) and Tom Krause
(SFGIoo) for conceiving and launching
this program!)
Networking receptions: Several Alumni
Association chapters host receptions that
bring new alumni and older ones together
to share career and grad school informa
tion. As you might imagine, many other
topics come up for conversation and a
lively time is had by all.
Communities of Interest: Clusters of
alumni have shared interests such as
psychology, dance, quilting, art, academic
research in various fields, law, or educa
tion. Often these Johnnies don’t have ways
to be in touch with each other even when
they know they’re not alone. The Next
Steps Action Team is planning to launch
a network across time and space to get
like-minded alumni connected.
Internships: A generous grant from the
Hodson Trust inspired summer internships
for students on the Annapolis campus.
Recipients have pursued a variety of
activities from arts to sciences to services
to professions. The project has been very
successful, and plans are afoot to begin a
similar program in Santa Fe.
We all have transitions to make as we
leave the college. These programs and
others help make the transition a time for
extended learning about how the great
ideas are the foundation for happy and
productive lives. If you’re interested in
participating in any of these programs,
either as supporter or supported, please
be in touch with Jo Ann or Roxanne.
They’ll help you make the connections.
For the past, present, and future,
Glenda Holladay Eoyang, SF76
�{Alumni Association News}
Chapter Update
With i8 active chapters meeting on a regu
lar basis throughout the country, including
a new chapter in Pittsburgh, St. John’s
alumni have plenty of opportunities for
seminars, social events, and cultural out
ings with other Johnnies. Efforts are also
under way in six new areas to develop
chapters from reading groups or nurture
budding interest in the formation of new
chapters and alumni groups.
In her annual report on chapter activity
to the association board, Carol Freeman
(AGI94), reported on an encouraging year
marked by active chapters planning innova
tive events and emerging interest in areas
yet to establish chapters.
Here are some highlights:
• The Santa Fe chapter is now meeting
bimonthly, and has formed a steering
committee to select topics and plan
meetings.
• The Boston chapter is thrilled to have
read Marcel Proust’s In Search ofLost
Time. This inspiring endeavor (5,000
pages) was a project embraced enthusias
tically by chapter members.
• The Annapolis chapter has decided to
develop a reading list for several months
in a row to attract more of the 500
alumni in the area to seminars.
• Inquiries about starting a chapter or
reading group are being pursued in
Ithaca, N.Y., and the Greater Miami area.
In Miami, Johnnies traveled up to three
hours to attend recent alumni gettogethers in Miami and West Palm
Beach, hosted by Annapolis staff
members Barbara Goyette (A73),
vice president for advancement, and
Jo Ann Mattson (A87), director of
alumni activities.
• Russ Dibble (SF97) and Kira Heater
organized the first seminar, on February
II, for alumni in the Missoula, Montana,
area.
In addition to seminars, Johnnies are
demonstrating their interest in socializing
with other alumni by turning out in large
numbers for crab feasts (Baltimore),
picnics (New York), and an annual
alumni dinner (Greater Puget Sound),
Check the Web
FOR Election
News
The Alumni Association nominations for
alumni representatives to the St. John’s
Board of Visitors and Governors and for
directors-at-large for the Alumni Associa
tion Board for 2005 will be posted on the
college Web site atwww.stjohnscollege.edu.
Select “Alumni” from the left-hand menu
(under the SJC seal), then click on the
Alumni Association homepage. A special
nominations page will appear among the
left-hand menu options
that are now highlighted in
red. Names, photos (when
available) and biographical
information about the
nominees, as well as infor
mation on the election
process, will be available
online on or before
August I, 2004.
45
ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE
ALUMNI ASSOCIATION
Whether from Annapolis or Santa Fe, under
graduate or Graduate Institute, Old Program
or New, graduated or not, 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 pro
grams and coordinate the affairs of the Associ
ation. This newsletter within The College mag
azine is sponsored by the Alumni Association
and communicates Alumni Association news
and events of interest.
President - Glenda Eoyang, SF76
Vice President - Jason Walsh, A85
Secretary -Barbara Lauer, SF76
Treasurer - Bill Fant, A79
Getting-the-Word-OutAction Team Chair Linda Stabler-Talty, SFGI76
Web site - www.sjca.edu/aassoc/main.phtml
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.
Brett Heavner (A89) and
Nancy Lindley (A58) at an
Annapolis networking
reception for students and
ALUMNI.
CHAPTER CONTACTS
Call the alumni listed belowfor information
about chapter, reading group, or other alumni
activities in each area.
ALBUQUERQUE
Bob & Vicki Morgan
505-275-9012
BALTIMORE
Deborah Cohen
410-472-9158
ANNAPOLIS
Beth Martin Gammon
410-280-0958
BOSTON
Ginger Kenney
617-964-4794
AUSTIN
Jennifer Chenoweth
512-482-0747
Bev Angel
512-926-7808
CHICAGO
Amanda Richards
847-705-1143
DALLAS/FORT
WORTH
Suzanne Gill Doremus
817-927-2390
DENVER/BOULDER
Lee Goldstein
720-746-1496
MINNEAPOLIS/
ST. PAUL
Carol Freeman
612-822-3216
NEW YORK
Daniel Van Doren
914-949-6811
{The College-
NORTHERN CALIF.
Suzanne Vito
510-527-4309
SANTA FE
Richard Cowles
505-986-1814
WASHINGTON DC
Jean Dickason
301-699-6207
PHILADELPHIA
Bart Kaplan
215-465-0244
SEATTLE
Amina Brandt
206-465-7781
PITTSBURGH
Joanne Murray
724-325-4151
SOUTHERN
CALIFORNIA
Elizabeth Eastman
562-426-1934
WESTERN NEW
ENGLAND
Julia Ward
413-648-0064
PORTLAND
Dale Mortimer
360-882-9058
SAN DIEGO
Stephanie Rico
619-423-4972
St. John’s College • Spring 2004 }
TRIANGLE CIRCLE
(NO
Susan Eversole
919-968-4856
ISRAEL
Emi Geiger Leslau
15 Aminadav Street
Jerusalem 93549
Israel
9-722-671-7608
boazl@cc.huji.ac.il
�{AlumniAssociationNews}
46
“A LOAF OF BREAD,
A GLASS OF WINE, AND ... I AND
ThOU.”
Sn^ng, Swirling, and Seminar at
Stags Leap Wine Cellars
BY Mark Middlebrook, A83
Here with a LoafofBread beneath the
Bough,
A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse - and
Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness And Wilderness is Paradise enow.
- FROM Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat^ c. iioo.
Nine centuries later, the sentiments
expressed in Khayyam’s verse echo each
summer in a vine-rich valley watched over
by a rocky palisade known as Stag’s Leap.
Alumni from around Northern Californiaand perhaps an eagerly welcomed visitor
from Santa Fe or Annapolis-rise early on a
sunny Sunday morning to prepare our pic
nic lunches and finish our seminar reading.
And then we’re off to the annual Stag’s
Leap Wine Cellars picnic and seminars,
where we’ll once again be the blessed
beneficiaries of St. John’s alumni Warren
(A52) and Barbara (A55) Winiarski’s
hospitality.
The drive from the San Francisco Bay
area takes about an hour, and many of us
carpool-if only for the pleasure of packing
in extra hours of conversation with fellow
alumni whom we may not have seen since
last year’s pilgrimage. As we head north,
fog often lingers on the Bay and even in the
lower reaches of Napa Valley, but its cool
ness provides a lovely contrast to the
intense valley heat that will come in the
afternoon.
We pass through the town of Napa and
head north on the Silverado Trail, a road
threading up the eastern side of Napa
Valley that’s traveled mostly by winery
hopping tourists and bicyclists. Vines
appear-lots of them-as we speed past the
now-familiar litany of wineries: Luna
(where former tutor Abe Schoener, A82, is
now winemaker), Altamura, White Rock,
Clos du Vai, Chimney Rock. After a few
miles, we see the distinctive notch in the
craggy ridge to the east. That’s the Stag’s
Leap. Just before the road begins to climb
out of the Stags Leap District and the
bicyclists start to down-shift, we pull into
the Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars driveway.
To keep track of all the stags in these
parts, you need a scorecard-or maybe a
punctuation handbook. The “Stags Leap
District” (multiple stags) is the name of
the small wine-growing region that sits
just below the notch in the ridge called
Above: Alex Poulsen (SF74) and Daniel
Cohen(SF90)
Left: Former Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars
events coordinator Gabriele Ondine and
PICNIC GUEST
{The College-
St. John’s College ■ Spring 2004 }
“Stag’s Leap” (singular possessive stag).
“Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars” (ditto) is the
Winiarskis’ winery and home of our annual
picnic and seminars. “Stags’ Leap Winery”
(plural possessive stags) is an unrelated
winery in the district.
We bypass the tasting room parking lot
and instead take the road that skirts below
the white wine fermentation building and
around a wooded hill to the small lake
tucked behind. There we unload our picnic
baskets and coolers, carry them up to the
lake’s grassy banks, and spread a blanket
on a spot to our Uking-full sun, full shade,
or dappled with some of each. It’s a little
more civilized than Khayyam’s Wilderness,
but with boughs, wine, and books-not to
mention a refreshing lake to jump into-it
will be Paradise enow for us.
Despite the claims of some that our
palates are most discerning in the morn
ing, we defer to the scruples of those who
might find earnest wine tasting at 10 a.m.
a bit unusual, and instead we sally forth on
a vineyard walk and winery tour. We stroll
past FAY-a storied vineyard where Stags
Leap District pioneer Nathan Fay planted
the region’s first Cabernet Sauvignon
grapes in 1961-and then into S.L.V. (Stag’s
Leap Vineyard), whose grapes catapulted
Warren Winiarski to fame when his 1973
S.L.V. Cabernet Sauvignon won the 1976
Paris tasting. We taste some of the grapes
and wonder at the winemaker’s techne that
�{AlumniAssociationNews}
reveals supple, prize-winning
wines from these juicy but still
tart berries.
From the luxuriant but care
fully-coifed wilderness of
grapevine tendrils, we return to
paved road and make our way to
the civilization of a modern
winery: crusher-destemmer
machines, fermentation tanks,
oak barrels, and bottling lines.
Our tour culminates in the
spectacular caves, which are
home to hundreds of barrels of
aging wine, a bronze bear and
cub nestled among several of
those barrels, a Foucault pen
dulum, a dramatically lit,
chapel-like room designed by
Catalan architect Javier Barba.
An hour of walking, plus the
heady, deep aromas of ferment
ing wine, have eliminated any
remaining scruples, so we make
a beeline for the lake. At a table
nearby, our host begins pulling
corks and pouring tastes.
The diligent among us work
methodically through the full
lineup, sniffing, swirling, and
then either swallowing or spit
ting-depending on one’s
lunchtime drinking plans and
desired degree of lucidity
during the afternoon seminars.
We start with Sauvignon
Blanc, several Chardonnays, and a pair of
Merlots. The simpler wines bear the Hawk
Crest name-Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars’
second label-while the grander ones
display the Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars
name and distinctive “standing stag and
tree” logo. We finish with an impressive
phalanx of Cabernet Sauvignons,
including the FAY Estate, S.L.V. Estate,
and occasionally, if we’ve been very, very
good, a precious taste of the CASK 33
(a blend of particularly excellent lots from
FAY and S.L.V.).
Tasting wine is all well and good, but
drinking wine is better, so we pour a glass
of our favorite and bear it gingerly back to
our chosen picnic spot. There we fling
open picnic baskets, unwrap deli sand
wiches or flip open cardboard carry-out
containers, and begin to enjoy the happy
union of good food, good wine, and good
company. Congenial swapping ensues-of
victuals, opinions about the wines, opin
ions about the seminar readings, stories of
Liz Travis
(SF83)
our lives during the preceding year (many
of them true), stories of our times at
St. John’s (some of them true).
All of this eating, bibbing, and creative
embroidery under the hot summer sun is
arduous work, and some of us reinvigorate
with a jump into the lake. At the stentorian
bellow of the ceremonial conk shell, we
commence the annual chapter meeting.
This short but raucous affair typically com
prises effusive thanks to the Winiarskis
and the hard-working winery staff,
announcements of upcoming events, a
desperate plea by the current chapter
president for a successor, and directions to
the various seminar rooms scattered about
the winery.
Despite the unquestioned zeal of
St. John’s alumni for seminars, the next
{The College.
5£. John’s College Spring 2004 }
47
half hour offers irrefutable proof
of the validity of Newton’s first
law. Every body assembled there,
in its tranquil, well-fed state of
rest, does indeed continue in
that state of rest unless com
pelled to change its state by
powerful forces impressed upon
it. Several of us cajole, plead,
and eventually threaten in order
to get these bodies rolling
towards their seminar rooms.
We typically run five simultane
ous seminars on readings
ranging from Plato to the Lotus
Sutra to Wallace Stevens to a
contemporary political essay,
plus one film.
An hour and a half later, the
seminars disband and we
regroup at the Arcade outside
the caves for a reception with
scrumptious desserts and
cheeses, perhaps a sip of dessert
wine, and coffee. “How was
your seminar?” mingles with
other typical post-seminar chat.
There is more catching up on
the previous year, expressions
of wonder that we’re able to
enjoy a day like this each year,
and the wistful sense that this
year’s day is almost done.
One more slice of cake or
piece of cheese, another round
of grateful thanks to our hosts,
perhaps a stop in the tasting room to buy
a few bottles, and then we’re heading
south on the Silverado Trail, back towards
the Bay Area. The day’s heat is starting to
wane, and sun slanting off the vines
makes the early evening sky glow. 1 roll
down the window, and the air rushing by
seems to sing.
This year’s Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars
picnic and seminars have not yet
been scheduled at the time of this
writing. Please note that reserva
tions are required, and that we some
times must limit attendance in order
not to exceed the winery’s capacity.
See the St. John’s College Alumni
Association of Northern California’s
Web page for more information and
reservations instructions:
http://teamrioja.org/sjcaanc/
�48
{St. John’s Forever}
Initiating the
Young into the
Tribe
‘!i4s well you know there is only one com
mencementspeech. It has been delivered
many times and it has many superficial
variations, but it always says the same
thing. An old man ofthe tribe tells the
young men that they are beautiful and
strong, that the world isfull ofevils, and
that they must go out into the world tofight
its evils and keep the vision ofits highest
good. ”
—Scott Buchanan, Commencement 1952,
he commencement rite
calls for a memorable
speech filled with sage
advice on how to go on
with the business of life.
Scott Buchanan called
commencement “the great rite of initiation
of the young into the tribe.” Some speech
es are memorable; some are not. Some
focus on history, some on urgent current
events. But at St. John’s College the selec
tion of the commencement speaker always
falls to those to whom it is primarily
directed, and throughout the years tutors
have been heavy favorites in the selection
process.
Scofield said in his 1950 speech that a
Tutors Richard Scofield and the Rev.
possible interpretation of the custom of
J. Winfree Smith became commencement
choosing a speaker from within the
traditions themselves. Scofield delivered
the commencement speech four times;
college is that students “think of the
Smith was selected by the graduating class
occasion, in spite of its name, as not only
looking forward. Since the life that lies
five times. Tutor Nancy Buchenauer was
ahead of you. . .is more complicated, more
selected by the students in Santa Fe in
serious, and more precarious than the life
1997, and after transferring to the
you are leaving, you could hardly go
Annapolis faculty, was asked to deliver the
without a backward glance.” dtp
2000 address.
T
{The College.
St. John’s College . Spring 2004 }
Tutor Richard Scofield, shown here in
1950, DELIVERED THE COMMENCEMENT
SPEECH FOUR TIMES.
�{Alumni Events Calendar}
Santa Fe
Homecoming: July a-4,2004
classes
are: ’69, ’74, ’79, ’84, ’89, ’94, ’99.
Childcare is available.
Friday, July 2
Picnic on the Placita, 5 p.m.
Reunion class parties
Movie: The Tao ofSteve
Saturday, July 3
Homecoming Seminars, 10 a.m. to noon
Barbecue, 12-2 p.m.
Alumni Art Show opening, 5 p.m.
Banquet, 7 p.m.
Members of the Denver-Boulder chapter
Sunday, July 4
Annapolis
GATHERED FOR A SEMINAR LAST WINTER.
President’s Brunch, 10:30 a.m
Homecoming: October 1-3, 2004
L2I2EEZ1liunni
____
Week i; June 28-July a, 0004
Kierkegaard’s Meditation on Abraham and
Isaac
Led by David Starr
Hegel, Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling,
and excerpts from the book of Genesis.
Painting & Reflection
Led by Phil Le Cuyer &
Elizabeth Pollard Jenny (SF80)
On-campus and off-site painting experi
ences, gallery tours, seminars.
Week2: July 5-9, 2004
Plato’s Republic
Led by Eva Brann & David Carl
Revisit one of the seminal texts of Western
political theory.
Don Giovanni & the Operas of Mozart
Led by Peter Pesic & George Stamos
Once again, Don Giovanni is dragged alive
through the gates of Hell.
Call the Office of Alumni and Parent
Activities, 505-984-6103
Registration, 4 to 8
Career Panel, 6:30 p.m.
Homecoming Lecture, 8:15 p.m.
After lecture: Wine and Cheese with the
class of 2005, Rock Party in the Boathouse
Saturday, October a
Seminars, 10 a.m.
Homecoming Picnic, noon
Class Luncheons, 11:45 P ®Afternoon: Autograph Party, Soccer,
Gathering of All Alumni, Dance
performance in memory of Harry Golding
Hors d’oeuvres & wine, 6 p.m.
Homecoming Banquet, 7:30 p.m.
Waltz/Swing Party, to p.m.
Sunday, October 3
President’s Brunch, ii a.m.
* Tentative schedule.
All alumni are welcome. Reunion classes:
’39, ’44, ’49, ’54, ’59, ’64, ’69, ’74, ’79,
’84, ’89, ’94, ’99.
Contact Planit Meetings for special rates at
Annapolis hotels. Space is limited for dis
counted rates; mention St. John’s College
when you call for reservations.
Phone: 301-261-8284; fax: 919-642-0062.
E-mail: kelder@planitmeetings.com.
For more information, call the Alumni
office: 410-626-2531.
{The College -St.
John’s College ■ Spring 2004 }
Back cover: Reality observers in Annapolis
�STJOHN’S COLLEGE
ANNAPOLIS • SANTA FE
Published by the
Communications Office
P.O. Box aSoo
Annapolis, Maryland 21404
D A N IE L H O U C K
( ao 6)
ADDRESS SERVICE REQUESTED
Periodicals
Postage Paid
�
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<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.
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St. John's College
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Annapolis, Md.
Santa Fe, NM
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thecollege2001
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48
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The College, Spring 2004
Description
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Volume 30, Issue 2 of The College Magazine. Published in Spring 2004.
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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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2004
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text
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pdf
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Harty, Rosemary (editor)
Borden, Sus3an (managing editor)
Behrens, Jennifer (art director)
Hartnett, John (Santa Fe editor)
Wilson, Rebecca
Silver, Joan
Kraus, Pamela
Miller, Basia
Stickney, Carey
Russell, George
Dink, Michael
Engel, Elizabeth
Goyette, Barbara
Byrne, Brigid K.
Maguran, Andra
Peterson, John
Eoyang, Glenda H.
Middlebrook, Mark
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The College Vol. 30. Issue 2 Spring 2004
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/dd24ae3bd6c019815f5181b0f1954519.pdf
8c058faee2abd867715f369dea0659bb
PDF Text
Text
The
College
St. John’s College
•
Annapolis
s p r i n g
•
2 0 0 3
Santa Fe
Montaigne
On the Education
of Children
�On Montaigne
“Good God, how I would hate to be thought a pretty
fellow with my pen, but an ass at everything else!”
M
ichel de Montaigne’s essays provide rich insight into
16th century life in Europe. His reports on the civil wars
of France, the terror of the plague, and the wonder of new
discoveries are engaging firsthand accounts of life in the
Renaissance. His keen observations of daily life—education, child-rearing, marriage, and money management—
still ring with good sense. There is also the sheer delight of listening to someone who loves to talk and has interesting things to say. “If you like my essays,”
Montaigne told Henri III, “you must like me, for my book and I are one.”
Michel Eyquem de Montaigne was born in 1533, the eldest son and heir of
Pierre Eyquem. The family money had been made generations before in the
trade of herring. A fourth-generation gentleman, Montaigne dropped his original
surname and assumed the more elegant name of the family estate. His father,
who guided Michel’s education so conscientiously by dictating only Latin be
spoken to him in childhood, purchased a magistrate’s seat for his son to assume
at the age of 21. With his charm and his connections, Montaigne could have
pursued a political career had he more ambition and energy. Instead, when his
father’s death left him wealthy enough to leave business and politics behind,
Montaigne sold his magistrate’s post, retired to the third-story tower of his
country estate, and took up his pen.
He was very frank in his assessment of himself and his vices. He was bald
and short. He had a “quick and firm” walk, a “loud and strong voice,” and was
“slow and late at everything.” He claimed no great talent for anything but the
ability to write about what he observed: “I look upon myself as ordinary in
every respect, except in the fact that I look upon myself as ordinary.”
Montaigne’s retreat was not absolute. He served two terms as the mayor
of Bordeaux, traveled extensively, and played a role in negotiations between
Henri III and Henri Navarre. He suffered greatly from kidney stones and died
of the ailments that plagued his later years on September 15, 1592.
Montaigne’s essay on education is a favorite of St. John’s in part because his
words resonate with the philosophy of the Program. He defined education as a
self-guided process that didn’t involve memorizing facts or repeating the opinions of others. He believed true education allowed a man to choose for himself
what is right. The ultimate goal of education, he wrote, was to prepare a man
to do some good as a citizen of the world: “This vast world—which some men
now think is but one among many of its kind—is the mirror in which we must
look in order to know ourselves in our true scale. And this world, in short, is
the book my young scholar must study.”
—RH
The College (usps 018-750)
is published quarterly 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
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postmaster: Send address
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Magazine, Communications Office, St. John’s College,
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Annapolis
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Rosemary Harty, editor
Sus3an Borden, managing editor
Phoebe Gilbert, art director
Advisory Board
John Christensen
Harvey Flaumenhaft
Roberta Gable
Barbara Goyette
Kathryn Heines
Pamela Kraus
Joseph Macfarland
Jo Ann Mattson
Eric Salem
Brother Robert Smith
Santa Fe
505-984-6104
tshalizi@mail.sjcsf.edu
Laura J. Mulry, Santa Fe editor
Advisory Board
David Levine
Ginger Roherty
Tahmina Shalizi
Mark St. John
Magazine design by
Claude Skelton Design
�The
spring 2003
volume 29, issue 2
College
•
The Magazine for Alumni of St. John’s College
Annapolis
•
Santa Fe
{Contents}
12
Brave New World
page
d e p a r t m e n t s
2
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
18
Montaigne and
Education
page
Accreditation in Annapolis
Santa Fe Copes with Drought
Marshall Scholar Heads to Oxford
Summer Classics
Art Deco in Denmark
Philanthropia Meets Aristotle
Announcements
Letters
28
Medical advances raise intriguing ethical
issues for four doctors in very different
roles.
from the bell towers
bibliofile
page 12
Annapolis GI Director Bill Pastille
discusses intellectual freedom and
St. John’s College.
• Eva Brann on Homeric delights
• Charlotte Fletcher’s life of an early
founder of St. John’s College
• Alumni Books
20
A Formula for Success
page
31
alumni voices
St. John’s remembers Douglas Allanbrook.
A glimpse into the classrooms of two
Johnnie teachers—one in Annapolis and
one in Santa Fe.
44
Reading the Signs
32
alumni notes
A LU M N I
page
page 20
Photographer Sara White Wilson (A03)
finds Hegel and graffiti have something
in common.
P RO F I L E S
32 Jacob Keller (SF98) authors a paper for
Structure on his way to medical school.
35 An ACLU fellowship puts Juan Villaseñor
(A97) on the case for free speech.
40 Logophile Hallie Leighton (SF92) writes
a book about unusual words.
43
obituaries
Martin Miller, A81
alumni association news
48 st. john’s forever
46
page 44
on the cover
Michel de Montaigne
Illustration by David Johnson
�2
{From the Bell Towers}
Annapolis Self-Study: A Probing Look in the Mirror
quality general education
programs in the liberal
arts that meet its stringent
educational, administrative, and financial criteria.
The AALE is the only
accrediting agency that
focuses exclusively on
the quality of undergraduate liberal arts and general education curricula.
“We trust AALE to have
good judgment about
liberal arts colleges in
general and St. John’s in
particular,” says Kalkavage. “They have known
Tutor Peter Kalkavage chaired the
Self-Study Committee.
about us for many years
and understand our goals
and habits.”
Bud Billups, and President
Membership is small:
Christopher Nelson. Dozens of
so far only Baylor University,
subcommittees met to analyze
the James Madison College of
and discuss the major areas of
Michigan State, the University
the self-study. “Accreditation
of Dallas, Thomas Aquinas
and self-study are labor-intenCollege, and Thomas More
sive and time-consuming,” says
College of Liberal Arts have
Kalkavage. “We have gone into
met the standards.
it in the spirit of hoping to
Middle States accreditation
learn from the experience and
renders the college eligible
by telling the truth about ourfor state and federal grants,
selves, come up with a report
provides a measure of proof
that will be useful both for the
that the college meets stanpurposes of formal review and
dards of quality education, and
for the education of our college
gives St. John’s the opportunity
community.”
to see how outsiders view the
Middle States is the regional
college. But at the same time,
accrediting body for the
submitting the college to
Annapolis campus. Santa Fe is
outside review is fraught with
accredited by the North Central difficulties: the college’s
Association Commission on
unique approach to educaAccreditation and School
tion—no grades, no formal
Improvement.
tests beyond the freshman
Middle States reviews the
music quiz and algebra
college every 10 years. After
exam, no electives, no
the self-study is complete, the
endowed chairs, no
report is sent to the accreditaacademic hierarchy—can
tion team, which will spend
be difficult to explain.“It
three days on campus this
is very important for the
November visiting classes and
college to guard its radical
interviewing faculty, students,
educational mission, its
and college officers.
devotion to genuine learnThe inclusion of AALE in
ing,” explains Kalkavage.
accreditation is new this year.
“We urge our students to be
Based in Washington, AALE
responsible for their opinions by
is a national association that
giving reasons for them and
accredits institutions offering
being open to critical examina{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 }
tion. The whole—at times,
tedious—process of accreditation is an opportunity for the
college as a whole to do something similar: to give itself a
keen, critical looking over; to
take pains in presenting its selfreview in a formal way; and to
submit ourselves to the scrutiny
of outside reviewers, who, we
hope, are able to understand
who we are and why we are not
like other schools.”
In no way does the self-study
reflect a perfect institution, he
says.“What we aspire to as a
community of learning is both
stunning and formidable, and
the extent to which we succeed
in being a community of
learners is truly remarkable,”
Kalkavage says.
Ultimately, accreditation
leads to a stronger institution,
says Dean Flaumenhaft. The
process of self-study “forces us
to articulate what it means to be
a community of learning: what
it requires, the ways in which
we need to improve ourselves
to live up to our aspirations. We
can’t just mutter a few slogans.
We have to try to say exactly
what we mean.” x
jo ann mattson
The self-study that preceded
the Annapolis 2003 accreditation review by the Middle States
Commission on Higher Education and the American Academy
for Liberal Education (AALE)
was an exhaustive 18-month
process that yielded a report
entitled Liberal Education in a
Community of Learning. The
document embraces questions,
observations, and recommendations on everything from
Hegel’s place in the senior
seminar to how to discourage
students from smoking.
Completed early in the spring,
the report touched on almost
every aspect of college life and
involved all faculty, many staff
members, and nearly every campus office. Students, associates,
staff, and board members also
were involved.
While the joint visit from
Middle States and the AALE
isn’t scheduled until November,
the process that precedes it is
perhaps the most valuable—and
in some ways painful—aspect
of accreditation. It requires
the college community to take
a probing look in the mirror
and acknowledge flaws as well
as assets.
Middle States defines
accreditation as “a means of
self-regulation and peer review
adopted by the educational
community…intended to
strengthen and sustain the
quality and integrity of higher
education, making it worthy
of public confidence.”
In Annapolis, the responsibilities of accreditation were
taken very seriously, says tutor
Peter Kalkavage, who has devoted hundreds of hours to accreditation over the past year.
Kalkavage chaired the steering
committee, whose members are
tutors Marilyn Higuera and Joe
Macfarland, Assistant Dean
Judy Seeger, Graduate Institute
Director Bill Pastille, Dean
Harvey Flaumenhaft, Treasurer
�3
{From the Bell Towers}
Community
Building in
Santa Fe
by Michael DiMezza (SF98, EC99)
The recently completed greenhouse in Santa Fe is a forceful
argument against contemporary building construction.
Typically, a few people with
powerful tools and foreign
materials construct new
buildings, an aggressive
approach that produces
quick results. But consider
just one piece of pressure-treated
lumber. Not only are carcinogenic agents applied to it to
[The
greenhouse]
radiate[s]
like a
well-arranged
fire that draws
deeply, burns
brilliantly,
and calls
people to it.
ensure its longevity, but it also
represents a significant expense
of petroleum in the course of
its harvest, transport, milling,
delivery, and installation. These
steps accelerate production at
the cost of future health and
energy problems. There is an
alternative: community building.
The new greenhouse
represents three years of cooperation between visionary
students, the Buildings and
Grounds office, and college
The Santa Fe greenhouse team: Josh Paverud (SFGI03), Pat McCue (SFGI82, EC97),
Zephyr Renner (SF03)(kneeling), Zusha Elinson (SF03)(standing), Matt Aronoff (SF03)(kneeling),
Michael DiMezza (SF98, EC99)(kneeling)
administration. Its construction
was not a matter of plans or
materials, but of people willing
to heft 30-pound bricks or
tolerate frigid Saturday and
Sunday mornings. Community
labor and a mere $4,000 produced this thermally intelligent,
non-toxic and flat-out beautiful
building. Our earthen walls,
locally harvested timber, and
recycled plate glass and lumber
radiate like a well-arranged fire
that draws deeply, burns brilliantly, and calls people to it.
Without all the Buildings
and Grounds work-study
students and volunteers who
gave their time and effort, this
project would have remained a
concept. Matt Aronoff, Zephyr
Renner, Zusha Elinson, and
Josh Paverud, all of this year’s
graduating class, deserve
special recognition. We laid the
foundation with some of these
students when they were freshmen; it’s fitting that we have
completed it together in their
final year. Also, St. John’s has
been fortunate to have the
talent of Pat McCue, the
college’s head gardener, and
David Perrigo, our architect
and friend. Their architecture
and landscaping visions of a
living campus are directly
responsible for its present
beauty. The class of 2000,
Student Polity, and the Graduate
Student Council generously
provided funding for raw
materials.
The greenhouse went up
behind the Fine Arts Building,
a perfect site for a building
designed to work with the sun’s
radiant cycles. Its footprint is
a familiar rectangle roughly
14' x 23'. The pitched roof has
three large skylights. Seven
floor-to-ceiling windows span
19 feet of its façade and allow
direct winter sunlight to warm
the growing area. The three
other sides are adobe brick with
doors on the east and west
and a window on the north.
At spring equinox the sun tracks
a higher course in the sky and
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 }
the eaves partially shade its
rays. By summer, only indirect
light will enter, leaving the
adobe’s thermal mass to keep
the building cool. Passive solar
structures such as this harvest
the sun’s mild, direct radiation
for cool-season heat and use
thermal inertia for warmseason cooling.
We hope this project can
offer a fundamental lesson:
All ecosystems, especially this
desert ecosystem, though rich,
are fragile. When our designs
function in concert with these
ecosystems, buildings like this
greenhouse can provide food,
shelter, beauty, and community,
effortlessly, for years to come. x
Michael DiMezza was project
manager on the St. John’s
College greenhouse construction.
He works as a gardener and
ecological designer for the college.
�4
{From the Bell Towers}
High and Dry in Santa Fe
by Pat McCue (SFGI83)
The drought in and around
Santa Fe has been severe for
the last few years. Although at
various times the surrounding
forest has been extremely dry
and dangerously vulnerable to
wildfires, we have not seen the
massive die-off of trees that is
plaguing the lowlands. Because
we’re closer to the mountains,
we’re a little wetter.
It has occurred to me that
the concept of drought is anthropomorphic. Apparently,
dry periods are typical of this
region and the last 30 years
have been comparatively wet.
I have asked some of the
residents if they remember
the drought of the 1950s. I was
told that although it was very
dry, there was still plenty of
water because there were fewer
people in need of it. Also,
their need was so much less
in comparison with today’s
requirements. As for the dying
trees, a local permaculturist
told me that the forest is being
stressed because the many new
wells that have been drilled
have lowered the water table.
So “the drought” would seem
to be largely a function of
population growth, and therefore we can look forward to a
permanent scarcity of water
even if the annual rainfall
returns to its previous level.
I came to St. John’s after
having worked for many years
for Plants of the Southwest, an
organization that specializes
in native landscapes and
holds a strong sense of mission
regarding the fragility of our
environment and the importance of conserving water. It
was evident that the growing
water shortage was inevitable,
so from the outset I initiated
gardening practices aimed at
lessening our dependence on
irrigation. The key is encouraging the formation of a deep
layer of topsoil that will act
like a sponge in holding whatever water does fall. Without
this measure, the degraded
landscapes of the West simply
shed the majority of rainfall
from their bare crusts. We
have used three main strategies
to do this:
First, we cover bare ground
with organic matter. By composting kitchen garbage,
manure, and garden waste,
all of which are in large supply,
each year we produce an
impressive amount of rich
organic matter to spread on
the grounds. We also mulch
whatever branches we come
across and this material is also
spread. In conjunction with
this practice, we have been
continuously planting native
trees and shrubs that are able
to survive more readily in this
environment, among them,
piñon and ponderosa pine,
black locust, Russian olive
trees, and Rocky Mountain
junipers. These plants’ roots
play a critical, subsurface role
in the development of healthy
soil. Finally, we harvest water
by putting basins around the
trees and bushes and by building
berms where water is running.
Obstructing the water gives it
time to sink into the ground
and nurture the life in the soil.
Snow Bound in Annapolis
In Annapolis, the
Presidents Day
storm canceled
classes for two
days. Buildings
and Grounds staff
worked long hours
to clear two feet of
snow from parking
lots, walkways, and
rooftops. The storm
also wreaked havoc
with the Senior Oral
schedule and ripped
new gutters off
Iglehart Hall.
The good news:
water restrictions
have been lifted
in the state, and
the drought
declared over.
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 }
These simple
procedures
have
changed the
environment of
the campus.
Pat McCue
While we may have little
influence over how much
rain falls, these simple procedures—the very same processes
at work in our forests—have
significantly changed the
environment of the campus.
The diversity of plant and
animal life has greatly increased.
Much of what we have planted
provides food for the birds
(robins, house finches, common bush tits, and scrubjays)
and the insects, which attract
larger animals such as rabbits
and squirrels. Rachel Balkcom
(SFGI00) donated several birdhouses built by the students in
her class at Santa Fe Prep.
Since coming here, I have instituted a policy of not mowing
many of the areas that were
previously cut whenever they
became shaggy. This has allowed wildflowers and grasses to
mature and spread their seeds
throughout the campus, providing for periodic displays of
seasonal wildflowers. The result is a landscape that may not
please those accustomed
to the more traditional landscapes. But the Santa Fe campus
is beautiful in the way that untrammeled nature is beautiful
and is preeminently sensible
where water is so precious. x
Pat McCue is head gardener on
the Santa Fe Campus.
�5
{From the Bell Towers}
Oxford
Bound
The night before his November
interview for the Marshall
Scholarship, Annapolis
senior Aaron MacLean (A03)
was calm, mentally ready, and
carefully prepped by tutors
who conducted several
practice interviews with him.
At 4 a.m., his tranquility
vanished. MacLean woke up
terrified. He managed to
drive himself through a pouring
rain to his interview at the
British Embassy in Washington,
arrived an hour early, and
waited in the car until his interview time. But when he
couldn’t find the front door of
the embassy, the panic rose
again—and he was getting wet.
After that, it was easy.
MacLean enjoyed the interview
and the committee seemed
impressed by him. One question
MacLean tackled with zeal
touched on Theodore Kaczynski,
the Unibomber, and his studies
at Harvard. The moral principle
Kaczynski had come across
more than any other was to
pursue freedom at all costs,
the interviewer explained,
adding that some suggested
Harvard could be sued for
contributing to the
Unibomber’s acts.
“Do you think Harvard
should be brought before the
courts for this?” MacLean
was asked.
In typical Johnnie fashion,
MacLean responded that first
one would have to define freedom and discussed how hard
it is to understand what being
d av i d t ro z z o
Annapolis
Graduate Plans
International
Career
Aaron MacLean heads to Oxford this fall to prepare for a career in international relations.
free means. He brought
up Plato’s Republic in his
thoughtful answer, which
ultimately let Harvard off
the hook.
Along with rich perspective
gleaned from reading great
books and keen observation
of the modern world, MacLean
remembered his mock interviewers’ instructions to sit up
straight, not talk so fast, and
curb his “ums.”
Within a few days, he
received the phone call he
hoped for: He was selected as
one of 40 Marshall Scholars,
talented young Americans
viewed as potential “leaders,
opinion-formers and decisionmakers” in the U.S. The
scholarship program was
established to foster “an understanding and appreciation
of British values and the
British way of life” and to
strengthen ties between the
people of both nations. In
the fall, MacLean begins studies
for a master’s in Medieval
Arabic Thought at Oxford
University.
MacLean was interested
in the Arab world, foreign
affairs, and dialogue between
cultures before the terrorist
attacks of September 11. He
had studied Arabic in Egypt
one summer and at Middlebury College the next. The
attacks, coming right after
his summer in Cairo, strengthened his resolve to pursue a
career in international relations. The knowledge he will
pursue in his graduate studies
is more urgently needed in the
world, he says.
“It is my belief that the
danger the West now faces
from Islamic terrorism is
made vastly greater by a deep
and abiding ignorance on its
part about the civilization of
the Middle East,” he wrote in
his application. “Further-
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 }
more, it is clear that these
foundations cannot merely be
divined by perusal of the newspapers. Studies of the contemporary situation must be supported by thorough knowledge
of the thousand-plus years of
history that led up to it,
knowledge that can only be
attained with study of the
languages involved, and of the
founding texts written in those
languages.”
MacLean, of Burke, Va.,
says his parents’ work influenced his choice of public
service. His father, Angus,
who died in 2001, followed an
Army career with many years
as chief of the Washington,
D.C. Metro Transit Police.
His mother, Sally, who worked
in civil service in Vietnam and
later for the FBI, is an assistant
principal in an elementary
school in Northern Virginia.x
�6
{From the Bell Towers}
Great Books Getaway:
Summer Classics 2003
Combine a high desert setting,
a city rich in cultural offerings
including one of the country’s
finest operas, and the chance
to study great works by
Plato, Tolstoy, and Flannery
O’Connor (among others), and
you get a vacation opportunity
unlike any other. Each year,
Summer Classics draws several
hundred people who prefer to
use their leisure time expanding
the mind and edifying the soul,
engaging in thoughtful
conversations of great books,
and enjoying Santa Fe.
Participants choose one
seminar per morning or afternoon each week for one to
three weeks. Seminars of up
to 17 are led by two members
of the St. John’s College faculty,
guests from other institutions,
and alumni. Call 505-984-6104
or e-mail classics@sjcsf.edu. x
Tutor Michael Bybee (right) leads a seminar.
This year’s line-up of seminars and tutors:
Week 1, July 13-18
Afternoon Session:
Nietzsche: Beyond Good and Evil, Victoria Mora and
Kent Taylor
Morning Session:
Hanna Arendt: The Human Condition, Michael Golluber
and Jay Smith
Charles Saunders Pierce: Various works, Michael Bybee
and David Carl
Ralph Waldo Emerson: Essays, John Cornell and
Richard McCombs
Shakespeare’s sonnets, William Alba and Krishnan
Venkatesh
Physics Before the Footlights—Five Plays, Robert
Richardson and Gino Thomas
All-participant seminar:
Isak Dinesen: “Sorrow-Acre”
Afternoon Session:
Galileo: Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World
Systems, Mark Rollins and Caleb Thompson
Flannery O’Connor: short stories, Jan Arsenaul and
Elizabeth Engel
Tolstoy: short stories, James Carey and David Starr
All-participant seminar:
Francis Bacon: “Of Truth,” “Of Friendship,” and
“Of Studies”
Week 2, July 20-25
Week 3, July 27-August 1
Morning Session:
Mozart and Offenbach: Opera, William Fulton and
Robert Glick
Plato: Five short dialogues, James Carey and
Frank Pagano
Shakespeare: Henry V, Judith Adam and Warren
Winiarski (A52)
Afternoon Session:
Archimedes, James Forkin and Brendon Lasell
Morning Session:
The Upanishads, Patricia Greer and Claudia Honeywell
Strauss: Opera, William Fulton and Timothy Miller
George Eliot: Middlemarch, Eva Brann and Janet
Dougherty
Henry James: The Ambassadors, Victoria Mora and
Peter Pesic
Selected works of classic French drama, Michael Bybee
and David Carr
All-participant seminar:
Joseph Conrad: The Secret Sharer
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 }
�{From the Bell Towers}
7
Art Deco in
Denmark
by Beth Schulman
All the members
of the court of
Denmark wore
shades of red,
evoking blood
and passion.
Musical and Dramatic Academy
in Manhattan. His roommate,
Tom Jacobs, composed a score
for piano, which he played
backstage during performances.
“Tobin and I agreed that
American nightlife following
the Volstead Act was the embodiment of a glossy exterior
covering a rotten interior that
Hamlet viewed with such
disdain in the Danish court,”
says Jacobs, also a sophomore.
“Also,” he said, “the women
looked great then.”
Costume designer Megan
Graff (A02), last year’s theater
archon, was responsible for
outfitting the cast of 19, many
of whom had multiple roles.
She dressed the audience for
the play-within-a-play in
evening clothes,
creating some herself
and borrowing several
from the Signature
Theatre in Arlington, Va.
(where she is currently
an intern), and some
from the Annapolis
Opera. Day clothes were
principally composed of
1920s-style suits and
trench coats for the men
and sleek dresses for the
women. All the members
of the court of Denmark
wore shades of red (the
color of the Danish
flag), evoking blood
and passion.
Jacobs incorporated
music into the play in
several ways. He composed a musical theme
for each important
character, which played
during scene changes
and functioned as a
subtle soundtrack for
the performance.
“Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern had a
A prince with an attitude problem: Joseph Hyde, A03, played a
bright ragtime melody,
Jazz-age Hamlet in The King William Players spring production.
while Ophelia’s was
classical and beautiful,”
says Graff. While not a
musical, the play had
part about it, thinking it
breakthrough where suddenly
other heightened musical
he was the creepiest and funni- through.”
elements as well. The playIncorporating music into
est Polonius I’d ever seen, and
within-a-play was set as an
the tale was an additional
our ghost has this voice that
opera, and Ophelia’s songs were
challenge, says Jacobs. “Aristotle
just took us over.”
more songlike than usual.
said, ‘melody is the greatest
The hardest thing about the
Herringshaw and Jacobs
of the pleasurable accessories
play was “thinking through
cast the spring production last
of tragedy.’ We put him to
fall and spent extra time working Hamlet and respecting the
the test.” x
on the music and meeting with script and the audience by
not giving a simple and uncast members to discuss their
thoughtful performance,” says
roles. “We had an amazing
Herringshaw, who wrote his
cast,” says Herringshaw. “I’m
sophomore essay on “Reversal
really pleased with the freshand Recognition in Hamlet.”
men, they showed such strong
“But that was also the best
leadership. Polonius had a
sara white wilson
This spring, The King William
Players in Annapolis gave a
fresh spin to Shakespeare’s
Hamlet by setting it during
Prohibition, adding a jazzy
musical score, crafting an
Art Deco set, and outfitting
Ophelia and the court to look
like characters from the cast
of Chicago.
The production was directed
by sophomore Tobin Herringshaw, a graduate of the American
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 }
�{From the Bell Towers}
8
Phonathon
volunteer Kathleen
Campbell Kelley
(A03) is all smiles.
Philanthropia
Meets
Aristotle
Here are two facts on the
minds of Philanthropia
volunteers:
G Over the past five years,
40 percent of alumni made
a gift to the Annual Fund.
G The participation rate
for any one year is less
than 30 percent.
The question then becomes:
How can all 40 percent of
alumni who already support
the college be encouraged to
make a gift every year? In any
one year, St. John’s alumni
support the college at a lower
rate than alumni of other
colleges. The goal for this year
is 32 percent—which would put
St. John’s in the same range as
its peers.
“ Moral virtue
comes about as
a result of
habit.”
Aristotle
“The participation number
is not important because we
want to compete with Haverford or Colorado College,”
says Jeff Bishop, vice president
for college-wide advancement.
“It’s important because it
leverages gifts from foundations and other large donors,
for whom alumni support is
an indicator.” And the percentage of alumni who make
gifts is a good sign of the
college’s future financial
health—it’s much more likely
that someone will give a second,
third, or fourth gift once
they’ve made the commitment
to support St. John’s.
So how can Philanthropia
volunteers encourage all 40
percent of Johnnies to give to
the Annual Fund every year?
One strategy is to begin by encouraging people to remember
their college connection during their reunion years. “Five
years, ten years, twenty-five
years... these markers serve as
reminders about the place of
the college in our growth,”
says Barbara Goyette (A73),
vice president for advancement
who will celebrate her
30-year reunion. “We’re
hoping for an extra fund-raising
effort during the reunion years
that will bring the participation rate up for those classes.
”
Reunion Class Leaders,
volunteers from each class,
work with college staff on
special letters, web pages,
fundraising challenges, and
other ways to boost giving
during reunion years. The idea
seems to be working. Among
Santa Fe alumni, the number
of donors has increased by ten
percent over last year, about
the same as Annapolis.
What’s the key to this success?
Ginger Roherty, director of
annual giving in Santa Fe
attributes it to “devoted,
dedicated alumni working in
concert with reunion class
leaders, as well as special
events, improved communi-
cations, and the
efforts of young
alumni and the
senior classes.”
A further step
has its inspiration
in Aristotle’s Ethics:
“Moral virtue comes
about as a result of
habit.” With that in
mind, the Philanthropia volunteers
are working to instill
the habit of giving
in alumni. Gary Edwards (SF79)
is working on a Philanthropia
program to continue the
momentum developed by
class leaders in reunion years.
“There are many ways we can
do this,” he says. “We can
send postcards, write letters
soliciting alumni notes from
our classmates, and continue
to build class web pages.”
Philanthropia volunteers
are banking on Aristotle’s
understanding of habit—and
their sense of responsibility
to the college—to boost the allimportant participation level
permanently.x
Alumni Help
with State
Funding
Effort
St. John’s has a long history of
funding support from the state
of Maryland, dating back to
1784, when the college was
chartered. Although there
have been some periods when
the college has gone without
money from the state, for the
most part the relationship
has been positive. Since the
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 }
mid-1970s, Maryland has been
allocating a small percentage
of the state’s higher education
budget to independent
colleges—including St. John’s—
under the argument that the
colleges contribute to the
state’s economic and cultural
well-being and are worth the
investment. In 2002, for example, the college’s portion
came to about $750,000, or
3 percent of the Annapolis
campus annual operating budget.
This year Maryland, like
many other states, is going
through a budget crisis. In
an effort to find the money to
balance the state budget, the
funding for Maryland’s independent colleges came under
scrutiny. Several proposals
were floated: tie the funding
to the number of in-state
students (this would have
meant an 85 percent cut for
St. John’s); cut the funding by
20 percent; cut the funding
by 51 percent. Alumni, faculty,
and trustees from schools in
Maryland (St. John’s, Loyola,
Johns Hopkins, Maryland
Institute College of Art,
Goucher, and others) wrote
letters, e-mails, and faxes to
their state representatives
stressing the importance of
the schools to the state and
laying out the consequences
of the proposed cuts. St. John’s
President Christopher Nelson
spoke with legislators daily.
The effort, coordinated by
the Maryland Independent
College and University Association (MICUA), was successful
in reaching legislators and
educating them about the
importance of the funding.
However, the final outcome of
the lobbying efforts is still in
doubt at press time. It is likely
that the independent colleges
will still take a significant hit
in the Maryland budget. x
�{From the Bell Towers}
Announcements
New Endowments
Two new endowments have
been established at the college.
The Nancy Gannon Gearing
Student Endowment will support
students at the Annapolis
campus through loans, prizes,
or scholarships. The Victor
and Mimi Zuckerkandl Faculty
Endowment will benefit faculty
at the Annapolis campus with
loans, salary, or employment
benefits. The college’s endowment funds can honor or memorialize alumni, faculty, and
friends of the college and match
a donor’s wishes with needs at
Career Services
the college. For a complete list
of all such funds for both campuses, request the Presidents’
Report, 1999-2001 from the
Advancement Office, SJC,
Box 2800, Annapolis,
MD 21404.
New Faces
In Santa Fe: Susan Patten,
director of the National Friends
program, based in Santa Fe;
Jennifer Sprague, director of
the Meem Library; Susan
Kaplan, director of Corporate
and Foundation Relations. In
Annapolis: Andrea Lamb, director of the Greenfield Library.
Name change: At St. John’s
College, the Placement Office
is no more. The Board of Visitors
and Governors approved an
amendment to the Polity that
changes the name of the office
to Career Services. Dropping
“placement” from the title is
intended to better reflect the
mission of the office.
“We were often confused
with the admissions office, or
expected to somehow place
students in classes,” says
Roberta Gable (A78), director
in Annapolis. Instead the office
helps students prepare applications for graduate school,
scholarships, and fellowships;
arranges internships and
9
part-time jobs; and provides
counseling for students
attempting to match their
talents and interests with a
paying job. In general, Gable
says, she’s called upon to “help
students achieve escape velocity.”
Gable mulled over several
potential names: “Exit Strategy
office,” “The Ministry of
Potentiality,” and “Department
of Free Will” were among her
favorites. Whatever the name,
Gable—who has managed the
bookstore, served as athletic
director, and headed the alumni
office—loves her new job.
“I have the best job,” she
says. “I get to talk with students
and listen to them talk about
their dreams and their hopes.”
{Letters}
Perspective on Ptolemy
It has been a long while since
I read the “Statistics vs. Ptolemy”
article (Summer 2002), but
I do want to add to Jessica
Gambill’s letter as to whether
anything is “lacking” in the
mathematics curriculum at
St. John’s.
A handful of specific observations may be helpful. First of
all, those college students who
are best at mathematics often
do not have a complete background in the pragmatics of
the language. My first exposure to many tools used in high
school and college algebra
came when I was a teaching
assistant. Some of those tools
turned out to be very useful in
my own graduate course in
complex analysis. At the same
time, I was quickly able to
identify the usefulness of the
tool within the context of the
work I was doing. In the same
way, working as a TA for everything from remedial mathe-
matics courses to tutoring students in differential equations
basically filled a lot of gaps.
Like Esther in The Bell Jar
discovering that her honors
course “failed” to give her the
prerequisites needed to major
in English at a community
college, graduate and the most
talented undergraduate
students are always discovering
that freshman college algebra
students have mastered something they themselves had
never heard of. This seems in
no way to prevent access to the
core. There are, for instance,
dozens of tricks used for matrix
operations linear algebra. Most
of them I have never learned
(but marvel when
I watch an undergraduate
engineering student whip
through them) and most of the
rest I don’t bother to remember.
This is really not a problem.
In the same way, teaching
undergraduates to solve
definite integration problems
shores up the same skills when
the TA is also taking graduate
probability theory (as long as
you remember that in the undergraduate calculus course,
the result of integrating over
the entire domain does not
have to be 1, as would be expected in the probability
course). Sometimes you have
to remember which classroom
you happen to be in.
Before attending St. John’s,
I spent a year at a liberal arts
college where I took calculus
with no “precalculus” preparation. Our calculus course
was unlike the “fat” curriculum
typically assigned to college
students. Those curricula
tend to be loaded with specific
applications that are later forgotten. “Exercises” are not
only repetitive, but they also
seem to reflect a compulsion
to demonstrate every possible
situation to which a theorem
might apply. Meaning easily
gets lost in calisthenics. The
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 }
course I had taken was, well,
sparse–and got to the point. It
was far more useful, ultimately,
than those fat calculus courses.
The curious thing is that
what is taught as “advanced”
coursework to college students
is often the easiest work to do.
“Abstract algebra” is the
college student’s first real introduction to mathematics as
conceptual language (college
algebra courses do some stuff
“translating” equations into
English, but that is not the
same thing). Pragmatically,
abstract algebra is easier than
the logic puzzle books in drugstore magazine aisles. Yet
modern algebra coursework is
typically left until senior year
for many college mathematics
majors. (The effort to introduce a structural, conceptual
approach to early math education in the 1960s—what was
called “new math”—is ridiculed
to this day, but many real live
continued on p. 10
�10
mathematicians remember
it fondly.)
My years at St. John’s
prepared me far more than the
typical college undergraduate
mathematics program to participate in graduate mathematics
studies (yes, I did have to take
undergraduate coursework
away from St. John’s. So do
St. John’s graduates who become doctors). In my first year
of graduate school, I immediately appreciated the links between probability and algebraic
theory—and, later, quickly what
is called measure theory. In fact,
I felt that graduate mathematics
was more “just like St. John’s”
than any other environment in
the “real world”—sometimes
more “just like St. John’s” than
was the college itself.
If the Program were infinitely
expandable (or maybe as a
preceptorial suggestion) I
would suggest some algebraic
theory. Johnnies would like to
know the story of Galois. The
Axiom of Choice—which becomes practically sacred
ground in the graduate mathematics environment—is also
prime Johnnie territory: it is
terribly important to mathematics over the past century or
two, it has a terrific name, and
it casts an interesting conceptual
light on probability (which has
way more eidos than most
people realize).
Sheri (Anderson) McMahon (SF78)
A Flawed Justice System
I have just read, with fascination, “Crime and Punishment”
(Summer 2002). In light of the
article’s undoubtedly factual
statement that “Johnnies in
justice veer to the idealistic,”
I find it surprising that the
article also reports, evidently
with confident approval, that:
“However common...scenes
of injustice are in fiction and
drama, front-line professionals
say they are rare in real life.
From arrest through sentencing,
those involved in the U.S.
{Letters}
criminal justice system say that,
despite its flaws, it’s a system
that works.”
My practice is mainly in civil
law. My own experiences with
the criminal justice system,
however, and those of lawyers
with much more experience
whose integrity and judgment
I trust, persuade me that this
optimistic assessment greatly
minimizes the extent to which
our criminal justice system
operates without regard for
justice....It is a common
“Justice in the
abstract is the
refuge of
hypocrites and
scoundrels.”
William Blake
experience of criminal defense
lawyers to see policemen lie
in court to help prosecutors
obtain convictions when they
“know” the defendant is guilty,
believing that the law affords
criminal defendants too much
protection; that prosecutorial
caseloads are so heavy that
prosecutors often have little
time or incentive to focus on
the justice of the particular
case; that bureaucratic D.A.s
are often more interested in
winning impressive conviction
statistics than assuring that
justice is done in their cases;
and that the “policies” of some
D.A.s often preclude a concern
for justice....Moreover, it is
common knowledge that,
throughout the United States,
racial and other discriminatory
biases are often present at every
stage of the criminal process
from identification of suspects
to sentencing—including
administration of the death
penalty.
All things considered, I
share the view that our criminal
justice system is among the best
in the world. But we blind ourselves to reality if we do not acknowledge that its “flaws” are
sufficiently great to warrant
deep concern among those of
us who still cherish the ideal of
law as an instrument of justice.
“For real justice to be done,”
wrote William Blake, “it must
be done in minute particulars.
Justice in the abstract is the
refuge of hypocrites and
scoundrels.” This truth remains,
sadly, too commonly ignored by
the administrators of our criminal justice system—both
prosecution and defense.
Harrison Sheppard (A61)
In Search of Phil Gold
I am interested in the whereabouts of Phil Gold (A51). He,
like me, came over to Israel as a
volunteer to the Israel Army in
our War of Independence. He
visited me in the South Negev
where we fought the Egyptians
and said he was in the unit in
the North facing the Iraqis and
Syrian Armies. That was the
last I saw of him.
Raphael ben-Yosef (A48)
aravati@netvision.net.il
Fax: 972-3-5325581
Phone: 972-3-532554
Calendar Mysteries
Revealed
Each year, alumni help us
identify the faces and circumstances of archival photographs
we publish in the Philanthropia
calendar. This year was no
different.
I just received a copy of the SJC
2003 calendar. I really like it—
the pictures take me back. The
February 2003 photo was taken
in 1973 or 1974. The girl on the
right wearing knee socks is
Judy Paine, of the class of 1976.
I am not sure about the others
in the photo. The September
2003 photo shows students in
the class of 1976 also, from left
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 }
to right they are: Janet Adams,
unknown, Brad Wronski (with
elbows on the table), Nancy
Garrow, Bridget Houston,
David Friedman (with head
down), and tutor Sam Brown.
This photo was probably taken
in 1973. The people I have
identified were all classmates of
mine in the January freshman
class. We were the first January
Freshman class in Santa Fe, I
think. They were great people.
Thanks for the wonderful
calendar.
Gregg McReynolds (SF76)
I can tell you the story of the
[Philanthropia] calendar cover.
The woman on the left in the
August photo is Ms. Monique
Wentzel (SF02). The picture
was taken in the spring of 2001,
not 2002, as noted in the credits,
on the Santa Fe campus. In the
foreground the students, left to
right: Adrian Bowles (SF02),
me (SF02), and Brett Esaki
(SF02). Over my shoulder, left
to right, are Peter Boyce (SF01),
Ms. Ashley Scott (SF01), Ms.
Laura Vitale (SF01) and Mr.
Christopher Howe (SF01).
[Photographer Howard]
Korn asked to take a picture
of Mr. Bowles, Mr. Esaki, and
me while we were engaged in a
discussion about the Maxwell.
In our Junior Lab tutorial with
Mr. Cohn, we had some major
problems with the conversion
from electromagnetic units
(EMU) to electrostatic units
(ESU). The equation given us
by Mr. Cohn was a bit much for
my brain to handle, but with
Mr. Esaki’s ample quantitative
skills and Mr. Bowles’ tendency
for mathematical exhibitionism
at hand, we headed outside to
give it a try on the concrete.
Mr. Korn approached some
five or ten minutes later when,
exhausted, we had decided to
give up. But still, we knew we
looked pretty cool out there,
so Brett said we should give it
another shot for the photogra-
�11
{Letters}
pher. In any case, Mr. Cohn’s
lab class was the best thing I
ever did at St. John’s. Thanks
for publishing the picture.
Joey Chernila (SF02)
I received the new calendar
and was delighted to see two of
my classmates pictured for the
month of October. The woman
is Erin Murphy (SF73) from
Malibu, Calif. We were friends
and have stayed in touch all
these years. She still lives in
Malibu and has raised seven
children. One of her daughters
attends the University of San
Francisco with my younger
daughter. (Interesting
coincidence.)
Four members of our family
have graduated from St.
John’s. My father, John L.
Williams, graduated in 1950
from Annapolis. I believe it was
the first graduating class for
Dr. [Richard] Weigle. Dr. Weigle
was still president when I graduated from Santa Fe in 1973. My
sister, Andrea, graduated in 1977,
and my oldest daughter, India
Clarke, in 2001.
The tutor in the September
picture is dear, dear Sam Brown.
How I loved that man. We used
to play four-hand piano pieces
together for fun. What a stitch
that was! He liked to egg
students on, and it looks like
he was succeeding with the
young man in the picture.
Thanks for a great calendar.
Be Hussander (SF79)
Thanks for the calendar—
I’m quite sure that the female
student in the October 2003
photo is Erin Murphy. She was
a classmate of mine, which puts
the date at either 1969 or 1970—
possibly ’71. Can’t remember
the guy’s name. I love this
historical detection—but
that’s probably because I’m
an historian!
Margaret Creighton (SF73)
Department of History
Bates College
“On the back cover of the calendar, the students pictured are, left to right: Amanda Mayer
(me, now Amanda Mayer Stinchecum), Steve Bernstein, Judy Jones, and Lon Gore. We belonged to
the class of ’61, so the photo was certainly taken before then. From the appearance of the seminar
room, and the fact that I am sure Lon Gore and I were in the same freshman seminar, I would
venture that the photo was taken during the academic year 1957-58.”
Amanda Mayer Stinchecum (A61)
Given the fact that the February
2003 photo was taken by Marion
Warren, who also took the
picture of Connie Weigle in the
sophomore language tutorial
(November), I would date
February’s photo as being
taken at the same time and
probably the same morning.
The woman with the long,
dark hair, checkered blouse
and boots or knee socks is
Carol Ryder (SF68). The
man she is talking to, with the
socks-in-sandals, is David Moss
(SF68). The hand-in-pocket
stance was also characteristically his. The man to the left
with the sharp looking chin—
actually a goatee—is Robin who
was from Chattanooga, Tenn.
I forget his surname, as I also
forget the name of the woman
with the two bob-tails. My suspicion is that the head between
David and Carol belongs to
Vida Kazemi (SF68).
I just received the calendar and
need to correct the attribution
of a photo which appeared on
the inside back cover. The fine
young fellow in the photo is
Bob Vincent, my classmate
and freshman core group
colleague. He looks so young
and has so much hair this photo
had to have been snapped
during our first year at SJC.
Thomas G. Smith (A84)
Mr. July is Joel Greenberg, class
of 1962. Wonderful photographs,
as always. Thanks to those who
assemble this calendar.
Linda McConnell (A61)
Correction
Anna Canning (SF02) was
misidentified in the summer
2002 issue of The College.
Kieran D.C. Manjarrez (SF68)
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 }
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 or
The College Magazine,
Public Relations Office,
St. John’s College, 1160
Camino Cruz Blanca,
Santa Fe, NM 87505-4599.
Letters can also be sent via
e-mail to: reharty@sjca.edu,
or via the form for letters on
the web site at www.sjca.edu.
Click on “Alumni,” then on
“Contact The College
Magazine.”
�{Bioethics}
12
BIOETHICS
I N A B R AV E N E W W O R L D
What’s right and wrong in life and death?
by Sus3an Borden (A87)
Shaping Public Policy
A
philosopher and a physician, former St. John’s
tutor Leon Kass is in a
position to shape government policy on critical
and controversial issues
such as human cloning and stem cell
research. In the desire to treat diseases
and ease suffering, Kass asks, can we lose
sight of the intrinsic value of human life?
Leon Kass (tutor, 1972-1976) discovered the hard way just
how controversial a seminar can be. As chairman of the
President’s Council on Bioethics, he opened the group’s
first meeting with a discussion of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s
“The Birthmark,” the story of a scientist who, in an attempt to remove his near-perfect wife’s sole blemish, ends
up killing her.
The media criticized Kass for his choice of reading. At
best, it was called a clumsy approach; at worst, an attack on
science. A column in the online magazine Slate saw the
story as predictive of Kass’ tenure on the council: “Given
the flatness of Hawthorne’s moral universe in ‘The Birthmark’ and his other mad scientist stories, it’s hard not to
conclude that Kass will similarly work hard to reduce
complex issues to their starkest antinomies.”
To the contrary, says Kass. “My real goal is what we in the
office call ‘toward a richer bioethics.’ We try to put contemporary discussions and controversies into a larger
philosophical, social, and political context. The discussion
of ‘The Birthmark’ was widely misunderstood as antiscience and a cautionary tale, but it’s a profound story. The
press failed to appreciate that the birthmark, being a mark
of birth, is not merely some superficial blemish but stands
altogether for what it means to be a perishable being,
marked imperfect in terms of being mortal.”
The imperfections of mortality—and science’s quest to
remedy them—define the council’s purview. Working
papers the council has produced include “ ‘Better’
Memories? The Promise and Perils of Pharmacological
Interventions”; “Age Retardation: Scientific Possibilities
and Moral Challenges”; and “Patenting Human Organisms.”
“These are extremely complicated matters,” Kass says of
the council’s work. “There are questions of the sufficiency
and desirability of the ends we pursue and questions about
the appropriateness of the means. There are questions of
the proper balance between modesty and humility on one
hand and, on the other hand, a vigorous attempt to repair
the defects of the world and of our own nature.”
When confronting such matters, Kass advises that we
think first about human life and then consider the new
technologies. Placing an emphasis on technologies distorts
the picture. Take, for example, the possibility of paying
potential organ donors.
“We could treat this as a technological problem to be
solved, and work on determining the best incentives and
finding ways to avoid placing undue coercion and pressures
upon the poor,” Kass explains. “But what we first should
do is step back and start with questions about the meaning
of embodiment, what it means to shuttle body parts from
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 }
�{Bioethics}
13
“There are questions of the proper balance between modesty
and humility on one hand and, on the other hand, a vigorous attempt
to repair the defects of the world and of our own nature.”
Leon Kass
one person to another, what it means to put the body into
commerce. We must make sure that in the desire to
improve health by increasing the supply of lifesaving
organs, we don’t forget about the dignity of human life.”
While the progressive nature of technology means that
we tend to look at issues case by case, Kass says that we only
begin to see their full ethical dimensions when we look in
the aggregate at the various powers now gathering for
intervention into the human body and mind. “These can be
used not just in ways that heal the sick and succor the
suffering, but could in principle make major changes in
what up until now was considered the natural way of being
human. Part of the difficulty when you ask questions case
by case, technique by technique, is that it’s always in
isolation and always justified by the last innovation.
“Sometimes the slippery slope is the right metaphor for
this approach, but sometimes one just jumps off a cliff,”
Kass says. “To begin to treat nascent human life as a
resource to be mined for the sake of benefits for the living—
that’s not a slippery slope, that’s a major leap. This year it
will be stem cells from five-day-old blastocycsts and ten
years from now it’s going to be organs from two-month-old
fetuses. We are agreeing right now that, precisely because
human development is a continuum, we are now saying yes
to a kind of exploitive human attitude for the sake of the
living. It will be hard to stop when more benefits are
available because we have already said yes to the claims of
the living. Treatments for people with diabetes and
Parkinson’s will far outweigh any kind of reverence for
nascent human life.”
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 }
�14
{Bioethics}
Right now, Congress is saying no to the first steps down this
path. In February, the House of Representatives voted to ban
all human cloning, both for reproductive and research
purposes. The vote followed the majority recommendation of
the council’s 2002 report, “Human Cloning and Human
Dignity: An Ethical Inquiry.” Kass was among the majority.
“On some matters I have very definite opinions and will
argue for them. I’m opposed to human cloning and I don’t
think we should be killing patients in acts of euthanasia or
assisted suicide. Still, as chairman of the council, I’ve had to
set some of my own views aside and preside over the kind of
conversation that will ensure that the best arguments on
multiple sides are developed. So many ethical issues are not
simply choices between good and evil but choices in which the
evil is deeply entangled with the good.
“If one is offering counsel to the president, what one owes
is a full account of what’s at stake and what’s to be said for
doing A rather than B or B rather than A. The report on
cloning we wrote was close to 300 pages, but the recommendation on the vote was only two sentences. The report says
that, wherever we come out in our thinking, people on the
other side have something vital to defend, not for themselves,
but for all of us. No one can be cavalier about the need to treat
human suffering, no one can be casual about nascent human
life, and no one can afford to be indifferent.”
Facing Matters of Life and Death
I
s it ethical to conceive a child to
save the life of another, even if that
child will be loved and welcomed?
In 1991, Dr. Stephen Forman (A70)
was at the center of a controversy
raised by that question. But as a
physician treating cancer patients, he
faces difficult ethical questions every day.
More than 4,000 people made it to the April 11 reunion in
Duarte, Calif. Amid balloons and picnic lunches they laughed
with old friends, exchanged tales of triumph, and hugged the
people who saved their lives.
The reunion, at the City of Hope National Medical Center,
was for bone marrow transplant recipients and donors, and
their families, doctors, and nurses. Among the guests was
Stephen Forman, director of City of Hope’s Hematology and
Bone Marrow Transplantation Program.
City of Hope is a leader in the fight against cancer, diabetes,
HIV/AIDS, and other devastating diseases. At least $2 million
is invested in research each week at the center. Approximately
30 to 40 percent of eligible patients participate in clinical
trials and studies, compared to the national average of 3 to 4
percent. Hand-in-hand with the center’s cutting-edge science
is its commitment to compassionate care. “There is no profit
in curing the body, if in the process, we destroy the soul,”
wrote a former executive director of the center. City of Hope
has adopted these words as its philosophy.
In 1988 the Ayala family came to City of Hope in need of this
very combination of compassion and science. Their 16-yearold daughter, Anissa, had leukemia, and bone marrow transplantation was her only chance for survival. Unable to find a
match after testing family members, searching the National
Marrow Donor Program registry, and staging several marrow
drives, Anissa’s parents approached Forman and his team
about trying to have a baby who might be a match for Anissa.
“We sat down and talked with the family quite a bit. We wanted
to understand better what they were thinking so we could think
about it ourselves,” Forman recalls. The father had had a
vasectomy, which would have to be reversed. The mother was
in her 40s, an age when conception is difficult. And the baby
would have only a one-in-four chance of being a match. “It was
pretty clear to us in talking with the family that if the potential
baby was not a match they would want the new child anyway. In
that context we felt we could help them with the medical,
emotional, psychological, and ethical rationale for all of this.”
Despite the odds against it, the father’s vasectomy was
reversed, a baby was conceived, and when Marissa-Eve Ayala
was born, she turned out to be a perfect match for her older
sister. Anissa underwent a successful transplantation when
Marissa-Eve was 14 months old.
While Forman was delighted by the outcome of the case, he
wasn’t exactly crazy about the media frenzy that surrounded
it. “I had to respond to the media and deal with the selfappointed ethicists who became a cottage industry around
that time. I had the best discussions with science writers and
the worst with—you know, that big conservative guy on the
radio,” he says, unable to recall the name of Rush Limbaugh.
Forman received hate mail, death threats, and even a threat to
kidnap the Ayala baby. “Newspapers raised questions about
breeding children for their parts; one accused us of being a
Jewish hospital experimenting on Christian babies.”
Time magazine’s June 17, 1991 cover featured the Ayala
sisters. The accompanying article presented a balanced
discussion of the case, exploring its medical, social, psychological, and ethical dimensions. It included a provocative
question from Rudolf Brutoco, the donor’s pediatrician:
“Does it make sense,” Brutoco asked, “to conceive a child so
that little Johnny can have a sister, while it is not acceptable to
conceive the same child so that Johnny can live?” The article
concluded that the “family’s act of lifesaving conception was
on the side of the angels.”
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 }
�{Bioethics}
15
“The ethical issues I face every day have to
do with the end of life...”
Stephen Forman
Although the Ayala case brought him national attention,
Forman says that the real ethical dilemmas in his work don’t
grab headlines. “The ethical issues I face every day have to do
with the end of life, the means of preserving dignity at a time
when people find themselves in an undignified setting,” he
says. “People seek help with their thoughts and feelings about
what they want done or not done as the end may be coming.
They need to decide how to manage pain. They need to make
decisions about heroic measures to be taken or not, as well as
assisted suicide.”
In the course of helping his patients, Forman guides them
through the most complex issues that human beings must
address. “I’ve always felt that oncology is the most philosophical of the specialties,” he says. “It’s concerned with
how one lives one’s life, with confronting its meaning and its
temporality.”
While Forman helps his patients wrestle with the mechanics
and meaning of death, he is also at work discovering new ways
to prolong and improve their lives. He is the principal investi-
gator for a $15.3 million, five-year National Cancer Institute
bone marrow transplantation program project grant and
co-principal investigator for a Strategic Program for Innovative
Research on AIDS Treatment grant to study gene therapy for
the treatment of AIDS patients. He is also co-editor of
Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation, a definitive textbook for
scientists and health-care professionals.
Being at the forefront of medical research means that
Forman is often in the public eye—a situation, he explains,
that can have its benefits for the advancement of medicine and
the health of many patients. One significant byproduct of the
Ayala publicity was a growing understanding of the need for
bone marrow donors. Today, Anissa is a healthy 30-year-old
who is the assistant director for the Red Cross Bone Marrow
Donor Program in Southern California. On the 10-year
anniversary of her transplant, City of Hope rechecked the
bone marrow donor registry that had yielded no match for her.
After a decade of debate and its attendant public awareness,
21 matches were found.
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 }
�16
{Bioethics}
Looking Behind the Shadows
M
ichael Victoroff (A71)
has seen medicine from
three perspectives: as a
physician in private
practice, as a medical
director of an HMO,
and as a university researcher providing
toxicology evidence for environmental
lawsuits. Each new vista has raised
troubling questions about patient care,
efficacy, and economics.
“Illusion, Plato’s cave, has been the theme, the continuous
thread throughout my whole career,” says Michael Victoroff,
doctor and medical ethicist. “In almost every subject that’s
been fascinating to me, there has been some aspect where the
general public does not see what’s really behind the shadows.”
The biggest shadow on the cave wall is the lack of science and
common sense in health care, says Victoroff. “Today more
than ever, with herbal medicine on the Internet and hundreds
of fringe healing professions, a lot of people are rightfully
nervous about medical practice. They see the critical combination of financial motivation and junk science.”
Even practitioners of orthodox medicine are suspect, he
adds. “They’re no different, just more subtle. People accept
the good will and good intentions of doctors as evidence of
good skill.”
Victoroff took a yearlong fellowship in bioethics following
medical school, and throughout his career he has spent at least
a quarter of his time consulting, teaching, writing, and lecturing
in bioethics, from prenatal care through geriatrics.
In 1997, after 19 years in medical practice, he became a medical director for Aetna. He says that he once thought HMOs
could save the medical profession. “The managed care movement was, to those of us who were believers, kind of like the
peace movement. Managed care was going to make medicine a
scientific and reason-driven social phenomenon rather than
simply a cottage industry of independent practitioners improvising treatments from which they derived a living.
“I saw that I could not improve health care in America as one
private practice doctor in Colorado, but I thought, ‘give me a
few million people and maybe from there my lever will be long
enough to affect something.’”
As medical director of a health plan, Victoroff had the
opportunity to look at tens of thousands of medical records. But
he wasn’t impressed with what he saw. For one thing, too few
doctors keep electronic records of patient care at a time when
the computer is a basic and critical tool in an efficient practice.
“When you see four specialists and they run a bunch of tests
and write several prescriptions, that’s a job for a computer.
That’s when you need the integrated health care delivery
system that America, and the doctors of America, have
vigorously rejected.”
Victoroff continues the cave metaphor in a discussion of
assisted suicide, which he says is a social, not medical, issue.
He’s sympathetic to the most compelling reasons for assisted
suicide. “Let’s say we have a person in such pain from cancer
that his life is total misery. He’s lying in bed yelling, he’s got no
quality of life and is expected to die within a matter of weeks.
He’s already getting lethal doses of morphine and he says, ‘this
is unbearable, can’t you just give me some cyanide?’ ”
Society may decide an individual can make the choice to die,
but Victoroff asks why a physician must assist in the act of
killing him: “It is a terribly bad idea for physicians to be killing
people, even as a gesture of kindness. I think that it
permanently contaminates the role of physician. Separating
the role of healer and killer is a very smart social practice.”
Victoroff has his own candidate for the assistant: judges.
“We have a group among us that already puts people to death,
has the liberty to do it, has immunity from liability, and the
power to order up a dose of hemlock. We can have what
amounts to a probate process: a court process as diligent as you
like and physicians can testify along with everyone else. If you
truly wish to die and we’re satisfied that you’re competent,
then we’ll kill you. We don’t need any doctors, just a judge and
dispensing pharmacist.”
Victoroff left Aetna in 2002 and has been working at the
toxicology department of the University of Colorado, where he
provides support research for toxic environmental torts, evaluating issues surrounding environmental safety. Because of the
sheer number of threats to human health posed by toxicity
issues in the air, groundwater and even medical treatment,
Victoroff isn’t hopeful he can make an impact on health care in
this area.
“It’s like the Dark Ages, surrounded by mythology and
religious beliefs; there’s almost a complete lack of attention
to science. A lot of people are making a lot of money on
Bioethics Reading List
Tom L. Beauchamp and James F. Childress, Principles of Biomedical Ethics
Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
Linda T. Kohn, Janet Corrigan, Molla S. Donaldson, and William C.
Richardson, eds., To Err Is Human: Building a Safer Health System
C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man; That Hideous Strength
Gilbert Meilaender, Body, Soul, and Bioethics
Ed Pellegrino, Beneficence in Trust
Suggested by Michael Victoroff, Leon Kass, and Nick Capozzoli
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 }
�17
{Bioethics}
something that is based on folklore.
That’s not to say that there aren’t some
dangerous chemicals out there, but
here’s the pattern I see: You have a team
of lawyers that goes down to a little town
that has a smokestack. They go to the
people who have illnesses who live
around the smokestack and offer them
money to participate in a lawsuit, then
they offer to settle with the smokestack’s owners. That’s a particularly
malignant pattern.”
Although cynical about the tort field,
Victoroff concedes half-jokingly that it
may contribute to quality control.
“Doctors make huge numbers of
errors and this has been almost the only
social mechanism we’ve used to
improve quality in medicine,” he says.
Victoroff tells of teaching a course that
brought senior law students and senior
med students together to discuss
bioethics. “I learned that by the time
these kids had spent a couple years in
their professional schools they had
already become accustomed to a mode
of argument and proof that was unique
“I saw that
I could not improve
health care in America
as one private practice
doctor in Colorado.”
Michael Victoroff
to their professions. When they were
confronted with an alternate mode of
asking and answering questions, they
almost couldn’t follow it.
“It’s hard to get people to solve problems constructively without first asking
them to step outside of the habits of
their own profession. In essence, that’s
what Plato was telling us to do when he
said you ought to get outside the cave
once in a while. What my career has
been, in one respect, is me shouting
from outside the door of the cave at all
the people in there staring at the wall,
and I don’t even know that I’m outside
the cave. I’m probably in another cave.
“I love illusions, but I see that they’re
illusions. I don’t know what’s behind
them, but I can tell when I don’t see the
whole picture. Over a career of fooling
with these things, I have found something every day to make me roll my eyes
and shake my head. That’s been the
main medical risk of my career—from
shaking my head in wonder.” x
Acting in a Patient’s Best Interest
F
orget cloning babies. Forget
assisted suicide. Neurologist
and tutor Nick Capozzoli
(AGI81) says that an ethical
drama can unfold in his
office any time he writes a prescription.
“I sometimes have to balance what
the patient should know about the medication against what I want the patient
to do with the medication,” explains
Capozzoli. “There are some patients
who say the same thing no matter what I
tell them: ‘Whatever you think is best.’
Others live in a world of great anxiety. If
they hear about a single side effect,
they’re probably not going to take the
medicine.”
“What, then, is the best approach?”
Capozzoli asks. “Do you lay out all the
facts the same way for every patient? Do
you say different things based on what
you know about each patient?” He compares his quandary to that of a legislator:
“When a vote comes up, do you take a
referendum or vote based on your
informed knowledge?”
Capozzoli has managed to find a path
that draws these alternatives closer together: “I believe there’s something
about the nature of what a physician is
that says you ought to have an opinion
about the right thing to do, and you
should say to the patient, ‘this is what
you ought to do.’ You should be clear
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 }
about your own opinion but also be
good about understanding the patient’s
concerns: Are they due to a different
world view or to their being fraught
with anxiety?”
His approach sounds moderate,
reasoned, sensitive—ethical. But
Capozzoli (a tutor for 20 years, a doctor
for nearly 35) is so finely attuned to the
intricacies of ethics that he questions
the validity of his questions: “Who is
the best custodian of the patient’s best
interest?” he asks. “Do I even understand fully what it means to act in a
patient’s best interest?” x
�18
{Essays}
MONTAIGNE
A N D T H E E D U C AT I O N O F C H I L D R E N
by William Pastille
S
ince the inception of the New Program, and no
doubt before as well, St. John’s College has
been devoted to the education of children. The
Preamble to the Polity of the college states that
the purpose of the institution is to “make
adults out of children.” The college’s motto—
composed, as Stringfellow Barr tells us, by an
admiring professor at Harvard, but instantly adopted by the
founders of the New Program because of its aptness—declares
that St. John’s “makes free persons out of children.” Both
formulations imply that the college’s role is to transform
dependent beings into free, independent beings.
The kind of freedom that the college wishes for its students
is intellectual freedom: the ability to fashion one’s own judgments without the hindrance of unexamined assumptions,
inherited prejudices, and cherished pronouncements of
alleged authorities. One of the finest descriptions of intellectual freedom is found in Montaigne’s essay “On the Education
of Children” where the author discusses the temper that a
teacher should try to produce in a student with regard to the
influence of authority:
Let the principles of Aristotle not be principles of him any more
than those of the Stoics or Epicureans. Let this diversity of
opinions be set before him; if he can, he will make a choice: if he
cannot then he will remain in doubt.
Only fools have made up their minds and are certain: Che
non men che saper dubbiar m’aggrada. [For doubting pleases
me no less than knowing. (Dante, Inferno, XI, 93.)] For if it is
by his own reasoning that he adopts the opinions of Xenophon
and Plato, they are no longer theirs: they are his. To follow another is to follow nothing: Non sumus sub rege; sibi quisque se
vindicet. [We are not under a king; let each preserve himself.
(Seneca, Epistulae Morales, XXXIII, 4.)] Let him at least know
what he does not know. He should not be learning their
precepts but drinking in their humours. If he wants to, let him
not be afraid to remember where he got them from, but let him
be sure that he knows how to appropriate them. Truth and
reason are common to all: they no more belong to the man who
first put them into words than to him who last did so. It is no
more secundum Platonem than secundum me: Plato and I see
and understand it in the same way. Bees ransack flowers here
and flowers there: but then they make their own honey, which
is entirely theirs and no longer thyme or marjoram. Similarly,
[he] will transform his borrowings; he will confound their
forms so that the end-product is entirely his: namely, his judgement, the forming of which is the only aim of his toil, his study,
and his education.
But the college does not want to cultivate intellectual freedom in its students while at the same time weighing down their
souls with the burden of hubris. Montaigne’s sage counsel concerning self-reliance in one’s thinking might be a recipe for the
most appalling intellectual arrogance if it were not coupled
with another bit of advice later in the essay: “Above all let him
be taught to throw down his arms and surrender to truth as
soon as he perceives it, whether that truth is born at his rival’s
doing or within himself from some change in his ideas.”
This guidance provides the humility that is necessary to
counterbalance the egocentrism of a mind that is always
striving to live by its own lights. Subservience to the truth
wherever and whenever it appears—even if it contradicts longstanding personal beliefs and preferences—is the earmark of a
truly independent intellect that is encumbered neither by external influences nor by inner defects like excessive pride,
sentimental attachment, or intellectual possessiveness.
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 }
�{Essays}
19
“Truth and reason are common to all.”
h owa r d ko r n
Michel de Montaigne
One might wonder whether the intellectual freedom of
forming one’s own judgments really is the only aim of education, as Montaigne seems to say in the first quotation above.
It may be that education can cultivate other sorts of freedom
that might be in some sense superior to intellectual freedom. For instance: What if the Self, in which Montaigne
encourages us to trust, is inherently unreliable, or illusory,
or merely an artifact of a deeper source of being—a source
that might be hidden from the Self by the Self, as a person
looking at himself in a mirror blocks his own sight of a light
source behind him? If this were the case, wouldn’t it mean
that we ought to become free from the Self instead of relying
upon it as the true guarantor of our freedom? Wouldn’t it
mean that we should regard the intellectual autonomy
recommended by Montaigne as an obstacle, not an aid, to
freedom? Perhaps St. John’s, in so far as it aims to make its
students intellectually independent and self-reliant, is
actually harming them.
But even if the Self is ultimately unreliable and true freedom is not to be found within its ambit, it hardly seems likely
that the step of coming to rely upon the Self can be skipped in
the progress toward freedom. Since self-reliance helps us to
break free of external influences, it clearly removes at least
some of the chains that bind us. The resulting intellectual
autonomy is at any rate less constrained than the prior state,
even if it is not the highest possible freedom. Intellectual
freedom may not be the Good, but it is certainly a good worth
possessing. x
Tutor William Pastille is director of the Graduate Institute
in Annapolis.
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 }
�{Johnnies in the Classroom}
20
SEEKING A FORMUL A FOR
SUCCESS
by Sus3an Borden (A87) and Rosemary Harty
T
wo math teachers, two cities, two nontraditional paths to the classroom.
Steve Travis, a 2002 Annapolis graduate,
tutored students at a middle school in
Annapolis for three years beginning in his
sophomore year. After graduation, he
sought provisional certification and a classroom of his
own. In Santa Fe, Carisa Armendariz Petrie (SF99)
entered a certification program right after graduating in
1999 and now heads the math department at a large high
school. With one in five alumni in the teaching profession,
The College takes a look at what continues to draw young
alumni to teaching.
It’s 7:10 on a January morning when math
teacher Steve Travis walks through the
front door of Bates Middle School. He
spends the next hour photocopying sample equations, writing homework and outcome charts on his classroom blackboards,
patrolling sixth-graders gathering at the
front of the school, welcoming students
inside the building, and serving hall duty.
The door to his class has a sign above it:
“Enter with Pride.” About a dozen students pass beneath it before the bell rings.
At 8:11 a voice comes over the public address system, leads the homerooms in the
Pledge of Allegiance, announces birthdays, recognizes visitors, and congratulates the school’s current crop of “Shining
Stars.” The Stars are asked to drop by
the guidance office to pick up certificates
of merit. The announcements end with
an exhortation to “have a focused and
respectful day.”
Travis entered the teaching profession
in the fall of 2002 with a provisional
teaching certificate and what he now sees
as a touch of hubris. He had tutored part
time during his sophomore, junior, and
senior years at St. John’s and, seeing how
much progress he had made in fairly
short sessions, he was looking forward to
the impact he could have in a classroom
of his own.
He set his sights on the Maryland
Functional Math Test, which each student
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 }
is required to pass before entering ninth
grade. The test covers basic arithmetic,
problem-solving, fractions, decimals, and
using formulas. At Bates, the pass rate is
low. The test seemed a worthy goal, something to work toward that would give him
clear feedback. His insider’s view of the
school led him to believe that improving
results would be simple.
“There were three teachers who held
my job last year. That’s a lot of failure for
one position. I thought I could come in
and really do things right and make an
effective change. There was a lot of room
for improvement and I thought I could
build on that,” he says. “I am, slowly,
but not like I wanted.”
***
At 8:17 the bell for first period rings and
Travis raises the projection screen that
hangs in front of his blackboard to reveal
the day’s warm-up equations—four problems involving the multiplication and
division of simple integers, both positive
and negative. While others set to work,
a girl in the third row carefully applies
gloss to her lips.
At 8:20 Travis closes the door to his
classroom and asks the students to be
quiet while they work. Three minutes
later he welcomes them back from their
weekend break.
“I’m getting a dog,” a student blurts out.
“Sean, don’t you already have a dog?”
another responds.
Several shout back in unison: “The dog
died.”
Travis announces that in the previous
week’s quiz there were no As and only
�{Johnnies in the Classroom}
d av i d t ro z z o
21
Steve Travis at Bates Middle School
three Bs. A girl who will do no work
during the entire period claims a failing
grade and sets to guessing who got the Bs.
Travis turns out the lights and uses a
transparency and overhead projector to
review the day’s work. When the room
darkens, the noise level immediately
diminishes. Travis will review the same
18 equations 5 times this day, to 5 groups
of students of varying interests and abilities.
“I’ve learned that having a template
like this helps them pay attention. It keeps
them quiet and involved,” Travis says,
somewhat apologetic about this simple
approach to teaching. He points to a timeline of world mathematics he’d posted on
the back wall of his classroom in August.
“I thought I’d be so creative, but you have
to manage the class before you can be
“It takes real
imagination, real
perseverance, and
hard work to reach
an entire classroom.”
Steve Travis
creative and some of the kids really can’t
handle creativity,” he says. “Some of the
most successful teachers in this school
stand at the front of the class and speak
in a calm monotone for the entire period.”
Above the classroom clock a handlettered sign reads: “Time is passing. Are
you?” Travis isn’t sure. His success with
the Maryland Functional Math Test was
well below his expectations. Only 40 of
his 100 seventh-graders passed.
***
Travis has posted a sign to remind
students of the order of operations for
equation-solving (parenthesis, exponents,
multiplication, division, addition,
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 }
�22
{Johnnies in the Classroom}
d av i d t ro z z o
subtraction). But the order of operations is not so clear when teaching
students with a wide range of skills.
If you don’t have multiplication
mastered, does it make sense to
move on to fractions? If your grasp
of decimals is still fuzzy, is it possible
to learn percentages? Travis’
experience tells him that moving
ahead only leaves more kids behind. But his obligation to the
county’s curriculum requires
him to stay on schedule.
“At the beginning I thought
it would be easier to get these
students on track and target areas
where they needed help, but I
found out that when you’re dealing
with so many kids at once you have
to teach the curriculum. As the
lone teacher in the classroom,
it’s hard to address the particular
needs of every student. I’m almost
Annapolis graduate Steve Travis tutors a student.
forced to use generic lesson plans,
which might be good but don’t
always work for every student.”
Fortunately, Travis is not
completely alone in the classroom. Three
St. John’s students—Bryson Finklea,
Elizabeth Laughlin, and Joseph Method—
tutor in his class.
“Sometimes what a kid needs will be
cleared up in 10 or 20 minutes,” he says.
“I can see in the class that they’re lost but
I don’t have the time to work with them.
When they come back after a tutoring
session, the difference is obvious. They’re
enthusiastic, they pay attention, they raise
their hands.”
***
Fifth period starts at 11:30 a.m. and
from the beginning things are not looking
good. The students pass around a moreor-less contraband magazine and when
Travis reaches for it, a keep-away
game begins.
Travis is in a precarious position.
He can’t stop his quest for the magazine
because he’s already committed to seizing
it. Yet he can’t jump in and whole-heartedly
try to grab it because a failure will make
him look foolish—not a good thing for a
first-year teacher.
In the end, Travis is successful. He
quietly walks toward the moving target
“I’m always trying
new strategies, new
techniques to make it
work. Sometimes it
feels like I’m rethinking
my approach every
single day.”
Steve Travis
and only reaches for it when it is clearly
within his grasp. He puts it into a file
cabinet and tries to turn the students’
attention to mathematics.
The equation of the moment:
3 1/3 x = 4 1/6.
A girl solves the problem and then
explains how: after converting the
numbers to improper fractions, she
flipped the fraction on the left and then
multiplied. Travis informs the class that
her method is called the multiplicative
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 }
inverse and then demonstrates an
alternative method that he learned
when he was in school.
“What year was that?” a student
asks.
“1945,” he answers.
“No, you’d be like, 63,” she says.
“No I wouldn’t. You added
wrong,” teases the 23-year-old
Travis. And now the class is awake,
shouting out how old they think
he’d be if he were born in 1945.
Later, Travis says he regrets his
tendency to joke around: “They
tell you not to even smile until after
Christmas. The students don’t need
you as a friend and they don’t want
you as a friend. They need to respect you, they need to know
your boundaries. Some of these kids
have no boundaries. They live in a
world that can be very insecure.
Some don’t even have food in the
morning—that’s insecurity.
“If I could start the year all over
again,
I would never let anyone speak without
raising a hand. At St. John’s, of course,
you want discourse, but with a class of
30 you need order.”
As the class makes its way through the
equations, a student amuses himself by
singing the Chia Pet jingle: “ch-ch-chchia.” Travis pretends he doesn’t hear.
A sign beneath the classroom clock
reads: “It’s time to do our best.” But
teaching is complicated and it’s not
always clear what’s best. “I’m always
trying new strategies, new techniques to
make it work. Sometimes it feels like I’m
rethinking my approach every single day,”
Travis says.
It’s 2 p.m. and the anticipation of the
final bell is raising the class’ chaos level.
The ongoing chatter of two girls grows
too loud. Travis asks one of them to move
to the front of the class.
“I’ll be lonely,” she whines.
“I don’t care if you’re lonely,” he
answers.
“I do,” she says as she picks up her
books and heads for her new seat.
The class is getting out of hand and
Travis makes a final push to assert his
authority. “When the bell rings, do not
get up. I will dismiss you,” he announces.
�23
{Johnnies in the Classroom}
A girl in the back pouts. “The bell
dismisses me,” she says. But in the end, she
waits for Travis to tell her it’s time to go.
***
Travis’ daily planning calendar is opened
to a quote from B.F. Skinner: “Education
is what survives when what has been
learned has been forgotten.”
What will survive from Travis’ first year
as a teacher?
“I now know how difficult it is to reach
certain students,” he says. “Coming in, I
thought, ‘I know each kid is different and
it might take a couple of strategies, but
I’ll find a way to reach each one.’ I’ve
come to realize that it’s not easy to get
through to everyone. It’s like getting an
orchestra to play—an orchestra that doesn’t
want to play and doesn’t know their instruments very well. It takes real imagination, real perseverance, and hard work to
reach an entire classroom.”
What will survive for his students?
Travis hopes they’ll retain the importance
of effort and perseverance. “I’ve always
stressed to them that more important
than the things I teach is the effort they
give. In an introductory letter I sent at the
beginning of the year, I wrote that I didn’t
care how much they knew, but how much
they were willing to learn. I told them I
was looking for students who are willing
to learn something that’s difficult,
students who will do their best.”
Travis says that this emphasis comes
from his own experience as a student at
St. John’s. “I remember how difficult that
first year was. I kept telling myself just to
try and do my best. When I read the
books, I remembered that the ideas in the
books were difficult even for the people
who wrote them. If it wasn’t difficult, it
probably wasn’t worth thinking about.”
Now in his first year of teaching, Travis
finds himself being offered very similar
advice. “When I get frustrated, I talk to
a friend of mine, Walter Mattson (A87),
who’s also a teacher. He says, ‘Sure it’s
difficult. But if it weren’t difficult, it
probably wouldn’t be worth doing.’ ”
A
t 12:30 on a Wednesday afternoon, Carisa
Armendariz Petrie emerges from the
sanctuary of the math department
office into a sea of raging hormones, teenage angst and overall indifference to the
uplifting benefits of algebra. She comes
bearing the quadratic formula like a rare gift to recipients
who will—one day—become convinced of its value.
With a student body approaching 2,000,
Santa Fe High School seems more like a
small community college than a secondary
school. Its 100-acre campus comprises
some buildings halfway through renovation,
older structures slated for demolition, and
new buildings going up. When the bell
sounds, students drift toward the gleaming
new Academic Center where Petrie teaches
and fill the hallways and staircases. Her
third-floor classroom is decorated with
posters of Albert Einstein, for Petrie,
“the patron saint of mathematics.”
This is the second of Petrie’s three 90minute classes, and the after-lunch crowd
can be tough. But Petrie takes control of
Algebra III with a warm-up problem that
quashes non-math chatter among the 28
students. She turns her attention to the
stack of math papers before her. There
were, she reports, careless mistakes.
Some folks need to read the directions.
And if you need help, she urges, sign
up for tutoring.
“You can gain back 20 of your points
if you correct your mistakes on this test,”
she says. “But I need you to write a
sentence explaining how you made your
mistake. And not just, ‘I messed up.’ I
need you to know where you went wrong.”
She hands out the tests, then moves on
briskly to tackle each of the objectives in
her carefully planned lesson. Her classroom is orderly, her explanations simple,
and her confidence in the students
evident.
Frustration among the students
emerges only once, when a tall girl sitting
in the back tries to evade the question
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 }
Petrie has asked. Pressed again, the
student becomes angry.
“I told you I don’t know,” she says again.
***
As she explains later, Petrie believes her
high expectations for her students factor
in their success, whether or not students
hold such expectations for themselves.
Their socioeconomic level, their race,
their parents’ education—all are reasons
educational experts say that some of her
students may be “at risk.” Petrie knows
that all students haven’t been prepared
equally—there’s a big disparity between her
economically disadvantaged and better-off
students—but she sees potential in all of
them regardless.
“My students do what they’re expected
to do,” she says. “These students are as
bright and competent and hardworking as
anyone, anywhere. And if you teach them
to be good students, they will be.”
She remembers a conversation she had
with a parent who was upset about a low
grade her daughter earned in Algebra II.
“She was afraid her daughter’s confidence would be blown,” Petrie explains.
“But if this student doesn’t experience
that now, when she goes to college it’s
going to be really hard for her.”
Petrie remembers what it’s like to struggle. She arrived at St. John’s at age 17, an
early high school graduate, and felt overwhelmed almost immediately. She wasn’t
used to such rigorous demands, and the intensity of seminar took some getting used to.
Supportive tutors and a network of friends—
along with lots of encouragement from
�24
{Johnnies in the Classroom}
home—helped her adjust to the Program
and overcome her initial feeling of being
out of place. “I remember really struggling
that first year,” she says.
But among the most valuable aspects of
her St. John’s education, she says, is that
she was required to take on difficult material in mathematics and physics that she
might never have encountered were they
not required by the Program. When she
sees her freshmen in Algebra 1A frustrated
and seemingly overwhelmed by the new
material they’re being asked to master, she
just gives them more—more practice, more
encouragement, more personal and smallgroup tutoring.
“At St. John’s, you’re not taking classes
just because they’re easy and interesting,”
Petrie believes her
high expectations for
her students factor in
their success, whether
or not students hold
such expectations
for themselves.
teri thomson randall
she says. “They’re hard. But you getthrough them and then you know you
really accomplished something.”
In her mathematics classroom, Petrie
can’t use the Socratic method. But she has
taken the simple step of asking students to
carefully read the chapter and think about
it before she begins demonstrating problems. She frequently asks students to write
and talk about mathematical concepts.
Seated on her stool next to the overhead
projector, she prepares one example after
another of problems demonstrating the
day’s objectives. She stops frequently to
make sure everybody’s still with her.
***
Carisa Armendariz Petrie outside Santa Fe High
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 }
“I’m not a performing teacher, I’m not a
dancing-around kind of teacher,” she says.
“I like to get stuff done.”
�{Johnnies in the Classroom}
25
“Being a first-year
teacher, you have to
learn everything from
the ground up.”
Algebra is in good hands with Carisa
Armendariz Petrie. But teaching wasn’t
her first career choice. She initially considered publishing or journalism, in part because she had seen how hard her mother
had to work as a third-grade teacher in
one of El Paso’s poorest communities.
“She really is a terrific teacher who
makes a difference in the lives of her
students,” Petrie says. “But I could also
see how much it took out of her, how tired
she would be at the end of the day. I couldn’t
imagine a more stressful job.”
Nevertheless, three weeks after graduating
from St. John’s, Petrie found herself in an
intensive teacher certification program
offered through the University of New
Mexico/Santa Fe Public Schools Intern
Program. The program included two
summers of coursework and a year of
practice teaching. Petrie had won her
place in a competitive selection process
that included interviews with 14 people.
She knew right away that she wanted to
be a math teacher, even though she hadn’t
been enthusiastic about math when she
first arrived at St. John’s.
“I’m not a math genius, but I really like
it and I really like the logic—it’s meaningful
to me,” she says.
She became licensed after a year of
teaching math at Capshaw Middle School
and passing a comprehensive state exam.
“Being a first-year teacher, you have to
learn everything from the ground up. And
it’s very hard to be a new teacher. I’d get to
work at 7 in the morning, leave the school
at 6, eat dinner, and fall asleep. I’ve never
been so tired.”
After completing the UNM program,
teri thomson randall
Carisa Armendariz Petrie
Petrie found her Santa Fe High position
at a job fair. Her math and science background at St. John’s—as well as her success
in a rigorous undergraduate program—
was attractive to recruiters. Measured by
indicators such as student achievement,
dropout rate, and community involvement,
Santa Fe is a good high school—the state
Department of Education recently gave it
an “exemplary” rating—and Petrie is happy
to be there. Petrie has done so well at the
high school that she was chosen to be math
department chairperson this year. She’s
also serving on a state committee developing standards for statewide testing in
mathematics. Although she’s not a great
fan of standardized testing, “if that’s what
we have to do, we’ll do it.”
Petrie’s mother is still her role model.
The children in her mother’s class have to
pass a standardized test to move on;
Petrie’s mother teaches school on Saturday
mornings to help them prepare.
“She wants her kids to be successful,”
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 }
Carisa Armendariz Petrie sets high
expectations for her students.
Petrie says of her mother. “And because
of her, they are.”
If teaching isn’t lucrative or prestigious,
its rewards transcend those of other
careers. Petrie’s husband, Geoffrey Petrie
(SF00), is an environmentalist who works
for a nonprofit group called Nuclear
Watch, an organization that keeps tabs on
Los Alamos and Sandia laboratories.
“We both feel the same way. If you
don’t have a job that’s important, that’s
meaningful, then why do it? Sometimes
I find myself saying, ‘I’m so lucky I don’t
have to work.’ But of course, I work very
hard. What I mean is that I get to work at
a job I actually care about.” x
�26
{Outreach}
TECOLOTE
GREAT BOOKS FOR
GREAT T E AC H E R S
Stephen Van Luchene Believes in Inspiring Teachers
by Rosemary Harty
A
fter a week of preparing lesson plans,
teaching, grading papers, and dealing
with classroom discipline problems, how
many teachers would volunteer to spend
four Saturdays in a room with other teachers,
discussing the Declaration of Independence
and other seminal works of America’s political foundation?
In New Mexico, at least 66 of them. Give
Stephen Van Luchene, Santa Fe tutor, the
credit for knowing that teachers—no matter
how overworked or undervalued—are
hungry for genuine conversation and an
opportunity to recharge their intellectual
fire at the seminar table. Beginning last
fall, teachers in Van Luchene’s Tecolote
Group have been reading works related to
the theme “Reflections on Democracy in
America” and discussing them with their
peers. Some of them travel from far corners of the state to attend, and the group
comprises teachers of all disciplines and
grade levels, public school and private
school teachers, and administrators
including the superintendent of
Santa Fe public schools.
Van Luchene envisioned Tecolote as
a way to bring to teachers the St. John’s
approach of inquiry and dialogue centered
on an important text. The name was
chosen to reflect the program’s classical
roots and also for symbolic effect. Tecolote
means owl in colloquial Spanish, and the
owl is an emblem of Athena. The “group”
in the name suggests that this effort can
contribute to a collective force, one united
by ideas and imagination, which Van Luchene
believes must be tapped to improve
K-12 education.
A major inspiration for Tecolote was
the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, an
educational reform initiative that requires
states to establish educational standards
and mandates testing to make sure
schools meet these standards. “A lot of
attention goes into determining which
schools get rewarded and which schools
get punished based on standardized test
scores,” he says. “But nobody was looking
to the teachers as people we could trust
and ask to really help to improve our
schools.”
Van Luchene, whose wife is a former
high school teacher, has a history of asking
how public education can be improved
and looking for ways to help. In 1982, he
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 }
helped launch a new teacher cooperative
and teacher certification project through
the University of New Mexico, the New
Mexico State Department of Education,
and Santa Fe public schools. Many
St. John’s students have been among
those who take this accelerated path to
state certification.
Van Luchene later worked with several
National Endowment for the Humanities
projects at St. John’s, including the NEH
Classics Project, created to bring teachers
to attend the Graduate Institute in Santa Fe
or Annapolis, and Summer Seminar that
gave teachers the opportunity to study
Plato’s Republic or Euclid’s
Elements.
After developing his plan for Tecolote,
Van Luchene went looking for funding
(although supported in several ways by
St. John’s in Santa Fe, Tecolote operates
independently). He wrote grant proposals
and approached foundations, eventually
securing support from the McCune
Foundation, the Bay Foundation, the
LANL Foundation, and Blaugrund
Foundation. Individuals including Tom
Krause and Ray Cave, members of the
St. John’s Board of Visitors and Governors,
and another donor who wishes to remain
anonymous also provided funding. Several
Santa Fe tutors and GI alumni participate
as discussion leaders, and Carol Balkcom,
wife of Santa Fe President John Balkcom,
signed on as a volunteer project manager.
Tecolote brings teachers to campus four
times a year for colloquia. The programs
start at 8 a.m. with coffee and donuts;
tutorials of about eight teachers follow
�{Outreach}
27
s c o t t c a r away
Christopher
Garwood, an
elementary school
teacher from
Albuquerque,
makes a point in a
Tecolote seminar.
Below, Stephen
Van Luchene,
tutor, Santa Fe
from 8:45 to 10:30, then groups of 16
meet for seminars with two discussion
leaders. Luncheons include guest speakers who address issues of liberal education
in New Mexico. In addition to the U.S.
Constitution, readings include
Tocqueville’s Democracy in America,
The Federalist, and the speeches and
papers of Lincoln and Madison. Planning
for next year’s theme is under way.
In keeping with the St. John’s philosophy,
“We aren’t telling teachers what we
think they should know,” Van Luchene
explains. “We’re giving them an approach.” And teachers—many used
to one-way communication in the classroom—thrive on the give and take of
dialogue and the thoughtful responses
their colleagues offer. They return to
their schools with new ideas on how to
deliver their curriculum.
“It’s also a great opportunity for good
teachers to meet other good teachers,”
he adds.
The programs and books are free, and
Tecolote participants are paid an honorarium
of $150 for each session. While the
amount isn’t luxurious, it does recognize
that their time is valuable and helps defray
travel or lodging costs. Van Luchene also
made sure the luncheons were a cut above
ordinary lunchroom fare—complete with
tablecloths and service—as a small but
important way to let teachers know
they’re appreciated, he says.
Charles Olivea, a 35-year veteran of the
classroom, says teachers need programs
like Tecolote to fill “a major gap” in their
education—that is, a program geared to
nurturing intellectual curiosity instead
of delivering pedagogy.
Olivea has taught in public and private
schools in New York and Connecticut, as
well as in New York prisons. He now
teaches history at Santa Fe’s Academy for
Technology and the Classics, a charter
school serving grades 7 to 12.
“From my experience, the majority
of public school teachers limit, and are
expected to limit, their intellectual horizon
to so many conventional and mandatory
graduate school courses,” he says.
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 }
“The notion of participating in an
intelligent discussion grounded on a
common set of texts is virtually alien
within our public school culture.”
In addition to seeing teachers thrive,
Van Luchene believes that St. John’s
College should share its intellectual
resources for the greater good. He hopes
to double the number of participants in
the program in a year or two and also
expects Tecolote to spawn new opportunities, such as a recent seminar for Santa Fe
high school students on Plato’s Republic,
organized with their philosophy teacher,
a participant in Tecolote, and led by
St. John’s students.
“Tecolote is just the right thing for us
to do,” he says. “It’s complementary to
the central work of St. John’s.” By returning
to their schools with the renewed insight
that teachers are lifelong learners, “these
teachers will go back and make a real
difference in the lives of their schools.” x
�28
{Bibliofile}
Rediscovering Homer
Homeric Moments: Clues to
Delight in Reading the Odyssey
and the Iliad, by Eva Brann.
Paul Dry Books, Philadelphia
by Barbara Goyette (A73)
A
fter the six seminars on
Homer my freshman year,
I was sad because I
thought we were finished
with the Iliad and the
Odyssey. I had read the
books, listened intently in the seminars,
talked a little, learned a few things. But
the kind of understanding I had hoped for
from the St. John’s experience was far, far
from realized. What I didn’t know then,
but soon learned, is that we all have a lifetime with the Iliad and the Odyssey. In
the program they serve as reference
points—the beginning of the great themes
of war, peace, misery, elation, self-awareness, fate, compassion, studied for four
years. And beyond St. John’s, for Johnnies
and I bet for many others, every war is the
Iliad, every difficult journey the Odyssey,
every soul-in-progress an Odysseus, every
larger-than-life, full-of-feeling person an
Achilles. Within the past year I read both
books again, for the third time (maybe the
fourth for the Odyssey), because I wanted
to check out the newish translations by
Robert Fagles (very direct and unadorned,
not forced into unnatural rhymes or
rhythms). Now comes this eminently
readable book, Homeric Moments, from
tutor Eva Brann.
I can’t do an honest review of this book.
First of all, I know the author and admire
her intellect and imagination; second, I
work for the college—so whatever I say is
an inside job, lacking in the objectivity
necessary for an honest appraisal. But let
me just make a few points about the book,
from the point of view of someone who’s
spent time with Homer and incorporated
his poems into consciousness but is
certainly no expert.
Structure
Brann shows a happy disregard for the
conventions of literary criticism. She
“Every war is
the Iliad, every
difficult journey
the Odyssey, every
soul-in-progress an
Odysseus...”
doesn’t offer a cohesive point of view for
examining the epics; she doesn’t hog-tie
the poems with the lasso of a single
interpretation. Instead, she writes about
“moments.” Her moments are akin to
epiphanies—a clarity that shines from
the text. The analogy Brann draws is to
the images on a Greek vase. She cites
an amphora image of Ajax preparing his
spear by making it fast in a mound of
earth just before impaling himself upon
it, distraught that he was not awarded the
wondrous shield of Achilles after the great
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 }
warrior’s death. “For just as the flowing
Homeric narrative can produce in the
attentive reader as a cumulative result a
detailed mental image, so, reciprocally,
a painted picture can be developed into a
tableau vivant, a living image containing
the gist of the whole story, a still, fraught,
vibrating stasis,” she explains. The ancient potter’s vision of Ajax caught in the
intensity of a moment exemplifies what
can be found in Homer as well.
This book makes us better readers of
Homer. The series of moments described—
like the images on the amphora—become
moments for us, created by Homer.
Brann’s interpretations are not barricades
between the books and us but rather
access points. This is not to say that she
does not address the great questions:
What are we to make of the gods and their
interference in human affairs? Why does
the Iliad end with the funeral of Hector
(and not, for instance, the fall of Troy)?
What is the source of Achilles’ wrath and
how is it related to his knowledge of his
impending death? What’s the deal with
Odysseus and the ten-year return? How
much fantasy should we recognize in
Odysseus’ tale? There are more, and
she takes them all on.
The most endearing characteristic of
Homeric Moments, to me, is how alive
the poems are to Miss Brann. Achilles
and Odysseus are somehow known to her—
through an imagination that must be
cinematic in its clarity. She knows the
color of Odysseus’ eyes (brown) and sees
into the psychology of Achilles’ wrath
(“he expends himself youthfully, lives,
even withdrawn from action, the intense,
concentrated, single-minded, abbreviated
life of the death-bound”).
She also offers wonderful pictures
of other Homeric characters. There’s
Hephaestus, the only god who makes
things. His house is “star-decked, bronzebuilt.” And Hector, breaker of horses, is
“an altogether solid though very human
being. He refuses to drink on duty, stays to
save his men, is kind to Helen—and wisely
keeps his distance; he is solicitous even of
his morally slight brother’s feelings…[H]e
has in him a strain of gentle civility.”
�{Bibliofile}
Brannian Insight
Those who like to highlight sections
that provide particular insight in books
they are reading may find their entire
copy of Homeric Moments awash in
yellow. Here are two examples of
Brannian observations:
1. What about the gods and the way
they intervene in human lives for
Homer? “…the pretence of an aiding
god seems to impinge on the purity of
people’s responsibility; every human
accomplishment or failure has a divine
signature on it. But the converse is
also true: Every divine intervention
duplicates a human intention and its
execution…Such reciprocity…makes
the origin of every human deed
questionable, and Homer’s moral frame
as ambivalent as any modern sensibility
could recognize.” Later, commenting
on how Athena transforms Odysseus
at crucial times, she says the gods “
enhance the scenery of human action by
making the looks of people and places
adequate to their inner nature…”
2. A long and fruitful discussion of
Homeric similes helps illuminate the
power of the epics’ poetry. Especially
in the gruesome Iliad, the images in
the similes are beautiful, creating a
double vision. “Similes, it is said,
‘defamiliarize’ the placidly normal
world by reflecting it in estranging
likenesses. Homeric similes, however,
often do the reverse: They project the
excruciating enormities of battle onto
an integral world of peaceful and homely
work as well as onto beautiful and boisterous nature, and so they transfigure
the incessant abnormality
of man-made war. In a flash they show
the isolated siege world of Troy as not
so hopelessly disconnected from the
sound natural world of work and weather,
but bonded to it by sudden visions
of similarity.”
Although it seems to me that any
time is a good time to read Homer, and
to take up Homeric Moments, now—
when war is as real to us as “real-time”
TV coverage and the Internet can make
it—is an especially good time. Miss
Brann’s insights on this ancient conflict
and its aftermath help mitigate the bare
impenetrability of the question: why
does humankind make war? x
29
Cato’s Mirania: A Life of
Provost Smith, by Charlotte
Goldsborough Fletcher
University of Pennsylvania), and ousted
Smith, a founder and provost for 15 years.
So long as they behaved themselves, Miss
Fletcher writes, Loyalists were safe in
Maryland: “The Provost was not a Loyalist,
but the perception that he was lingered.”
To avoid surveillance, Smith moved to
Chestertown, which had been considering
establishing a college for some time.
Smith was the man to do that. He first
opened a school for his two sons, which
subsequently was absorbed into the Kent
County Free School. Its board elected him
chairman. Under his leadership, the
trustees petitioned the Maryland Assembly
to charter the Kent County Free School as a
college. Already with years of fund raising
behind him in Pennsylvania, Smith collected
pledges worth 5,000 pounds. After the
Revolution’s most famous leader’s permission was gained to name the college for
him, Washington College was chartered in
1782 with Smith as its principal and chairman of the board of trustees.
Not content to stop there, Smith was
determined to charter a college on the
Western Shore, which together with
Washington College would form the first
University of Maryland. He believed deeply
in the proposals on education he had written
for a college for his mythical province
of Mirania in America, a plan originally
formulated when New York was considering
such an institution and a plan that so
charmed Franklin he chose Smith as the
first provost of the College of Philadelphia.
“Liberty will not deign to swell but where
her fair companion Knowledge flourishes
by her side,” Smith wrote under the pseudonym of Cato.
He joined with two other clergymen
representing the three most prominent
denominations in Maryland in preparing
a charter for the future St. John’s. The
so-called University Law was drafted by
Smith, the Rev. Patrick Alison, representing
the Presbyterians or Dissenters, and the
Rev. John Carroll, the Roman Catholics.
It was adopted in December 29, 1784, two
days after the festival day of St. John the
Evangelist, patron saint of the Free Masons,
of which Smith, like Washington and
Franklin, was a member.
“The University Law, however, would not
go into effect until a board of trustees was
elected from the group of subscribers who
together had pledged 1,000 pounds,”
Miss Fletcher writes.
University Press of America, Inc.
Charlotte Fletcher served as the librarian
of the Annapolis campus for 35 years,
presiding over a lively, learned center of
civility until her retirement in 1980. However, her lasting contribution to St. John’s
College may be in the work she continued
after leaving the college. In a series of
scholarly articles, only one of which was
written before her retirement, Fletcher
made a tremendous contribution to the
history of the college. Working with a
zeal for getting it right, she was the first
to authenticate the steps that led to King
William’s School becoming St. John’s, a
story which heretofore had the ring of
legend. She wrote a convincing account of
how the college may have been named; an
article on the college’s first president, John
McDowell, and a piece on King William
School and the College of William and
Mary, both founded the same year.
All were published by the Maryland
Historical Magazine and wrapped up in
one 1991 issue of The St. John’s Review
(regrettably out of print). Now comes a
book about the foremost figure in St. John’s
founding, William Smith, a remarkable
Scotsman from Aberdeen and president
pro tem of the college—for one day.
A friend of Benjamin Franklin, with
whom he had an ever-changing relationship, disagreeing as they did over Pennsylvania’s proprietary form of government,
Smith was chosen by the American Philosophical Society to deliver the eulogy at
the society’s memorial service for Franklin.
Among other accomplishments, this
Anglican clergyman wrote the charter
for that distinguished society.
Although turned down as the first
bishop-elect of Maryland (rejected because
he had been seen to stumble on a New York
street, presumably from strong drink),
Smith preached at the consecration of the
first Maryland bishop and remained devoted
to the church. He wrote the preface of the
1789 Book of Common Prayer, unchanged
since then.
Without William Smith, St. John’s
College would never have been established.
Smith arrived in Maryland after the Pennsylvania legislature dissolved the board of
the College of Philadelphia (later the
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 }
continued on p. 30
�30
Rebecca Wilson served for many years as
the college’s director of public relations in
Annapolis.
Calculus: The Elements
by Michael Comenetz
World Scientific Publishing Inc., 2003
This book by Annapolis tutor Michael
Comenetz provides a full and clear
account of the essentials of calculus,
presented in an engaging style that is
both readable and mathematically
precise. Concepts and central ideas are
emphasized throughout. Physical examples
and interpretations play a leading role, and
Charles Jones (A79)
For Smith, there was much to do.
“Smith traveled on horseback over 300
miles in the winter of 1785-86 to convene
and supervise elections in the Western
Shore counties to validate the St. John’s
charter.”
One can imagine what hardships
were posed by wintry rides on Maryland’s
primitive roads. His service was essential.
Without his commitment, St. John’s
would not have been able to begin classes
five years after the University Law was
adopted.
After Smith returned to Philadelphia,
Maryland withdrew its support for the
first university, and St. John’s and
Washington became, as they are today,
independent colleges.
“The Provost returned to Maryland in
November 1789 to preside as the president
pro tem at the opening of St. John’s
College in Annapolis,” Miss Fletcher
writes. “On that day Smith was president
of three colleges: St. John’s College and
Washington College in Maryland, and
the College of Philadelphia.
Miss Fletcher has written a valuable
book about a figure of enormous energy,
ambition, drive and intelligence. Outspoken,
Smith was not a sentimentalist. He landed
in jail as the result of his German translation of an article protesting the failure
of Pennsylvania Assembly members to
support a militia to protect the ScotsIrish from slaughter by Indians on the
state’s western frontier. A businessman,
he also acquired 70,000 acres of land,
something of which St. Paul would have
disapproved, a major factor in his not
becoming bishop. Part of it became the
site for the town of Huntingdon, Pa.,
which he also founded.
Incidentally of interest is that Miss
Fletcher is a descendant of Smith through
his daughter, Willamina Smith, who
married Charles Goldsborough. Her book
about her distinguished ancestor has been
extensively researched, documented by
numerous notes, and tightly written. It
beautifully rounds out her earlier impressive accounts of the history of St. John’s.
–Rebbeca Wilson (HA83)
{Bibliofile}
is led to a consideration of the Lysis and
Phaedrus.
In the prologue to his work, Geier
describes a moment of inspiration from
the latter work: “One evening, late, after
a class on Plato’s Phaedrus, I was sitting
at one end of a living room. At the other
end, a good distance away, was a fireplace. There was no fire in it at this time.
As I gazed there, into that dark fireplace
(were there ashes there? I don’t remember. There may have been. There probably were), I kept asking myself: just what
is the ‘object’ of Eros. What is it? What
can it be? After a while, as I kept gazing
there, not a short while but not a very
long one, I saw, with great excitement
and delight, the ‘object’ of Eros. It was
the very thing I was looking at and asking
‘what’ about. The very thing I was looking
at and not seeing was the very thing I was
looking for. Had the fireplace not been
dark I would not have seen this. Then I
realized that that ‘object’ was not not
known, but that it was known as unknown; and therefore that it was not just
something unknown, but that it was the
Unknown. I saw in that fire-less fireplace
the very thing that was not there. And
precisely this was (and is) the ‘object’
of Eros.”
Bookbinder’s Finishing Tools
Makers 1780-1965
By Tom Conroy (SF77)
Oak Knoll Press
alternative approaches to fundamental
ways of thinking help the student develop
the intuitive understanding so important
in science and engineering. Many questions and problems, with detailed solutions, encourage active reading and
independent thought.
Plato’s Erotic Thought:
The Tree of the Unknown
by Alfred Geier (A54)
University of Rochester Press
Alfred Geier’s book is presented as an
attempt to understand the nature of the
object of Eros in Plato’s writings. He
considers first the Symposium, where he
is led to a deeper understanding of the
“nature of Love (Eros).” But then the
problem manifests itself as related primarily
to the “way in which Love arises,” and he
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 }
For anyone interested in the history
of books, here’s a valuable resource
compiled by Tom Conroy. Conroy, an
independent book conservator, fine
binder, toolmaker, and binding teacher
in Berkeley, Calif., has published a
directory listing hundreds of tool-cutters
from 1780-1965 and their firms. The
book includes brief biographies of each
craftsman or firm, original trade marks,
and advertisements.
�{ A l u m n i Vo i c e s }
31
Remembering Douglas Allanbrook
forward, can distinguish the two. In
“Truth-Telling and The Iliad,” Douglas
remarks out of the blue that if Homer
ever tried to solve any Problems Zeus
would strike him dead with a thunderbolt. Two years later he noted that
some in preceptorial had concluded
that Thucydides was a wise and
perfect cynic.
Douglas thought that wrong. “If no
solution in human affairs is possible,”
he wrote, “it is because nothing of
heartfelt concern is a problem that can
be solved. If no solution is possible,
human excellence calls for courage and
shrewdness to walk hand in hand with
decency and compassion.” He then
concluded with a snapshot of Prime
Minister Indira Ghandi and saintly
[In 1981] Douglas gave a lecture
Mother Teresa, smiling at each other
entitled “Truth-Telling and the
in deadly fashion on TV, each needing
Iliad,” which began: “The terrible
something at that moment from the
word truth implies a parity between
other, struggling to defend something
what we see and what we say.” He
good against the grind. This, it seems,
then suggested that the Iliad and The
is as good as it gets. The good soldier
Peloponnesian War are the only two
Douglas Allanbrook is remembered as a teacher
puts down his head and keeps walking.
books that “consistently exhibit” this
and friend.
My first visit to the house on
quality, that “reflect in their words
Revell Street was to talk about my
and accounts, speeches and stories,
for reflecting, and for setting things
precept paper (which erred on the
the real that is in front of our eyes and
straight. In both of them one feels the
side not of cynicism but naiveté). Douglas
that is so difficult to own up to, or
ache for, and the absence of, an efficacious
happily showed me his piano, recently
to talk about.”
good, and while Socrates may speak of
installed in the renovated attic. The sight
The following year Douglas offered a
himself as the only true citizen of Athens,
of his little workspace, filled with big
preceptorial on Thucydides. Douglas
Thucydides the Athenian has put into the
sheets of music, prompted me to report
persistently pointed to the way Pericles
mouths of his Athenians words that fix
that his recent recording of a Bach prelude
encouraged Athenians to fight not for
forever in our memory the inexorable
and fugue (on the record with McDowell
what might be gained by an enemy’s defeat,
grind of power, time, and moral decline.”
on the cover) had a meditative quality to
but out of love for the beauties of Athens,
In preceptorial we puzzled. Was Pericles
my ears entirely new—something that
which (as Pericles described at some length)
naive to think love of law and similar beauopened not only Bach but the whole of
had to do with law and habits of civilized
ties might prevail? We also read speeches
what we call baroque music to my soul.
behavior. This appeal—to fall in love with
of Lincoln, where again, law, government
Douglas smiled in a now familiar, put-on
Athens for the best of reasons—appealed to
of the people, by the people, for the
way—like a cartoonish wolf in a fedora—and
Douglas’s own sense of patriotism. And that
people, and now Equality, are held up as
said, “Oh yes, Mr. Ney, nobody plays Bach
the love proved inconstant, that the beauties
high values, to be loved at highest cost. A
the way I do!” It seems truer words were
of Athens were neglected and so failed,
sign of progress? Or is that naive? Douglas
never spoken. On my shelf at home is a
Douglas kept in our minds as we worked
provoked us with the suggestion that the
costly collection of CDs rarely touched,
through the book, reading one case history
preservation of the American union had
representing a failed attempt over two
of disaster after another. And a year later,
not been worth its cost in blood—a provoca- decades to find someone who plays Bach
in his lecture, “The Inefficacy of the Good,”
tion rooted, it seems, in his experience as
on the piano with anything like Douglas’
he finished his discussion of Pericles’ first
a soldier, and his tendency to think that the humanism and perfection...
speech by looking forward a few decades to
foundations of political life are troubled
How far from accidental that a brilliant
the demise of democratic Athens:
with termites.
young composer who had been given the
“It would be a shameless naiveté to
A simple distinction pops up throughout
secret of Logos for Fingers would give a
conceive of any of Plato’s political works as
his writing—between Problems, which can
arising from any ground other than one of
good part of his life to teaching in the
be Solved, and Troubles, which cannot and
the blackest pessimism regarding human
Program. What a blessing to have known
so must be endured, or perhaps slipped
affairs….The war was an occasion, first for
him, teacher and friend.x
around. Happy the man who, looking
Thucydides and then for Plato, for observing,
Members of the St. John’s community
came together with family and longtime friends of Annapolis Tutor
Douglas Allanbrook for a memorial
service March 29 in the Great Hall.
Mr. Allanbrook, who had spent half
a century at St. John’s, died in
January of a heart attack at the age
of 81. He had continued to perform
at the college and to lead language
tutorials after his retirement from fulltime teaching.
This remembrance by William Ney,
Class of 1982, was among the many
offered during the memorial service,
which also featured Mr. Allanbrook’s
music.
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 }
�32
{Alumni Profile}
Questioning the Blueprint of Human Life
by Jason Bielagus (SF98)
hat is the nature of
life? Can we distill
it into principles?
How are humans
different from all
other forms of life?
How do we know we know something?”
Five years after leaving St. John’s, says
Jacob Keller (SF98), questions like these
continue to intrigue him. He carried his
habit of questioning into the Ph.D./M.D.
program he’s currently enrolled in at
Northwestern University. And he found
it particularly helpful as a researcher in
Columbia University’s Department of
Biological Sciences, where he worked in
a laboratory under Dr. John Hunt.
Keller went to Columbia to gain the
prerequisites needed for medical school;
he went to Hunt to gain research experience. Along the way he landed a credit as
lead author of a paper published in the
scientific journal Structure, saw his
computer-generated model of a protein
featured on the journal’s cover, and gained
another notice of his work in the journal
Science—notable accomplishments for any
established researcher, highly unusual for a
liberal arts graduate in a pre-med program.
The research Keller conducted at the
Hunt lab developed from a larger project
involving dozens of labs working to
complete the Human Genome Project.
Although the human genome has been
sequenced, scientists have yet to discover
the exact function of every gene. By looking
at the structures of proteins our genes
make, researchers hope to discover what
those proteins and the genes that make
them do.
Keller’s research centered on
MT0146/CbiT, a protein required to
synthesize vitamin B12. Previously, it was
thought that MT0146/CbiT was a decarboxylase. Keller proved that it was, in fact,
a methyltransferase.
Nearly every biological function, both
in sickness and in health, happens through
proteins. Knowing how these proteins
work will allow doctors to combat disease
with great specificity. “The current
method is much more trial-and-error, and
therefore requires far more time and
W
money,” says Keller. “This inflates the
cost of drugs and sometimes even prevents
them from being developed.”
Structural biology has led to new treatments for multiple sclerosis, for example.
The disease strikes when a patient’s
immune systems mistake the cells
sheathing the nerves for foreign cells.
The immune system then attacks and
kills those cells, wreacking havoc on the
patient’s nervous system. Recently,
Dr. Jack Strominger of the Harvard Medical
School found that a single protein on the
membrane of the nerve-sheath cells was
triggering the attack by the immune
system. He then found a molecule that
would bind to that problematic membrane
protein, thereby covering it and blocking
it from detection by the immune system.
After taking this new drug, MS patients
no longer have symptoms of the disease.
The technique that Keller and others
use to determine the structure of proteins
is X-ray crystallography. The technique
requires taking the DNA sequence that
codes for the protein of interest and putting it into bacteria cells. Once inside the
bacteria cells, the DNA produces a large
quantity of the protein. After being isolated
and purified, the protein is treated with a
variety of chemicals and conditions to
make the protein crystallize.
“A good crystal is 1/10 — 1/5 of a
millimeter and has about 1015 (a million
billion) molecules in it,” Keller said.
“Once the protein is crystallized, it is
exposed to X-rays. By interpreting the
diffraction patterns of the X-rays, the
structure of the crystal can be determined.
Based on the diffraction patterns, a
researcher can create a computer model
of the protein.”
Examining the structure of the molecule
then allows its function to be determined,
adds Keller. “Wayne Hendrickson, a
crystallographer and colleague at
Columbia, described X-ray crystallography
as a microscope that uses X-rays for light
and a computer for a lens. In St. John’s
terms, I would say that it’s like looking at
the shadows on the wall of the cave to try
to find out what the real forms are.”
The technique owes a lot to Young and
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 }
his light-slit experiment. “That paper’s
framework has great explaining power,
even in terms of modern macromolecular
crystallography. Young’s paper, actually,
has given me a sort of reference point, or
way of thinking, that shapes my understanding to this day.”
Keller isn’t sure he’d be in science if he
hadn’t chosen to come to St. John’s. He’s
certain that he’ll be a better scientist because of the college. “I feel that I have not
had the questioning principle squelched
out of me by question-phobic
lectures. Many people in science are not
even all that excited by their research.
Those who are often make the best scientists.”
His path to medicine stems from a
desire to help people, though he hasn’t
settled on a specialty. As a scientist, he
gains the opportunity to continue to ask
questions and search for the answers. His
Ph.D. research may focus on the structure
of proteins.
“My real dream would be to figure out
how some system works from the atomic
to the macroscopic scale. Like figuring
out how the shape of some protein affects
behavior or the macroscopic realm in
some way. It has been done before, for
example with muscles. They understand
muscle contraction from atoms on up.
“There are ways to use structural information to cure disease, but the big goal of
structural biologists, and this is somehow
more compelling to me, is the study of
these fantastic forms, trying to understand how they work, and discovering
what overall principles guide their behavior.
These structures are really incredible,
because they are right on the verge of
coming to life, yet are made out of simple
atoms. Their component atoms are more
or less understandable as simple elements,
yet the complexity of the relationships
between these components is great. The
single, isolated protein is only the beginning of the real complexity of life.” x
�jim zir
Jacob Keller at Northwestern University
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 }
�{Alumni Notes}
34
REMEMBRANCE OF FRESHMAN
YEARS PAST
Have a favorite story from your
first day, week, or month of
Freshman year? Please e-mail it to
Sus3an Borden at s-borden@sjca.edu
for a nostalgia story we’re working on.
1942
J. HEINMULLER sent this note:
“Homecoming was A-1. So glad
I made it. Thanks.”
1951
GEORGE WEND recently traveled to
Thailand and is “deep into digital
photography.”
1955
CAROLYN BANKS AND HELGE
LEEUWENBURGH: “We are still in the
‘Travel for Groups’ business and are
still creative. If anyone is interested,
get in touch. Our last St. John’s tour
was in 1985 to Greece. That’s a long
time ago, but the fun is still longremembered.”
1960
HILDRETH SMITH BECKER writes
from Arizona: “Currently I volunteer at a Swedenborg Church’s
library-bookstore. Busy also with my
granddaughter, Adela, age 7, whose
mother CHRISTINA PAIGE, graduated
from St. John’s (Annapolis) in 1988.
I continue with studies in philosophy and religion.”
1961
DAVE ROSENFIELD writes: “My truly
aimless life continues in reasonably
good health; for this I am thankful,
although, as an atheist, I do not
know to whom or what I am
directing this thanks.
After being unsuccessful at enabling, I moved on to the University of Pennsylvania and earned a
degree (B.S. in economics, major
in finance) from the Wharton
School in 1965—to whatever end
I cannot imagine as I have never
worked in the business world. In
1970, I consolidated several
questionable enterprises into
the WD&R Carpentry Co. (Who,
Didditt & Rahn), which became
immensely successful in highpriced architectural restoration
(not repair) and light commercial
construction. Whatever made me
imagine I was an academic?
My days are just filled! Since
retiring from business in 1986, I
never get a day off. I have a small
business, Sanborn Shooters
(www.sanbornshooters.com) that I
operate from home. It is a federally
licensed machine gun company
with a gun range here on the ranch.
Other interests include my vintage British Motorcycles, pyrotechnics, (my wife, Mary Ann [Sanborn]
& I are both licensed professional
display pyrotechnic operators) and
reading junky detective novels.
Mary Ann intends to sell her businesses soon. After that I will sell
the machine gun business and we
will devote more time to travel
and our pyro work. I still have not
decided what I want to do when I
About that English Weather
EONARD KAHN (SFGI96) spends about half of his
time in the UK as a doctoral student in philosophy at
the University of Oxford and the other “in Southern
California trying to recover from the collective onslaught of English weather and English food
(so-called). My wife has decided to forgo the British
experience and (quite wisely) only deigns to leave the West Coast
of the U.S. for our brief forays to Europe proper. After bumming
around Italy in the summer of ’02, we decided that if St. John’s
establishes a third campus in Siena we would strongly consider
making a repeat performance as senior residents! I would love
to hear from old friends as well as from any Johnnies wandering
through the city of dreaming spires (or considering study here).
Drop me a line at leonard.kahn@magdalen.oxford.ac.uk.” x
L
grow up—but there is plenty of time
for that sort of thing. Mercifully, I
have never been jailed, produced
issue, or voted Democrat. We
welcome visitors on our ranch near
Austin, Texas: Davinryder@hotmail.com”
1962
NEIL CHARLES POTASH spent an
October day with classmate JOHN
FRANKLIN MILLER at the Edsel &
Eleanor Ford House. The tour was
interesting to Potash, a retired historian, especially since it was conducted by the museum’s curator
and president, Miller. After a delicious lunch—including much Johnnie reminiscence, Neil returned to
Bowie, Md., where he continues to
work on his Ph.D. at the University of Maryland.
JOHN FRANKLIN MILLER, president
of the Edsel & Eleanor Ford House,
has been appointed president of
the Library of American Landscape
History (LALH). Based in Amherst,
Mass., LALH was founded on the
belief that clear, informative books
and exhibitions about North American landscape design would broaden support for enlightened landscape preservation. In recent years,
LALH has produced a number of
publications, such as Pioneers of
American Landscape Design, The
Spirit of the Garden, Landscape
Gardening, and Landscape Architecture in the Midwest. According
to Miller, the importance of landscape preservation is illustrated in
many of the Ford family sites.
“Landscape and landscape-garden
preservation have come of age in
the late 20th century, following
upon earlier successes in architectural preservation,” said Miller.
“The Ford family has had an important role in this, since their environmental stewardship began when
Henry Ford commissioned the
visionary designer Jen Jensen to
create the landscapes for ‘Fair
Lane,’ Greenfield Village, and the
Henry Ford Hospital; and Edsel
Ford commissioned Jensen to create
landscapes for the Ford House in
Grosse Pointe, ‘Skylands,’ in Maine
and ‘Haven Hill’ near Clarkston.”
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 }
1970
LES MARGULIS (A) sends news from
Australia: “I have had an eclectic
career. My first job out of school
(B.A. in philosophy) was working at
a porno movie house. Didn’t make
my Jewish mother happy. Went back
to school and got a master’s in advertising (had an appropriate background given that ad execs are
sometimes called ‘whores’). Eventually, wound up at BBDO where I
stayed for 25 years and ran one of
their international divisions. Lived
abroad for a while and traveled extensively, but was not getting rich.
Left BBDO in 1999 to seek my fame
and fortune during the Internet
go-go years. Nine months and $100
million dollars of investors’ money
later, the company went bust. I migrated back to advertising and
worked as VP for a Hispanic agency.
And now I am on my way to
Australia to be president of the
largest multicultural agency there.
I am looking forward to kicking back
and putting another shrimp on the
barbie. If any Johnnies pass through
Sydney, my e-mail is
lesmargulis@hotmail.com.”
1973
MARY TARAIL (SF) is still working
full time as a psychiatrist as part of
Mount Sinai Hospital in New York
City. Her grandchild, Isabella, is 3
years old. She reports that she is
finding time to read again and has
been in touch with LIZZIE GOLDWIN,
who is well.
MOZELL LANG (MORRIS) (SFGI)
retired from the Michigan Department of Education as a science
consultant in October 2002. She
now works as a science consultant
for the Pontiac Schools.
1974
JON HUNNER (SF) continues to direct the Public History program at
New Mexico State University, where
he received tenure last year. His
book, Inventing Los Alamos, will be
published in 2003 by the University
of Oklahoma Press.
CRUGER JOHNSON PHILLIPS (A) is
executive director of a small nonprofit called Hopeworks, which
�35
{Alumni Profile}
christopher huston
Working to Safeguard Fundamental Rights
Juan Villaseñor, at ACLU’s headquarters in New York
by Rosemary Harty
uan Villaseñor (A97) was alarmed
by what followed in the wake of the
September 11 attacks: expanded
domestic spying programs, secret
military tribunals, and similar
government efforts to gather
information and evidence on
foreigners and citizens alike. From where
he stood, fundamental American rights
were under attack.
“I saw what the government was doing to
our civil liberties and rights in the name of
national security, and it really kind of scared
me,” he says.
His first response was to join the American
Civil Liberties Union. Then, while clerking
for a federal judge in his first year out of
Vanderbilt University’s law school, he
applied for and won the ACLU’s prestigious
J
William J. Brennan First Amendment
Fellowship. He began the yearlong fellowship in the organization’s national offices
in New York last September and has gained
experience working on several high-profile
ACLU cases. Many involve free speech and
the Internet. Villaseñor has also worked on
cases that are part of the organization’s
attempts to block antiterrorism measures
it believes infringe on basic constitutional
rights.
In addition to a chance to work for something he believes in, the fellowship has
provided an opportunity to work on a broad
variety of important cases with skilled and
dedicated lawyers.
Among his first cases was Melvin v Doe,
the first case of its kind to reach a state
supreme court, and one expected to shape
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 }
laws governing free speech on the Internet.
In joining the case, the ACLU seeks to protect anonymous speakers in cyberspace who
face legal intimidation from public officials
whom they criticize. The case involves a
Pennsylvania Superior Court judge seeking
to unmask the identity of an anonymous
web master who criticized her for lobbying
the governor to fill a judicial vacancy. The
ACLU, in defending the web master, seeks
to defend the basic American right to
criticize public officials.
Although the Internet has changed the
delivery of the message, the basic rights are
the same as those established in a landmark
1960 case, Talley v California, in which a
man was fined for distributing anonymous
handbills in violation of a Los Angeles
continued on p. 36
�36
{Alumni Profile}
municipal code that required such literature
include a name and address. The Supreme
Court found the code unconstitutional. In
a later case, Reno v ACLU, the Supreme
Court declared the Internet as a new and
powerful democratic forum in which anyone
“can become a town crier with a voice that
resonates farther than it could from any
soapbox.”
“If the Pennsylvania Supreme Court finds
against our client, then his identity will have
to be revealed,” Villaseñor explains. “He
will unnecessarily suffer embarrassment,
and all because he engaged in political
speech—the expression that lies at the very
core of the First Amendment.
“More broadly, however, other anonymous speakers will experience a chilling
effect because they will be unwilling to
engage in criticism of political or other
public figures for fear that they be sued
for defamation”
So far on the Melvin case, the ACLU has
lost in the lower courts;
Villaseñor has been involved in several motions to quash subpoenas filed on behalf of
the plaintiff and co-drafted the appeals to
the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. The case
should be heard by the state high court this
spring.
Another First Amendment case Villaseñor
is working on involves the American Library
Association, a case up for review in the U.S.
Supreme Court. A three-judge court in
Philadelphia ruled that libraries could not
be required to install Internet filters as a
condition of federal funding. The ACLU is
co-counsel in that case.
“Basically at issue is whether Congress
could pass the Children Internet Protection
Act (CIPA),” Villaseñor explains. “These
filters underblock, they don’t catch the
sites that they’re supposed to catch, and a
lot of sites that have scientific information
seeks community solutions for problems families face raising teens.
DAVID MACLAINE (SF) had a successful reading at the Lupin
Naturist Club of excerpts from his
collection of poetic parody/transformation “The Naked Bard” in
the summer of 2002.
PAUL SZABO (A) recently joined
Calfee, Halter & Griswold, LLP in
Cleveland, as a senior attorney
specializing in intellectual property
law. He counsels publicly- and
privately-held clients regarding
may be blocked from view simply because
of anatomical terms you might find within the site.”
The ACLU is representing a public
library in the case; Villaseñor is involved
in researching and preparing briefs.
A fascinating case Villaseñor has worked
on centers on the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act (FISA) and involves a
number of historic firsts. Enacted in 1978,
“Given our
constitutional values,
we simply are not a
society that wants to
block speech.”
Juan Villaseñor
FISA established a special court, composed
of seven federal district court judges, to
review the attorney general’s applications
for authorization of electronic surveillance
aimed at obtaining foreign intelligence
information. Last May, this court took the
unprecedented step of making public its
unanimous decision rejecting the
government’s bid to expand spying powers
directed at American citizens. The attorney
general then appealed to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review, a
body convened for the first time and comprising three Court of Appeals judges
selected by Chief Justice William Rehnquist.
“The ACLU asked the court for permission to file an amicus brief on behalf of
patent, copyright and trademark
matters. A registered patent attorney, Szabo renders opinions as to
patentability, right to use, patent
infringement, and patent validity
issues.
1976
BETSY DAVENPORT (SF) lives with her
family in Portland, Ore. She has a
private practice doing psychotherapy
and parenting consultation, and is
developing a specialty in adult
ADHD and the challenges it presents to families. Her daughter is 10,
what we represent. The court allowed us
to file a brief, but ultimately rejected our
arguments,” says Villaseñor. “The court of
review reversed the trial courts and basically has foreclosed—at least on its face— any
way that anyone can appeal the decision.”
The Supreme Court recently refused an
appeal of the decision.
These developments are very disturbing to
Villaseñor, especially since he believes most
Americans aren’t aware of what’s at risk.
“Any average, law-abiding citizen must
be concerned about the FISA court powers.
It circumvents the Fourth Amendment,
allowing searches on less than the constitutionally required probable cause, and the
target of the search would likely never
know that he or she is a target at all. Any
‘evidence’ gathered against him or her may
never be used against the person.”
Working for the ACLU—which faces
occasional attacks from mainstream America
as well as conservative critics for some of
its battles—is “definitely a conversation
piece.” But misconceptions often cloud the
ACLU’s image and purpose, Villaseñor
believes.
“If people think that we (ACLU staff) are
for child porn or we are in favor of children
viewing material that is harmful, that is
completely and patently false. What we are
in favor of is that the government cannot
tell you what material you should be looking
at. You as a parent can install a filter in
your own private computer, but that doesn’t
mean the government should require
it in public libraries.
“Given our constitutional values, we
simply are not a society that wants to block
speech. The answer for free speech is more
speech, not less. That includes hateful,
racist, and other kinds of controversial
speech.” x
the “big” kids are 34 and 36, and her
grandsons are 2 and 6. Her husband
will retire from university teaching
in January 2003.
After almost 20 years as a trial
attorney in both public and private
practice, WILLIAM W. NOOTER (A) is
now a magistrate judge on the D.C.
Superior Court, having been
appointed in October 2000. Bill
currently presides over cases in
Family Court. He lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife, Elissa Free,
and daughter, Amanda, age 11.
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 }
ANNE NICOLE SCHLESS (SF) writes
“I am living on a piece of ‘paradise
found’—writing, carving, singing
and building a workshop. I run a
small company for a living and am
really enjoying the people and the
challenge—basically loving life,
including the ups and downs.
Greetings to all!”
1977
WILLIAM MALLOY (SF) writes:
“My techno-addresses have
changed. On the one hand,
the new home phone number is
�37
{Alumni Notes}
713-283-9444, and on the other
hand, the new email address is
ogopogo@sbcglobal.net On the
other other hand, the mailing
address remains P.O. Box 570822
in Houston, Texas 77257-0822.
Let me hear from you, even if we’ve
never met, particularly if you don’t
recognize the palindrome ‘ogopogo.’
“Open question to anyone: In what
ways does the Ethernet resemble
phlogiston? In what ways does it not?”
1978
THOMAS WOOD (SF) has taken a new
position as coordinator of the core
curriculum at St. Mary’s College of
Ave Maria University in Orchard
Lake, Mich.
1979
JEFF MCELROY (SF) writes, “I have
recently left my 14-year career in
nonprofit fund-raising and reactivated
my law license. I have opened a law
office in my Hollywood guest house
so that I can better parent my 7-yearold son. My practice is focused on
tax-exempt organizations and adoption for lesbian and gay parents.”
1980
GERI GLOVER (SF) closed her
private practice in Santa Fe in May
2002. She now splits her time between Santa Fe on the weekends and
the Alamo Navajo Reservation near
Magdalena, N.M., during the workweek. She is the Child and
Adolescent Behavioral Health
Services coordinator for Alamo.
TOM G. PALMER (A) writes: “I
greatly regret having missed the
20th reunion, but I had agreed long
ago to participate in the international meeting of the Mont Pelerin
Society in London, which took place
over the same week. I was nominated
for membership and the nomination
was accepted. (The society was
founded in 1947 in Mont Pelerin,
Switzerland, at an international
meeting of liberal scholars called
together by Friedrich A. Hayek to
undertake the rehabilitation of
classical liberal thought.) I’ve recently taken over editorship of the
Encyclopedia of Libertarianism. As
a senior fellow of the Cato Institute,
I’ve also published a number of
essays on the economics of property,
constitutional government after
9-11, globalization, and other topics.
I’ve been on the road a lot, giving
lectures at universities, speaking at
conferences of newspaper editors,
and speaking before business
groups. My position at Cato keeps
me busy—it’s pretty much my dream
job. I may have the record for SJC
alums in long-distance relationships, as it’s now been over seven
years that my partner and I have
lived in different countries. He’s
British, we met at Oxford, and he
lives in London. We do manage to
see each other four or five times a
year, in America or in Europe (we
managed to spend nearly two weeks
together in France this summer
when I was lecturing at the University
of Aix-en-Provence). Someday we’re
hoping to be able to live together
in some country, at least for
some time.”
1981
SARA MARCY (SF) writes: “I am
very sorry to inform the college
community of the death, last April,
of LANCE FORSYTHE (SF). After a
short illness he passed away and
was brought to the mountains in
Montana, where, as those who
knew him can attest, he will rest
happily.”
1982
PETER FISK (SF) has a busy chiropractic office and teaches network
spinal analysis. NATASHA (WALTER)
FISK (SF84) is doing aura balancing
from a perspective of drawing out
some wisdom from energy blocks.
Their daughter, Gioia, is 6 and is in
the first grade at the San Francisco
Waldorf School.
REBECCA (COURSEY) KING (SF)
writes: “During the last five years
I have undergone a significant personal transformation, resulting in
a divorce from my husband of 16
years and moving from Montana to
Santa Cruz, Calif. I am completing
my fourth and final year at the
Barbara Brennan School of Healing,
where my senior project is on erotic
transfer in the healer-client relationship. I work as a spiritual energy
healer as well as a counselor/sex
educator specializing in the fascinating field of relationships, intimacy, and sexuality. I’ve begun
writing articles based on my field,
and have found myself deeply involved with Tantric Buddhism as a
base for my spiritual practice and
reconnection with the feminine. I
have also deeply explored Shadow
Work, Jungian Dream Analysis,
Depth Psychology, Tantra, a lot of
workshops on sexuality, and a lot of
truly unique relationship experiences. My daughter, Galen, is 8 1/2
and lives primarily with Dave in
Montana. She spends about one
week out of every five with me and
loves the ocean and the redwoods.
So after years of living a very sociably acceptable and financially secure life, with a friend and loving
companion, I am finally returning
to something which has been calling me, the soul’s longing to live
something yet unexplored inside of
me, for which I was still hungering
when I left St. John’s. I continue to
ponder existential questions of
reality and devote a great percentage
of my time to spiritual practices
and meditation and inquiry and energy-healing work. I still love to
dance and have trained in various
movement therapies. This summer
I reread Antigone and Oedipus Rex
to regain insight into the underlying
mythic level of sexual dysfunction.
I read Jungian books for fun and
scintillating intellectual intrigue,
and wonder just what I will study
next. Blessings and radiance to all
my fellow Johnnies.”
1983
ARTHUR EDISON (SF) is an associate
professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at the University of
Florida. He studies neurochemicals
and spends most of his time at work
thinking about worms (nematodes)
and NMR (nuclear magnetic resonance). He is happily married to his
wife, Katherine (20+ years), and has
two great kids, Emily, 17, and
Maddy, 15.
SUZAN M. PORTER (SF) will be
teaching sixth-grade science and
seventh-grade pre-algebra at the
NOVA School in Olympia, Wash.
“NOVA is a middle school which
serves academically talented youngsters, and I’m very much looking
forward to the challenges.”
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 }
1987
LARRY DAVIS (SFGI) graduated with
an M.A. from Austin Presbyterian
Theological Seminary in Austin,
Texas, in 2002, and was the first
person to walk across the stage and
get a diploma in the seminary’s
centennial year.
JOEY COXWELL (SFGI) and his
wife, PATTI (SFGI92), have been
on the move again! They are now
in Meridian, Miss. Joey teaches
AP chemistry and physics and
sometimes astronomy, and Patti
teaches elementary music to 1,050
students in grades K-6. Their
daughter, Joanna, will be attending school with mom in the fall.
She is the only student in her
preschool class who knows all the
planets, in order! Patty writes:
“We are not accomplishing ‘great’
things compared to most of what
I read in the alumni section, but
we sure are enjoying being fouryear-olds again! We’ve lost touch
with most everyone due to moves.
Our e-mail address is
Falala1701@aol.com.
Just put your name in the subject
line so I won’t dismiss it as spam.”
1988
JOHN MCLAUGHLIN (SFGI) writes,
“After this update I will hold off for
a decade or so! February and the
first week of March the goal is to add
350-400 miles—somewhere around
there—on to 900 miles previously
skied in Scandanavia. Health and
weather allowing, that will make for
a continuous line from Oslo to
Knivskjellodden. Living in Telluride, Colo., it will take a few days
to get comfortable with the low
elevation. Otherwise I am definitely
ready to go.”
SUKUMAR PERIWAL (A) writes from
Canada: “Greetings to friends from
St. John’s. Not having been in touch
since graduation in 1988, it’s intimidating to catch up. While doing a
D.Phil. at Oxford I lived in Prague
for a few years doing research on
nationalism and teaching at a new
international university there, then
traveled around, writing columns
and a serialized novel for an Italian
newspaper. Now I live in Victoria,
British Columbia, where I work for
�38
{Alumni Notes}
the government of British Columbia
in international relations. I got
married last summer to Eleonora
Babejova, ending the longest longdistance relationship in history.
I’ve stopped smoking and completely
changed personality type but would
still love to hear from long-lost
friends at:Periwal@gems5.gov.bc.ca.
”
ELLEN SCHWINDT (A) writes: “After
spending 13 years in Baltimore,
mostly in education of one sort or
another, I’ve recently moved to
South Conway, N.H., and I married
a Civil War historian named
William Marvel. I’m running a tiny
community music school, teaching
violin, piano, and music theory,
visiting a weekly peace vigil, and
supplementing my own two
children’s educations with snow
experiments, more music, and
general dragooning.”
1989
BEVERLY ANGEL (SFGI) graduated
from the University of Texas Law
School in May 2002 and joined a
very small firm in a small town near
Austin. “It’s a steep learning curve
but I’m enjoying it immensely.”
From JENNIE PACKARD (SF): “I’m
delighted to report my engagement to Robert McGee. A former
Army officer, Robert is now a
computer systems engineer here
in Santa Fe. We feel very blessed
to have found one another, and
I’m happier than I’ve ever been.”
1990
KELLY KOEPKE (SF) writes: “My
freelance writing business is going
well, our fixer-up house is eating all
our money, but we love it!”
JIM KOLSKY (SF) reports that he and
his wife have returned to California
after a 10-year absence: “I am now
directing the Information Intelligence Department at E&J Gallo
Winery in Modesto. Lots of great
perks for wine connoisseurs, of
which I am not one…yet!”
After leaving St. John’s, WILLIAM A.
SCOTT (AGI) earned a law degree at
the University of Maryland. He was
recently appointed assistant commissioner of the Maryland Department of Public Safety, Division of
Correction. He serves on the board
of the Chesapeake Youth Symphony.
1991
LAKE (JAMES) PERRIGUEY (SF) is
a lawyer representing people and
small business in state and federal
court. His clients include pornographers and churches, war protesters,
mothers, fathers, and entrepreneurs.
HEATHER NOONE (SF) and her
husband, CHRIS LA BONTE (SF92),
write that they are enjoying their
time in Carbondale, Colo., where
they moved after Chris finished
school in Austin. Heather is in a
master’s of counseling program at
Pacifica, Calif., and they are thinking
of moving to Southern California.
1992
JOHANN AND ANGELA KLAASSEN
(SF), became the proud parents
of twin boys, Abram George and
Benjamin Thomas, on May 23, 2002.
MICHAEL BROWN (SF) is living
and working in San Francisco and
would be delighted to hear from
old friends. He can be reached at
M100brown@yahoo.com or
415-734-9500.
1993
TOM LISCO (SFGI) was privileged
to attend the 2001 Sino-American
Educational Forum (co-sponsored
by People to People Ambassadors
and the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards) in
Beijing, China.
JENNA PALMER (SF) and JAMES
MICHEL (SF92) are happy to
announce the birth of their first
child, Luise Ruth Michel, born
May 17, 2002. For pictures, visit
http://photos.yahoo.com/luluruth. Jenna has been teaching
English in colleges around the Bay
Area, but will be taking time off to
help Jim run his law office, which is
in its sixth year in San Francisco.
They can be reached at
jenna_palmer@hotmail.com or
jamichel@sbcglobal.net.
1994
THE REV. NATHAN J.A. HUMPHREY
(A) has been busy uniting couples
in wedlock, and some of them are
Johnnies. “In October, I officiated
at two Johnnie-related weddings:
On the 5th for Jordan Asher Finch’s
sister, Allison. Jordan was best man
and his fiancée, QUINBY OWEN
(A01), was a bridesmaid. On the
19th, I married fellow classmate
YVONNE BELANGER (A94) to Jeff
Pomerantz, friends of WILL
GLUSMAN (A92) and AMY (HOFFMAN)
GLUSMAN (A93), who were in
attendance.”
In February IVY TURKINTON (A)
was named director of strategic
planning, information technology,
and government relations for
United Way Services of Cleveland.
Previously, she was director of organization development for the
Tri-Counties Regional Center in
Santa Barbara, Calif.
1995
LYNARRA FEATHERLY (SF) writes:
“KATHLEEN EAMON (SF97) and I will
celebrate our 10-year anniversary
next year. How does she do it?
MEGHAN JUDAY (SF) and Eric
Savage are expecting their first
baby in April 2003.
SHARON A. MORRIS (A) now goes by
her middle name, Alexa. She is the
executive director of the MPLS
Forum, an international industry
organization driving worldwide
deployment of multi-protocol label
switching networks, applications,
and services. Formed in 2000, the
forum serves as a meeting ground
for service providers, equipment
manufacturers, component vendors,
and testing companies to address
the needs of the industry.
“Hello class of ’95 and those who,
like me, never made it to fruition,”
writes ANDREW HECK (A). I look
back to my short stay at St John’s
with humor and awe, and wondered what has happened to those
who made my stay so very bizarre
and exciting. I’ve been spending
my time in the service of fermentation (baking bread) and playing
music (nothing like Iron Bladder.)
Should anyone from second floor
Randall, hippies on parade, those
who sledded with the beer fairy,
drank with me at the Immaculate
Conception and Running of the
Snake wish to reach me, my
address is 1252 Highland Ave.,
Chattanooga TN 37405,
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 }
e-mail born2drinkus@
yahoo.com, phone: 423-266-1879.”
1996
SAM DILLEHAY (SF) and Katie
Bradford, both living in Brooklyn,
plan to be married in the middle
of next year. Send your congratulations to sdillehay@yahoo.com.
JOHN WHITFIELD POTTER (AGI)
reports: “I’m in my senior year of
the Master of Divinity program at
Princeton Theological Seminary.
I plan to be ordained as a minister
in the Presbyterian Church (USA)
sometime next year. I’d love to get
back in touch with old friends. My
address is SBN 314, Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, NJ
08543 and my e-mail address is
john.potter@ptsem.edu”
FRANCK ROARK (A96) and his
business partner, Colin Brotherton, have formed a limited liability
corporation in New York. Writes
Frank: “One part of the company
is a retail store in Potsdam, N.Y.,
called Woodland Gardens. The
store (the name of which was inspired by Wordsworth) specializes
in three areas of design retail: first,
providing fine home accessories
that are uncommon to the region
and searching out extraordinary
pieces that are unique to the
region. Next, creation of custom´
designed interiors. Third (and most
definitely not last), delivering its
highly acclaimed “garden-style”
floral designs of superlative quality
and style. All Johnnies who happen
to find themselves in-or-around
the Clarkson University area are
welcome to stop in and contemplate beauty.”
1997
MARCELLE HOMER (SF) is doing
graduate work in rhetoric and
teaching at Idaho State University.
DEBORAH T YRRELL (SF) and JEFF
HUGGINS (SF) were married on
October 13, 2001, and are living
in Albuquerque.
PIA THADHANI (A): “I suppose an
update is long overdue. After graduating from law school last year, I
started work at a law firm in New
York and I find it is a surprisingly
pleasant work environment! If
�39
{Alumni Notes}
Quiet Neighbors
and a Baby Boy
(SF86) writes: “My husband, Graham
Garner, and I were overjoyed to bring a baby boy,
Simon, into the world on March 27, 2002. He is
amazingly cheerful and social, and we’re having a
wonderful time playing with him in the lovely Quaker
burial ground (just outside Philadelphia) where we
live and serve as caretakers. Our neighbors are very quiet and
seem fairly friendly. Graham and I share a job as managers of
QuakerBooks of Friends General Conference, which is ideal for
getting plenty of time with Simon. Recently DEBBIE HUMPHRIES
(SF86), who started out in our class, stayed here while she and
her husband were in Philly at an AFSC board meeting. She and I
keep finding Johnnies that
also happen to be Friends
(Quakers), which is remarkable since there are so few
of both in the world, though
they do seem to promote
compatible ways of
approaching life. AMY BIANCO
(SF86) has also been to visit
with her sharp sweetie, John
Whysner, whom she married
in September. I’d love to hear
from anyone who remembers
me and we love to have folks
visit. You can contact me at
ledgleg@earthlink.net.” x
L
UCY DUNCAN
anyone would like to discuss law
school, law firms in New York, or
catch up, I can be reached at pia.
thadhani@cliffordchance.com”
tion. For many years it has been
my dream to come back and make
a difference here on the beautiful
slopes of the Alleghenies. Here I
am; now the difference remains
to be seen.”
CELINE BIANCA BOCCHI (SF)
writes, “Hi everyone! Life is
beautiful, isn’t it? I am living in
Rio de Janeiro, close to the beach,
with my cat, Pixel, and my fiance,
Roberto. We have a nice little
guest room, so feel free, if you just
happen to be in the neighborhood,
to give me a call (021-2429-5503).
Abracos da cicade maravilhosa!”
INA WUNDRAM (SFGI) is now
retired from Emory University and
is a professor emerita. She is also
a first-time grandmother of a baby
girl, Savannah.
JUDITH TOLIVER NEELY (A) has
taken on the job of revitalizing
her native city, Aliquippa, Pa.:
“This is an old industrial city
on the Ohio River just 22 miles
northwest of Pittsburgh, often
called the cradle of the labor
union movement. It has been
plagued with growing rates of
decay, crime, poverty, drug abuse,
and a steadily decreasing popula-
LORNA JOHNSON (ANDERSON) (SF)
has moved with her new husband to
a beautiful neighborhood in Chicago and is now working from home as
an executive recruiter for her parents’ company. She is also working
as an assistant stage manager for a
fantastic play at a theater in
Evanston, Ill. The play is titled Mad
Forest,by Caryl Churchill, and she
has been invited to assistant direct
several upcoming shows.
1998
HEATHER MACLEAN (SF98) will
be moving to Austin, Texas, this
winter. While in Austin she plans
to pursue a graduate degree in
American Studies at the University
of Texas at Austin. One of her longrange plans is to work in an art
library, and earning a second graduate degree will help with this goal,
as most art librarianship positions
require a master’s in an art-related
subject. For the last three-and-ahalf years she has been working
as the associate librarian for
Cataloging and Computer Services
at the Santa Fe campus library.
During this time, she also received
her master’s in library science
from Emporia State University in
Kansas in August 2001 by completing their distance education program. muddyhands2@yahoo.com.
MICHAEL O’BRIEN (SFGI) writes:
“After bouncing back and forth
between Alaska, New Mexico, and
Vermont for the past few years, I
have settled in Fairbanks. I’m still
exploring wilderness and running
marathons, but I also recently
became a lawyer. Go figure. Anyone
wanting to get in touch can reach
me at: meoem2002@hotmail.com.
1999
Changes for BETHANY MATSUSHITA
(SF), formerly Bethany Ann
Creswell: “I am one of the many
who went on to another place,
eventually. However, after two years
at St. John’s, I felt that I had found a
niche of a sort and now, I suppose,
I am trying to get back in contact
with old friends and fond memories
of yore. As of last March I graduated
with a Bachelor of Arts in art at
Eastern Oregon University in
La Grande, Oregon, and—not long
afterwards—married a man Japanese in origin and 15 years my senior
(a sociology major of the same
university). Now we are both in
Portland, Oregon, slaving away
and paying off student loans, and I
would love to hear from any of you.
You can reach me at bcreswell@
excite.com.”
HONOR MOODY (SF) is currently cataloguing audiovisual Judaica at the
Harvard College Library. She
is also working towards her master’s
in library and information sciences at
Simons in Boston, MA. You can reach
her at moody@fas.harvard.edu.
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 }
MICHAEL HOKENSON (SF) is pursuing an MBA and MS at the University of Michigan. He plans to pursue
entrepreneurial work in Asia upon
graduation.
2000
PAIGE ELIZABETH FORREST (A)
is now a medical student at the
University of Pittsburgh School of
Medicine. Following graduation
from St. John’s, she completed a
Howard Hughes Medical Institute
summer research internship at the
University of Virginia School of
Medicine, then attended James
Madison University in Harrisonburg, Va., for a year of self-designed post-baccalaureate studies
to complete the science prerequisites for entrance into medical
school. In her spare time at James
Madison, she became a certified
emergency medical technician
with the Harrisonburg Volunteer
Rescue Squad.
JIM HALL (SF) is in his second year
of law school at Seattle University
School of Law. He’s doing well and
loving the law!
CHRIS JONES (SF) writes, “I am
now in my last year at Yale Divinity
School, and I’m in the process of
applying for pastoral counseling
programs. I hope one of them
takes me back that way–back to
those beautiful sunsets!”
ANDREA QUINTERO (SF) and SAM
MARKHAM (SF) are living together
in London and doing post-graduate
work. Andrea studies art history at
the Courtauld Institute, and Sam
studies book history at the School
for Advanced Studies, University of
London.
BRITTA RILEY (SF00) spent some
time in Florida, but is now back on
the ranch in Brenham, Texas, where
she is a construction foreman and
carpentry apprentice for a residential remodeling contractor. Britta
has founded an organization called
the Texas Adult Recreation Initiative that “undermines the immediate association of exercise with
lonesome drudgery. We work with
advertising firms and public park
departments around the state to
create existence systems and advertising campaigns for open, noncompetitive, commitment-free,
coed, pick-up games in soccer, basketball, volleyball, and softball. We
�40
{Alumni Profile}
An Anlage for Logophilia
A Lover of Language Publishes a Book on Rare Words
BY SUS3AN BORDEN, A87
H
allie Leighton (SF92)
collects words. From
the Latinate allicient
(attracting) to the Arabic
zarf (a cup-shaped device
for holding hot coffee
cups), she is drawn to unusual words and
devoted to learning their backgrounds
and meanings. Her new book, Rare Words
and Ways to Master their Meanings,
includes choice specimens from her
word collection.
Rare Words, published this year by
Levenger Press, was the brainchild of
Leighton’s father, Jan, her co-author on
the project and a great influence in her
passion for hunting fresh and interesting
words. “From the time he was a kid, his
hobby has been collecting and memorizing
words,” Leighton says. “When he was in
the army he carried a Webster’s in his
barracks bag all through Europe.”
Leighton picked up the hobby in high
school, fixing on “hussar” and “bivouac”
in Tolstoy’s War and Peace at age 13.
Every time she ran across an unfamiliar
word, she looked it up and noted its definition in her journal. “I was trying to
keep up with my dad,” she says. “We
played a game where he would have me
point to any word in Webster’s Unabridged
Dictionary. Ninety percent of the time,
he knew what the word was.”
Despite their shared interest, when her
father asked her to help write the book,
Leighton hesitated, fearing that such a
book could inspire people to use words
to distance themselves from others rather
than communicate. In her introduction to
the book, she writes that she was haunted
by this passage from George Orwell’s
essay on “Politics and the English
Language”:
“Bad writers, and especially scientific,
political, and sociological writers, are
nearly always haunted by the notion that
Latin or Greek words are grander than
Saxon ones, and unnecessary words like
expedite, ameliorate, predict, extraneous,
deracinated, clandestine, subaqueous,
and hundreds of others constantly gain
ground from their Anglo-Saxon numbers.”
In the end, Leighton says, she realized
that Orwell was not exactly right:
“Athough many words have synonyms…
no word possesses an exact clone. A synonym is just that: a word with similar—not
identical—meaning. There is always a tiny
shade of difference in meaning that makes
one word the most appropriate in a
specific context.”
Freed from the judgment of Orwell,
Leighton committed to the project. She
and her father reviewed her father’s word
collection and argued over which 500
words would go into the book. Leighton
then looked up each word in 15 different
dictionaries to extrapolate her own
definitions. While her father insisted
that each entry be pithy, Leighton wanted
to pack the book with as much interesting
information as possible. In the end, her
father’s attention span proved an efficient
arbiter: “Dad has attention deficit even
worse than I have and if the definition
wasn’t very brief he would fall asleep,”
Leighton says.
Among the charms of Rare Words are
the mnemonics that accompany many
entries. For the word fistulous (tubular
and hollow) the book notes: “A fist is
fistulous; it creates a hollow.” For
invidious (provoking envy or ill will),
we remember this: “Did his invidious
preference for Sally invoke envy in Dee?
Yes!” For chiasmus (a rhetorical inversion
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 }
Hallie Leighton shares a love of
words–and co-author status–with
her father, Jan.
of the second of two parallel structures):
“ ‘I had the Chianti, then the Chianti had
me’ is a chiasmus.” And anlage (an inherited disposition to certain traits or a particular character development) is remembered as “the luggage of inherited traits.”
Leighton considers her passion for
words an anlage from her father, and says
that this anlage is not limited to logophilia.
Her father is a professional actor specializing in impersonations. He holds the
Guinness Book of World Records title for
portraying the most historical roles. Following in his footsteps, Leighton majored
in drama at the High School of Performing
Arts in Manhattan. As a Johnnie, she
performed at Santa Fe coffee houses,
channeling bygone rock stars such as
Cyndi Lauper, Edie Brickell, and Sinead
O’Connor. After college, she wrote and
costarred in “Divas Deconstructed,”
impersonating over a dozen divas from
�41
{Alumni Profile}
also work with sponsoring businesses to cover the costs of field lighting
and maintenance in cities where
funding is limited. We are always
looking for contributions of any
variety—funding, contacts, and
ideas.” If you want to harass her
for not staying in touch, try her at
brittariley@hotmail.com.
WANDA R. ROBINS (AGI): “I have
moved to Austin, Texas, and would
love to hear from any St. John’s
alumni. And for those GIs at
St. Stephen’s School—come join
the Austin alumni chapter!”
ADELAIDE (Ada) JUNEBUG
ROUECHE-BEARD was born May 31,
2002, to MARJORIE ROUECHE (A)
and James Beard. Marjorie reports:
“I am working as a science editor for
a textbook company, a company that
LOVES Johnnies (for those of you
who may find yourselves in Austin
looking for a job).” James and Marjorie married in March, “which is
proof positive that we can find nonJohnnies who can stand us too.”
JASON (AGI) and SUSAN SALINAS
(AGI99) moved to Coronado, Calif.
Jason flies helicopters for the Navy
and Susie works at the Hotel del
Coronado.
CHRISTOPHER VAUGHAN (A) had
the opportunity to see DERRICK
CUNNIFF FLETCHER (A00) when
both were volunteer counselors at
Boggy Creek Camp in Eustis, Fla.,
for a week last summer. Christopher
is still pursuing a teaching degree
in deaf education at Flagler College
in St. Augustine. “My years at
St. John’s have served me well,” he
writes. “Taking Western Civilization last semester helped put a lot
of my studies at St. John’s in
chronological order.”
2001
From the Windy City, JENNIFER
HARRIS (A) reports back: “I cannot
believe that it has been over a yearand-a-half since I graduated from
St. John’s. In that time I have been
quite busy. I spent part of the summer after graduation in Florence,
Italy, studying art history and painting conservation. I made the move
to Illinois and I received my M.A. in
the humanities (why limit myself)
from the University of Chicago,
focusing on art history and aesthetics. I am now working as the coordinator of Rights and Reproductions
at the Museum of Contemporary
Art in Chicago.”
DAN O’KEEFE teaches at the St.
Thomas Choir School in New York
City, a boarding school for the boys
choir of Saint Thomas Episcopal
Church.
Rare Words Meets
Great Books: The Quiz
Which Program authors do you associate with
these words from Leighton’s book? (answers below)
1. Antinomy
2. Delphic
3. Empyrean
4. Entropy
5. Heuristic
6. Incommensurable
7. Maenad
8. Manichean
9. Ontological
10. Peripatetic
11. Sennet
12. Theodicy
Answer Key
A.
B.
C.
D.
E.
F.
G.
H.
I.
J.
K.
L.
Euripides
Aristotle
Sophocles
Plato
Leibniz
Kant
Anselm
Maxwell
Dante
Euclid
Augustine
Shakespeare
1-F; 2-C; 3-I; 4-H; 5-D; 6-J; 7-A; 8-K; 9-G; 10-B; 11-L; 12-E
Barbra Streisand, Marilyn Monroe, and Maria von Trapp to
Oprah Winfrey, Tonya Harding, and Xena, Warrior Princess.
“Obviously, my doing a lot of impressions, the channeling, is
definitely an anlage. I can’t escape from that,” says Leighton,
who adds that her grandfather was a bandleader and her
mother is a writer for As The World Turns.
Leighton herself worked for two years as a writer’s assistant for
the soap opera. She’s now a freelance writer whose clients have
included Cotton Inc.; Verizon, and a chain of health food stores.
Alumni networking functions in New York have been the
source of some of her best jobs. But alumni activities aren’t
all business for Leighton. She’s been a faithful participant
in alumni seminars, served as treasurer for the New York
chapter, was a reunion class leader in 2002, and with Bill
Fant, set up the JohnnyXpress, a bulletin board for alumni
on Yahoo.
Right now, she’s planning another project with her father,
this one about George Washington, one of his favorite characters
from his acting career. Leighton won’t give away the content
of the project, but says she’s interested in exploring what her
father’s dug up as an amateur historian. “This is a playful side
of George Washington, a fun side, a passionate side,” she
says. “This is not your father’s George Washington.”
Rare Words is available only through the Levenger Press
catalog or web site: www.levenger.com. x
TALLEY H. SCROGGS (A) lived in
France to learn classical cuisine and
then joined LOU KOVACS (A02) to
backpack together through Romania. They both moved to Portland,
Ore., last summer. Talley has two or
three chef jobs, and Lou has been
working in a vineyard. Talley thinks
she’ll head back to graduate school
in the fall.
SUZANNAH SIMMONS (SF) has been
living in Charleston, S.C., since
February 2002. She will be joining
the Peace Corps in Thailand beginning June 9, 2003. She sends her
best wishes to everyone and can be
reached at guneh@hotmail.com.
TIMOTHY SPARKMAN (SF) and
MARIA (MIA) MCDANIEL (SF00)
were married in Santa Fe, N.M.,
on June 23, 2002. x
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
September; deadline for the
alumni notes section is July 15.
If you do not want classnotes
included on The College web
site, e-mail Victoria Smith:
v-smith@sjca.edu.
LAUREN SWEENEY (SF) moved back
to her hometown of San Diego,
Calif., and is happily employed at
La Jolla Playhouse. She writes that
she misses St. John’s and Santa Fe
every day!
In Annapolis:
The College Magazine
St. John’s College, Box 2800
Annapolis, MD 21404;
reharty@sjca.edu
DAMON CARROLL (SF) was selected
to attend the United States Army
Officer Candidate School and began
his active duty service as an army
soldier in January 2003.
In Santa Fe:
The College Magazine
St. John’s College
Public Relations Office
1160 Camino Cruz Blanca
Santa Fe, NM 87501-4599;
tshalizi@mail.sjcsf.edu
2002
JOEY CHERNILA (SF) and ALANA
HOLLINGSWORTH (SF) were married.
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 }
Alumni notes on the Web:
Read Alumni Notes and contact
The College on the web at
www.sjca.edu—click on Alumni.
�42
{Obituaries}
Martin Miller, A81
Annapolis Graduate Inspired Many
Martin Miller and
his son, Benjamin, at
Annapolis Homecoming
in 2001
ost of what Martin C.
Miller—a Massachusetts
engineer, husband, and
father—accomplished in
life may seem ordinary
in the big picture of life;
but to those who knew him—especially his
friends and classmates in the Annapolis
class of 1981—everything he did was extraordinary, and the way he lived his life
was exemplary. Born with a congenital
heart defect, Miller wasn’t expected to
survive beyond infancy. Medical advances
in cardiology, combined with his own
resiliency, helped him defy the odds for
much longer. He died January 11, 2003,
at the age of 45.
Determined to be treated like a normal
child, Martin Miller insisted on a place on
the Little League team, found mistakes in
his school textbooks, and graduated first
in his high school class.
Miller left Brown University for St. John’s
after a year because he sought a more
challenging education with greater
M
opportunities for independent thinking.
After graduation, he earned a master’s
degree in electrical engineering from
California Institute of Technology. A
resident of Framingham, Mass., he worked
at Draper Laboratories in Cambridge,
Avid Technology Inc., and most recently
“To Martin,
a problem was a
problem to be solved.”
Daniel Van Doren
Crescent Networks. His wife, Linda,
describes him as a man devoted to his
family, who greatly enjoyed his four-yearold son, Benjamin, and excelled in his
profession.
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 }
Daniel Van Doren (A81), a former
roommate and longtime friend of Miller’s,
was among the Johnnies who shared
remembrances at Miller’s memorial service.
He remembered that Miller couldn’t walk
the few short blocks into town without
stopping frequently to rest, and that being
out in the cold was particularly taxing to
him. But mostly he remembered Miller’s
determination to achieve his goals.
“In our senior year, Martin was near
the top of the class and had set his sights
on a degree in electrical engineering. He
applied to the top five graduate programs
in the country. When two of them rejected
his application, he was flabbergasted. You
or I would have been disappointed by the
rejections and would have accepted them
as fate pre-ordained,” Van Doren said at
the service.
“To Martin, a problem was a problem
to be solved. He composed letters to both
schools informing them that they were
wrong to reject him because they had not
fully appreciated the importance of our
�43
{Obituaries}
St. John’s education. And wouldn’t you
know it? They both agreed. MIT sheepishly
admitted that it had already accepted its
full class but offered to place Martin at
the top of the waiting list in case an opening occurred. Cal Tech, I think it was, the
best school in the country at the time,
reversed its decision and admitted him
into their program, and it was to Cal Tech
that he went the following year.”
Linda Miller sent along a text of a
speech her husband gave at a conference
several years ago. He spoke about the
physical and psychological effects of
congenital heart disease, but focused
his remarks on living with hope: “I don’t
think of my body as being ME. It is more
“Do not
live life piling
up regrets...”
Martin Miller
the biological vessel that contains me.
In this way, my body does not define me.
If it fails, as it occasionally does, at least
I don’t fail.”
Recounting his choice to start a family
with Linda, in spite of his fears of leaving
a child without a father, Miller offered
advice to others who struggled to overcome heart conditions—good advice for
anyone to embrace.
“Do not live life piling up regrets....
When I die, I would rather regret that I
did not finish everything that I set out to
do than regret that I never even tried to
do something I wanted to do…” x
in mechanical engineering from the
University of Virginia. During World War
II, he drove ambulances in Africa and Italy
for the American Field Service. After the
war, he earned a master’s degree in engineering at Virginia Polytechnic Institute
and State University in Blacksburg.
He taught at the Naval Academy from
1958 until his retirement in 1988, and was
also a member of the Johns Hopkins
University engineering faculty. An expert
on auto safety issues, he held six patents
on car emergency warning systems and
was a consultant for Ford Motor Co.
on automobile negligence cases.
William Chester Buchanan
William Chester Buchanan, class of 1947,
and a teacher, translator, and writer, died
Jan. 27 in India. Buchanan was born in
East Lansing, Mich., in 1923. He received
a bachelor’s degree in music from Michigan
State University in 1944 and attended
St. John’s from 1944 to 1947. In his sophomore year at the college, he won the prize
for the best annual essay, and the following
year, a prize for the best original sonnet.
He spent three years teaching and
studying in France, and earned a master’s
degree from the Sorbonne. Later, he earned
a master’s in theology and literature from
the University of Chicago Divinity School.
He taught English in France, taught
at the Walt Whitman School, at Lenox
Academy, and for 17 years taught English,
French, and a great books sequence at
Olivet College, where he was adviser to
the Garfield Review, a literary magazine.
His last teaching post was at Olney Friends
School, in Barnsville, Ohio.
He published numerous book reviews,
translations from French, a volume of poetry,
and a book of essays and reminiscences.
Buchanan spent 17 years living at a
monastery and retreat center in Michigan,
and traveled extensively in Southeast Asia.
B. Meredith Burke
William Barr
William Barr, a graduate of the class of 1942
and a former Naval Academy engineering
professor, died December 15, 2002, in
Charlottesville, Va. He was the nephew
of Stringfellow Barr, who with Scott
Buchanan, founded the New Program
at St. John’s.
After graduating from the college,
Mr. Barr earned an undergraduate degree
B. Meredith Burke, class of 1967, a
political activist devoted to populationrelated issues such as immigration and
birth control, died Dec. 11, 2002. A native
of Los Angeles, Burke went on to earn a
master’s degree in economics from the
University of Southern California, and
master’s and doctoral degrees in demographics from the University of Southern
California. She worked to defend her controversial stance that the U.S. reconsider
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 }
immigration policies she believed threatened the environment.
She served as chair of the Maternal and
Child Health Advisory Board of San Mateo
County, California; was a visiting scholar
at the Hoover Institution at Stanford
University and fellow of Negative Population
Growth. She was also interested in women’s
rights and public health issues. She coauthored a book on prenatal testing and
founded Lariam Action USA, an information service for users of the anti-malaria
drug mefloquine.
Jerome Goodman
Jerome Goodman of Brookline, Mass.,
class of 1934, died in January at his home.
He was 89 and had continued to work in
the private firm he shared with his daughter,
Carol, until a few months before his death.
An Annapolis native, Goodman earned a
degree from Harvard Law School in 1937.
During World War II, Goodman left his
law career to serve in the office of the
judge advocate. After the war, he returned
to Boston to practice law. In 1977, he and
his daughter formed the law office
Goodman & Goodman.
Active in Brookline politics, he had
served as a town meeting member for many
years and had been a member of the town
advisory committee and the Republican
Town Committee.
James Alexander Matthews
James Alexander Matthews (HA99) died
on March 9 as a result of a long battle
with Lou Gehrig’s disease. He worked at
St. John’s for over 37 years and was an
important presence in the lives of students,
staff, and faculty. A remembrance of
Mr. Matthews will appear in the next
issue of The College.
ALSO NOTED ARE:
DAVID ABBEY HOOKER, class of 1948,
January 2, 2002
NOEL MERIAM, class of 1962,
August 12, 2002
CHARLES O. “BUCKY” WINGATE II, class of 1935,
June 11, 2002
�44
{ S t u d e n t Vo i c e s }
reading the
signs
by Sara White Wilson (A03)
F
or four years I have been reading books as the
St. John’s curriculum requires—frequently
and with analytic attention. I’ve come to read
public signs and graffiti in the same way. Not
only can I never look at a road or a store sign
without reading it completely, even if I pass it
every day and already know what it says, but I also can’t
resist analyzing the subtleties of meaning in the words.
Traveling on a small island in the West
Indies I saw a road sign in plain lettering,
“DEPRESSION.” Naturally, the sign indicated a decline in the road, but imagine
such a sign appearing in our psychologically
self-conscious America. We might wonder:
Where is the rest of the pharmaceutical
drug advertisement?
Before I came to photograph official
public signage, I photographed public
words in the form of graffiti. Graffiti can
be rendered quite artfully—despite that, or
perhaps because, it is indecipherable. My
impulse to read and make sense of everything is cleverly tricked. I think I can decipher the shape of a letter or a word but the
play of colors and graphic shape will not let
me make sense of it. I find it best to focus
less on the letters and more on the colors
and shape of the graffiti in order to discern
a readable word or phrase.
A theme has developed in my photography
that encourages a similar sort of reconciliation between word, meaning, and composition. I like to photograph signs—legal or
illegal—in their environment and capture
how the environment enhances the sense
of the words in the sign. Sometimes there
is not reconciliation of sign and environment but rather a contrast between them.
The photograph of artificial graffiti spray
paint on an earthy and cracked adobe wall
expresses for me the incongruity of seeing
loud and commanding graffiti off a dirt
road in barren Abique, New Mexico. My
impulse to read everything seems to be
similarly matched by a basic need to write,
no matter what the forum.
This photographic project—to frame
words and their environment—also informs
some of the thinking behind my senior
essay. I tried to understand what some
translators call “picture-thinking” in
Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. How
can thinking, which seems to be intimately
connected with words in speech, writing,
and internal dialogue, be connected with
pictures in one working of the mind,
according to Hegel? How was he suggesting
images were co-concurrent to thought?
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 }
Signs gain their meaning relative to
their surroundings. Reading the texts in
the St. John’s program is unlike reading
signs because the books convey a meaning
that is not relative; we value them precisely
because we can read them out of context
and still learn their universal significance.
Reading the texts at St. John’s is like reading
signs, however, in that both signs and books
are, at their most basic level, written in
order to be understood. Furthermore,
like a road sign or a political message in
graffiti, the books at St. John’s intend to
persuade and direct. I hope that my
photography frames the relative nature of
signs but with an eye that is well-trained by
the readings of the past four years—an eye
that works to discern the universal through
the relative. x
Sara White Wilson plans to keep taking
pictures and never stop reading.
�{ S t u d e n t Vo i c e s }
Left, “Graffiti on
Cracked Wall; ”
Above, “Exodus;”
Right, “Philadelphia”
“Reading the texts
at St. John’s is like
reading signs…in that
both signs
and books are,
at their most basic level,
written in order to be
understood.”
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 }
45
�46
{Alumni Association News}
From the Alumni
Association
President
Dear Johnnies,
As you might imagine, communication is the
major challenge for the Association. Alumni
live in many interesting places, move often,
and have a habit of not reading every bit of
mail they receive. I know I fall into this category—so many envelopes and so little time!
Your Association Board is experimenting
with new and more efficient ways to communicate with you. Let us know how they work.
The annual dues mailer was sent out in
February (and will be mailed again in June
for those of you who prefer to pay dues in
the summer). We are thinking about ways
to make this invitation more appealing and
more clearly distinguished from mailings
from the college and from Philanthropia.
Your Association dues are not donations
to the Annual Fund; they go to support
Association activities such as Homecoming,
reunions, the alumni directory, senior
dinners, and activities for chapters. Your
dues payment makes you a “member in
good standing” of the Alumni Association,
so you can vote and run for a seat on the
Association Board. Of course, we encourage
you to donate to the Annual Fund to support
the college, in addition to paying your dues
to the Association.
The postal service also delivers messages
about chapter activities. Postcards are mailed
out from each of the campuses to their
respective chapters. If you are among the
“geographically privileged” who live where
chapter meetings are held, you should receive
mailings. If you don’t get mailings let one of
the Alumni offices know, and you’ll be put on
the list. Some chapters also have web sites to
support communications among alumni.
In the past, we used The College magazine
for our announcements about elections and
changes in the Association by-laws. Recent
changes in the publication schedule of
The College make this approach impractical
in future. So, we plan to make full use of our
web site to distribute information about
elections and other items of official business.
Lest we leave out those among us who do not
have ready access to the Internet, your dues
mailer will include information about how
to obtain copies of the information by mail.
In the future, we will plan to use the web
more extensively. Surveys of alumni indicate
that the vast majority of us are online and
prefer to receive information via e-mail or
over a web site. During the last year, Association Board members and Action Teams have
used e-mail to stay in touch and complete
tasks between our face-to-face meetings.
The trend will surely continue as our work
expands and our time together becomes
more precious.
We are also supporting college staff as they
improve their communications regarding
alumni activities. You should have received
your “stick-em-up” announcements about
Homecoming in Santa Fe and Annapolis and
reunions during 2003, thanks to alumni
directors Tahmina Shalizi and Jo Ann Mattson.
Finally, the college has a new web site in
the works. Expected sometime late this summer or early fall, the web site will offer many
features and functions to help us all stay in
touch with each other. Most of all, we’re
excited about the online, unified, user-maintainable alumni directory. Not only will it let
you find friends whom you’ve lost, but it will
also let you change your own data so that
others don’t lose you. In conjunction with
the web site, we are considering making a
lifetime e-mail address available to alumni.
Details will be worked out over the next few
months, but the purpose is clear. The Alumni Association wants to connect more often
and more meaningfully with more alumni.
This goal shapes all our decisions about
communications, events, and services we
provide to you, our members.
Please be in touch. Let us know what
communications messages and methods
work best for you.
For the past, the present, and the future,
Glenda H. Eoyang (SF76)
President
St. John’s College Alumni Association
ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE
ALUMNI ASSOCIATION
Whether from Annapolis or Santa Fe, undergraduate or Graduate Institute, old program or
new, graduated or not, 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 Alumni
Association news and events of interest.
President–Glenda Eoyang, SF76
Vice President–Jason Walsh, A85
Secretary–Barbara Lauer, SF76
Treasurer–Bill Fant, A79
Getting-the-Word-Out Action Team Chair–
Linda Stabler-Talty (SFGI76)
Web site–www.sjca.edu/aassoc/main.phtml
Mailing address–Alumni Association,
St. John’s College, Box 2800, Annapolis, MD
21404 or 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca, Santa Fe,
NM 87505-4599
CHAPTER CONTACTS
Call the alumni listed below for information
about chapter, reading group, or other alumni
activities in each area.
ALBUQUERQUE
Bob & Vicki Morgan
505-275-9012
PHILADELPHIA
Bart Kaplan
215-465-0244
ANNAPOLIS
Beth Martin
410-280-0958
PITTSBURGH
Robert Hazo
412-648-2653
AUSTIN
Bev Angel
512-926-7808
PORTLAND
Dale Mortimer
360-882-9058
BALTIMORE
Deborah Cohen
410-472-9158
SACRAMENTO
Helen Hobart
916-452-1082
BOSTON
Ginger Kenney
617-964-4794
SAN DIEGO
Stephanie Rico
619-423-4972
CHICAGO
Lorna Johnson
773-338-8651
SAN FRANCISCO,
NORTHERN
CALIFORNIA
Jon Hodapp
831-393-9496
DENVER
Lee Goldstein
720-283-4659
LOS ANGELES
Elizabeth Eastman
562-426-1934
MINNEAPOLIS/
ST. PAUL
Carol Freeman
612-822-3216
NEW YORK
Joe Boucher
718-222-1957
NORTH CAROLINA
Susan Eversole
919-968-4856
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 }
SANTA FE
John Pollak
505-983-2144
SEATTLE
Amina Stickford
206-269-0182
WASHINGTON DC
Jean Dickason
301-699-6207
ISRAEL
Emi Geiger Leslau
15 Aminadav Street
Jerusalem 93549
Israel
972-2-6717608
boazl@cc.huji.ac.il
�{Alumni Association News}
Variety Reels in
Denver-Boulder
Alumni
Undaunted, Jenny set to planning chapter
events.
“I sometimes resorted to scanning the invitations from other chapers to get ideas for
programming,” she recalls. “I even went to
the Internet to look up reading selections
from the syllabi of philosophy professors
from such places as Columbia in order to
get ideas for our seminars.”
Quickly realizing the “lone wolf”
approach wouldn’t work, Jenny called for
a planning session. She was gratified to see
15 people turn up with ideas and enthusiasm
for the chapter.
When Lee Goldstein (SFGI90) traded Miami
for the Rocky Mountains a few years ago, she
promptly went looking for an Alumni Association chapter.
“I really love interacting with people who
have gone to St. John’s,” Goldstein says.
“With other Johnnies, I always have things
to talk about, and I’m always interested in
the conversation.”
Goldstein, a Denver attorney, has
been a member of the vibrant DenverBoulder chapter for three years; in
January she assumed the presidency
from Elizabeth Pollard Jenny (SF80)
of Boulder, who founded the chapter.
At an Alumni Association meeting
in Santa Fe this January, the chapter
won praise for offering some of the
most creative and varied chapter
events in the country. Consider this
year’s slate, planned back in October:
A February seminar on Stephen J.
Gould’s The Panda’s Thumb. Joseph
From left to right: Brian Van Way (SFGI96),
Campbell’s The Hero of a Thousand
Virginia McConnell (AGI84), Nathan Pollack
Faces. Physics with Stephen J. Hawk(A65), Ed Whitney (SF71), John Agresto (AGI89),
ing or magic realism with Jorge Luis
Beatrice Butler (SF81), Lee Goldstein (SGI90),
Borges. Group outings to the Colorado
Elizabeth Pollard Jenny (SGI90)
Shakespeare Festival and other area
theaters, a field trip this summer to the
Denver Art Museum, and the popular
“And so our general inclination towards
holiday potluck, this year, with readings
diversity was born,” Jenny says.
in Pirandello. Who could resist?
Last June, Santa Fe President John Balkcom
Good programming pays off in attenvisited Denver for an event co-hosted with
dance. About 15 regulars turn up at every
Philanthropia at the historic Brown Palace
event, and every event draws a new face or
two. Alternating meeting sites between Boulder Hotel; more than 50 alumni turned out for
the meeting to offer ideas on how the college
and Denver makes meetings more accessible
can serve alumni, find out what’s happening
for Colorado Johnnies, Goldstein notes.
with current students, and express a sense of
The quest to offer regular and interesting
gratitude for their St. John’s education.
chapter events has required a broad base of
Looking ahead, Goldstein sees no shortage
input, and alumni have risen to the chalof good ideas for the chapter. “There’s a lot
lenge since the chapter was formed in 1998,
says Elizabeth Jenny. As a newcomer to Boulder of energy in the chapter and we keep building on that,” she says. x
and hungry for intellectual offerings, Jenny
pushed for the formation of a chapter.
“Imagine that you could revitalize an
intellectual life in the midst of midlife job
worries, suburbia, diapers, career-obsessed
friends, and ailing parents by starting up a
vigorous chapter,” Jenny recalls.
But soon after gaining its charter from
the Alumni Association, the chapter saw attendance drop off. Former mainstays of the
reading group decided they needed a hiatus.
Around
the Chapters
Alumni are active in 18 chartered Alumni
Association chapters from New York City to
San Diego, from Texas to Chicago and from
the Puget Sound area to Israel. More than
100 St. John’s alumni meet every month to
discuss books, poetry, art, or music. Chapters
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 }
47
organize picnics, potlucks, art gallery visits
and swing parties—but showing their true
allegiance—still favor the seminar more
than any other activity.
Every year, from 650 to 800 different
alumni attend at least one event sponsored
by St. John’s alumni chapters. Here’s a status
report from around the country:
The Washington, D.C., chapter meets
biweekly, except during the summer,
when members tackle a long book to
discuss together in the fall. The chapter
organized a National Gallery visit and
seminar, potlucks, and parties.
Scoffing at superstition, the Austin,
Texas, chapter meets on the 13th of
most months. They gathered for 11
seminars last year.
The San Diego chapter joined forces
with the Del Mar Great Books group
in their area in order to have a larger
discussion group.
The Twin Cities chapter has been
organizing its meetings around
themes or authors. Most recently,
the chapter has taken on a series of
Goethe readings and invited Julie
Reahard, a Santa Fe tutor specializing
in Goethe, to discuss “Elective Affinities.”
Albuquerque chapter president Bob
Morgan got on the phone two years ago
to round up alumni for a more active
chapter that draws alumni to seminars
and potlucks held six times a year.
Annapolis and Boston report newly
revived chapters and interesting ideas
for events.
Additionally, two reading groups in
Pittsburgh and Western New England held
events to measure alumni interest in forming a chapter in their areas. Alumni in
those areas contacted the alumni office
close to them and received assistance in
getting started.
Many chapters were visited during 2002
by Santa Fe President John Balkcom or
Annapolis President Chris Nelson or other
college staff, who usually lead a seminar or
participate in a reception. Several chapters
assisted Philanthropia in planning fundraising events.
In 2002, 14 of the 18 chapters had a president or other representative attend at least
one of the four annual Alumni Association
meetings, giving chapters a significant voice
within the association. x
�48
{St. John’s Forever}
alfr ed eisenstaedt, life magazine
Tutor James S. Martin
delivers a lecture in
1940. This picture from
the archives of Greenfield Library was
originally published
in Life Magazine as
part of a major feature
on the college. Martin,
who joined the college
from the University
of Chicago, went on
to hold a number of
positions with the
college.
I
n the 1937 supplement to the Bulletin
of St. John’s College, Scott Buchanan
set the criteria for formal lectures:
“The liberal arts operate in the light
of principles which constitute the
liberal sciences. These sciences will be
progressively expounded in formal lectures
by various members of the staff as the course
proceeds. They will be expository and critical
also of themes that arise in the reading of the
books.” Initially, lectures were held twice
weekly. J.Winfree Smith wrote in A Search
for the Liberal College that a few years after
the New Program was adopted, the Friday
night lecture and discussion period following
it became tradition. Of its place in the Program
today, Santa Fe Dean David Levine says:
“Lectures are an opportunity for us to discover
questions we didn’t have before, to develop
new interest in texts that are both new and
familiar to us, and to see how others think
deeply about other important matters.” x
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 }
�{Alumni Events Calendar}
Datebook
Summer in Santa Fe
June 29—July 4, 2003
Summer Alumni Program
Week 1
Homecoming Events
Reunion classes: 68, 73, 78, 83, 88, 93,
and 98
Friday, July 4
Registration and hospitality—4 to 6 p.m.
Grecian Picnic—5:30 p.m.
Katy Moffatt (SF73) concert—7:30 p.m.
Rock ’n’ Roll Party—9 p.m.
Saturday, July 5
Registration—9 to 10 a.m.
Alumni seminars, children’s activities
—10 a.m.
Fiesta Picnic—Noon
All-alumni welcome-back gathering
—1:30 p.m.
Lecture—5 p.m.
All-Alumni Art Show opening—6 p.m.
Cocktail reception—6 p.m.
Homecoming happenings in Santa Fe,
July 2002
Alex Gammon (A94),
Katherine Nehring
(A03), and Bryce
Heavner (A93) enjoy
sushi and small talk
in Annapolis.
Sunday, July 6
President’s Brunch—11 a.m.
July 4—28, 2003
Alumni Art Show
July 6—11, 2003
Summer Alumni Program,
Week 2
Fall in Annapolis
Homecoming Events
Reunion classes: 33, 38, 43, 48, 53, 58, 63,
68, 73, 78, 83, 88, 93, 98
Friday, September 12
Registration and lecture, wine and
cheese with seniors
Saturday, September 13
Seminars, picnic, Alumni Association
Annual Meeting, and Homecoming
Banquet
Reception for the Class of 2003
More than 100 graduating
seniors and alumni came
together March 23 for a
reception geared to connecting graduating seniors with
Annapolis- area alumni. Alumni
said they enjoyed meeting
graduating seniors and talking
about their varied career
paths. For their part, the
students gained perspective
on the job market, law school,
and other post-graduation
plans. The event was sponsored by the Annapolis
Alumni and Placement offices.
Sunday, September 14
President’s Brunch
{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 }
�P ERIODICALS
P OSTAGE PAID
P UBLISHED BY THE
COMMUNICATIONS OFFICE
P.O. BOX 2800
A NNAPOLIS , M ARYLAND 21404
ADDRESS SERVICE REQUESTED
�
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The College, Spring 2003
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St. John's College
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Santa Fe, NM
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Text
�STJOHN’S
College
ANNAPOLIS • SANTA FE
The College (usps 018-750)
On Aristotle
ristotle impresses us with both his breadth and his
is published quarterly by
St. John’s College, Annapolis,
MD and Santa Fe, NM.
Known office of publication:
depth. Breadth: he explains why we feel the way we
Public Relations Office
do when we watch a tragedy, he lays out all the pos
St. John’s College
sible types of friendship, he explores the founda
Box 2800
Annapolis, MD 21404-2800
tions of logic and grammar and rhetoric, he marvels
at the life cycle of butterflies, he prescribes cures
Periodicals postage paid
for lethargy, he explains motion and time. Depth:
at Annapolis, MD
he asks the most fundamental questions about nature, humanity, virtue,
postmaster: Send address
causes,
- and
he makes
profound
lype in Aristotle’s name
onthinking
the search
engine
Altavista
and you(yet
getexquisitely simple) prochanges
to The College
nouncements:
“
Man
is
by
nature
a
political
animal,
”
“
Man,
by
nature,
Magazine,
Public Relations
12.4,335 entries, including “Aristotle and Target Marketing?” as well as
Office, St. John’s College,
desires
to
know.
”
scholarly sites and Annapolis tutor Joe Sachs’ translation of The Physics
A
on barnesandnoble.com. Aristotle’s writings - in Latin translation were the “source of the dominant teachings of the European universi
ties” for about five centuries up to 1600; “for the four centuries since
then they have been reviled as the source of a rigid and empty dogmatism
that stifled any genuine pursuit of knowledge,” according to Sachs in the
introduction to his translation. Almost every book of philosophy read on
the program alludes to Aristotle, whether to follow him or to divert from
his supposed course. For example, Kant, in his preface to the second
edition of the Critique ofPure Reason, notes: “That logic has already,
from the earliest time, proceeded upon this sure path [of a science] is
evidenced by the fact that since Aristotle it has not required to retrace a
single step...”
Aristotle lived from 384 to 32a B.C. He was the student of Plato, the
teacher of Alexander the Great. His dad was a physician, so as a youth he
probably was channeled into the kind of studies that would prepare him
for a career in medicine. He founded a school in Athens, the Lyceum,
where he walked around and lectured; he’s variously described as slight,
a dandy of a dresser, and speaking with a lisp. When he wanted to write
about politics, he collected information about the government and
history of 158 cities. At St. John’s, a lot of time is spent reading and
talking about Aristotle, and this is a place where what he actually said
is taken seriously.
-BG
Box 2800, Annapolis, MD
21404-2800.
Annapolis
410-626-2539
b-goyette@sjca.edu
Barbara Goyette, editor
Sus3an Borden, assistant editor
Jennifer Behrens,
graphic designer
Advisory Board
John Christensen
Harvey Flaumenhaft
Roberta Gable
Katherine Heines
Pamela Kraus
Joseph Macfarland
Eric Salem
Brother Robert Smith
Santa Fe
505-984-6104
classics@mail.sjcsf.edu
Laura J. Mulry, Santa Fe editor
Advisory Board
Alexis Brown
Robert Glick
Grant Franks
David Levine
Margaret Odell
John Rankin
Ginger Roherty
Tahmina Shalizi
Mark St. John
Magazine design by
Claude Skelton Design
�{Contents}
PAGE
IO
DEPARTMENTS
a FROM THE bell TOWERS
A Conversation with
•
•
•
•
•
John Balkcom
Santa Fe’s new president talks about
his past life as a consultant, his present
challenges at the college, and his vision
for the future.
PAGE
•
•
•
l6
The Logos According
TO Aristotle
Introducing The College
A spooky Mellon Hall
Belly dancing alumnae
Febbie class to be discontinued
Philanthropia encourages thumos
among future alumni
Top ten program books
Summer Classics offerings
The life of Leo Raditsa
9 ALUMNI VOICES
•
Annapolis tutor Joe Sachs (A68) has
translated four of Aristotle’s works.
His principle: use ordinary English
to capture the freshness of the
philosopher’s thought.
A defining moment for everyone from
the 1940s: Pearl Harbor Day.
a6 LETTERS
aS ALUMNI NOTES
ALUMNI
PROFILES
ag Lisa Simeone (A79 ) wins a role at NPR.
PAGE
2,0
The Education
That is Parenthood
33 Heather Moore (SFoo) became a
shopaholic - for the coolest circus around.
PAGE z6
Six Johnnies whose professions
focus on children discuss the trials
and triumphs of parenting.
PAGE
35 Phil Woods (A61) combines his love of
books with his devotion to Paris.
37 STUDENT VOICES
•
2^
A transfer student trains her eye on the two
campuses.
38 ALUMNI ASSOCIATION
•
•
Choral Kaleidoscope
To recreate an ancient Greek chorus, a
tutor looked to Greek pottery, Plato’s
descriptions of physical conditioning,
and accent and meter in the tragedies.
All about Senior Dinners
Election Notices
41 OBITUARIES
•
PAGE 30
Nancy Buchenauer on Robert Bart
43 alumni connections
44 ST. JOHN’S FOREVER
ON THE COVER
Aristotle: His workspervade the St. John’s
program. Illustration by David Johnson.
�2.
{From
the
Bell Towers}
Introducing
The College
In which the editor
utters heresy.
Last fall, we bid farewell to
The Reporter, which had been
the St. John’s publication for
alumni since 1974. We thought
the time had come for a new
look and a new way of present
ing information that befits the
many changes at St. John’s.
Many changes at St. John’s?!?
Heresy! Why do I write this?
The program remains intact;
McDowell Hall still stands;
today’s Johnnies still have that
head-in-the-clouds, not-distracted-by-fashion, young intellectu
al air about them; Monte Sol
still beckons for a solitary climb.
The year I graduated from
St. John’s is the year Becky Wil
son, then public relations direc
tor for the college, started The
Reporter. When I returned to
St. John’s after 20 years labor
ing in the publishing world, the
college, I found, was over
whelmingly the same. The pro
gram, after all, is still what’s
important; the words that Barr
and Buchanan used to describe
the college, and the essays in
which Jacob Klein explained the
basis of liberal education still
hold true. Yet there are differ
ences: i) The college adminis
tration is professional and the
college is on sound financial
ground. 2) The Santa Fe campus
has grown to the same size stu
dent body as Annapolis, with its
own cast of fascinating and com
mitted tutors, an array of stu
dent activities that are Johnnielike yet uniquely southwestern,
and a full complement of appro
priate buildings. 3) The stu
dents are as a whole more stu
dious, and they are better ■
qualified. Sitting in on classes
now, I find that almost everyone
has prepared, everyone can par
ticipate. (In my day, in a good
class it might have been half
The artwork on the cover is by David Johnson, who also draws
PORTRAITS FOR THE NeW YoRK TiMES BoOK ReVIEW. EvERY COVER OF
The COLLEGE'VniA. feature a writer from the program.
who had done the translation or
worked through the proof.) 4)
The tutors represent a wider
range of ages and backgrounds;
they have a variety of interests
that they are willing to share
with students. 5) Student servic
es are much improved - there is
a full-time counselor and a stu
dent activities coordinator on
staff, and a thriving athletic
program. 6) The alumni body as
a whole has gotten much larger
and much younger - more than
60% from the classes of the
1980s and after. And they have
become much more actively
involved with the college. 7) A
lot of little things, mostly physi
cal: the Woodward Hall library,
newly renovated when I was a
student, had become shabby and
overcrowded and a new library
was opened in 1996; there are
{The College-
new spaces like the Mitchell
Gallery and the Conversation
Room; the food in the dining
hall seems pretty good. I’m sure
that if I had been a student in
Santa Fe and returned there the
changes would have seemed
even more striking.
Alumni and others who care
about the college should be
aware of all this change. They
should know how vibrant,
funny, endearing, smart,
intense, and talented the cur
rent students are. They should
know how St. John’s is governed
and how decisions are made.
They should be reminded of
their shared experiences at
these two places - Santa Fe and
Annapolis - and their shared
experience that is entirely
placeless: the reading, study,
and discussion of Plato, Sopho
St. John's College ■ Spring 2001 }
cles, Descartes, Aquinas, Cer
vantes, Kant, Hegel, Austen,
and the whole gang. That’s what
this new magazine. The College,
is all about.
Although the look is new and
different to better reflect
St. John’s today, there are some
things about this magazine that
we wouldn’t want to change
from their old and trusty
Reporter format: class notes,
profiles of alumni, college news,
campus concerns. You’ve told
us that you want to read about
the program, so there will be
more stories about the books
and the curriculum itself. John
nie traditions carry on through
the decades, but since it’s
always a new set of students
playing croquet or setting up
the games at Reality, we plan on
telling you what’s happening
with those. St. John’s history is
a rich lode - through photos and
articles, we hope to connect you
with the college’s past. We hope
to hear from alumni through
letters, class notes, and article
submissions.
As the name suggests. The
College is about the one college,
St. John’s, that exists on two
campuses. News from both cam
puses will be included; students,
tutors, and alumni from both
campuses will be profiled.
Although the actual production
will be handled in Annapolis,
alumni can feel free to contact
the magazine’s staff at either
campus about The College. Let
us know what you think.
Barbara Goyette, A73
Editor
b-goyette@sjca.edu
410-295-5554
Laura Mulry, SFGI02
Santa Fe Editor
classics@maiLsjcsf.edu
505-984-6104
Sus3an Borden, A87
Assistant Editor
s-borden@sjca.edu
410-626-2538
�{From the Bell Towers}
Down in the
basement truly the weird
and creepy lair
ofCharon the storage areas
have been
emptied...
Tales from
THE Crypt
It’s not Hades, land of shades.
Although the hallways of Mellon
now look nightmarish, fit for
endless wandering with no hope
of escape, they are in fact being
stripped for a useful purpose:
the beginning of a $12.5 million
renovation. During spring
break, workers took up the
worn hall tiles, removed the
rain-stained ceilings, and
exposed crawl spaces in the
south and west wings of Mellon
(these wings contain the music
rooms, music library, and all lab
rooms). Down in the basement truly the weird and creepy lair of
Charon - the storage areas have
been emptied of their boxes of
admissions propaganda, dusty
chandeliers, broken desks, and
seminar chairs in need of new
seats and rungs. The circa 1958
heating, plumbing, and electri
cal systems are being exposed
and marveled at for their Rube
Santa Fe
Yearbook in
THE Works
The completion of the new gym
and the installment of John
Balkcom as president of the
Santa Fe campus have con
tributed to the creation of an
energetic and highly motivated
student body in Santa Fe this
year. Enthusiasm for extracur
ricular activities and attendance
at school functions is much
higher than in recent years. To
quote Brendan O’Neill (SF93)
in the Student Events Office,
“This is the most involved stu
dent body I have seen on this
campus in a long time.” To tap
this creative energy (and also to
eliminate one comparison
3
Always dingy, the hallways of Mellon look even darker now that
THEY have been TORN APART. ThE $13.5 RENOVATION WILL RESULT IN A
BRIGHTER, MORE INVITING SPACE.
Goldbergian nature. “There’s
some old machinery down there
all right,” says Sid Phipps,
superintendent of buildings and
grounds.
Plans call for new mechani
cals to be installed this summer,
and the first series of renovated
classrooms should be finished
between Annapolis and Santa
Fe) a few members of the sopho
more class decided that this
year they would create a year
book. For the past 20 years or
so the students on the Annapo
lis campus have been able to put
together an annual yearbook,
but it was not something that
happened in Santa Fe.
According to Student Activi
ties Director Mark St. John,
over the years various groups of
students have thought to put
one together but didn’t have
enough material when press
time rolled around. Then last
year’s Reality committee recom
mended to the rising sopho
mores adding a yearbook to the
list of possible fundraisers.
While the idea of a yearbook as
a fundraiser was soon deemed
impractical, the thought of cre
ating one was openly embraced.
After a month or so of planning.
{The College.
by Christmas. Work on an addi
tion with tutor offices on the
Heating Plant side of the build
ing will commence this summer.
Other phases of the project
include installing a new roof,
spiffing up the auditorium,
adding a glassed-in satellite cof
fee shop in the courtyard, and
''This is the most
involved student
body Ihave seen
on this campus
in a long time.''
Brendan O’Neill
Student Events Office
as well as meeting with the
administration and Polity to
gain their support, the year
book staff was ready to go.
Notices were posted in the
Ephemera and MoonTag adver
tising for writers, photogra
phers, and graphic designers anyone interested in joining the
fledgling staff. Not long after
ideas about theme and content
St. John’s College ■ Spring 2001 }
putting in a new art and pottery
studio, darkroom, and confer
ence room. The whole project is
due for completion in 2003.
The Hodson Trust has given
St. John’s a $4.5 million chal
lenge grant to complete the
Mellon Hall funding. The col
lege has already raised more
than $10 million for the project,
leaving less than $2 million to
be raised; the Hodson Trust will
match dollar for dollar any
donation for the Mellon Hall
renovation.
were being discussed and
assignments handed out. Sub
missions were collected,
although layout work was
delayed until the beginning of
the second semester in order to
upgrade the technological capa
bilities of the office that is being
shared with the MoonTag.
The ambitions of this first
yearbook are small. We do not
hope to rival anyone’s high
school yearbook in size,
although we certainly hope to
match, if not exceed it in quali
ty. While the yearbook has yet
to be named (a campus-wide
contest is being held to choose a
name), the theme for this year is
community. The goal of the edi
tor is to have every aspect of the
college community represented,
not just the undergraduates, so
submissions are being sought
from tutors and staff alike,
-BY Erin Hanlon, SF03
�{From the Bell Towers}
Febbie
Class to be
Discontinued
The Instruction Committee on
the Annapolis campus has rec
ommended that the January
Freshman class be discontinued
in Annapolis in five years, with
the last class enrolling in aoo6.
Called the Febbie Class because
its members originally came to
campus in February, the mid
year freshman class was con
ceived to help keep the college
at capacity by compensating for
first-semester dropouts. The ao
to 40 students began their
freshman year in January,
worked through the summer,
and joined the rest of the fresh
man class as sophomores the
following fall. Today, admis
sions to the freshman class are
at an all-time high and keeping
the class full is no longer a prob
lem. Twenty years ago, many of
the Febbies were transfers from
other colleges; today most of
those who enter in January
wanted to come in September,
but the class was already full.
“The change is made possible
by the relative financial health
of the college and by substantial
growth in the applicant pool for
the fall freshman class,” said
Dean Harvey Flaumenhaft in
explaining the decision. “The
reasons for discontinuing the
mid-year class are instruction
al...The regular freshmen get a
school year with six more weeks
of reflection and conversation
together. They also have more
time to prepare their essays, and
are less likely to suffer a change
of tutors between semesters.”
The break between the end of
the summer semester and the
beginning of the sophomore fall
semester is short, and Febbies
are often exhausted just as their
sophomore year is beginning.
Beginning in January is attrac
tive to some prospective stu
dents, for example those who
are undecided about college by
the spring of their senior year in
high school, or those who need
to earn more money before
beginning college. “Despite its
inherent disadvantages, mid-year
entrance has given many stu
dents access to the benefits of a
St. John’s education.” notes Mr.
Flaumenhaft. The Santa Fe cam
pus plans to continue to offer the
option of enrolling in January.
A Far Cry from Essay Writing
ascertain how the
web could be used to
Si. John "5 College is a co-educatiooal,
Si. lohn's was fouaded tn i6!>6 and has
keep them more
fotr-year liberal arts college known for it*
two ctutpuses, one in Annapolis,
disiinciive "greaf books" tuthMiwn.
Maiylsid. and anorher in Santa f e. New
Through <he reading of original lenis,
Mexico. The College awards both (he
involved in the col
siodeni.'i (cOeel on ibc gteai igKSlioits of
Bachelor ufArts »d Master ofAm
ihe Western iradiiion from ancient Greece
degreet. St. Julia’s has no ndijious
lege (possibilities
to nioilem tunes Siudenls study from the
affilisrion St. John's is one coHeye on two
ciassittof liierature. phiSosofil^. theology.
cam}xtsc» The campuses idiare a conunou
[«ychologs. ]»liticaf science, ectinomiCi,
cuniculuni, and siudoils may transfer
being explored
(usury, nudiemMics. laboratory sciences,
befweendsuu during the course of their
music, and the visual am
sanhes.
include chat rooms,
bulletin boards, email for life, and
password-protected
directories); and
third, a site will be
“architected” (web
people actually use
this word) and then bruit. Time
line for the project is about a
year. The initial telephone sur
veys of alumni begin this spring.
Like many small colleges,
The St. John’s College web site
St. John’s struggles with tech
is in for a facelift. The college
nology issues. On the one hand,
has hired a firm called Genera
the college needs a web site and
tion to help redevelop the sites
administrative computing sys
for the two campuses, to look at
tems that are comparable to
ways to unify the sites, to
those at other schools. On the
increase functions for alumni,
other hand, being technologi
to explore avenues for market
cally up-to-date doesn’t matter
ing the Graduate Institute
in the context of the program of
online, and to provide prospec
instruction. But even though
tive students the kind of infor
the program can function with
mation they look for on the web.
out it, the internet holds huge
Generation has lots of experi
potential for bringing alumni
Megan Miller (SFGIoi - left) and Logan Wink (SFoo - right) start
ence with higher education
together in cyberspace and for
ed BELLY dancing TWO YEARS AGO FOR EXERCISE AND FUN. “It WAS MY WAY TO
clients and will help St. John’s
increasing their involvement
GET OFF CAMPUS AND RELIEVE STRESS DURING SENIOR ESSAY WRITING,” SAYS
through a three-part process:
with the college. 4"
Wink. As the duo got more involved with the ancient Babylonian
first, the college will look at
DANCE FORM, THEY PROPOSED TO THEIR TEACHER, TaNYA KeRN (cENTER),
internal and external needs and
THAT
THEY PERFORM. ThEIR FIRST SHOW WAS AT St. JoHn’s IN SaNTA Fe AND
define audiences for its site; sec
THEY RECENTLY FINISHED A THREE-SHOW RUN AT El FaROL ON GaNYON RoAD.
ond, alumni will be contacted to
SljOtlN’SCOLLlXJ
Web News
@SJCA.EDU
{The College -
St. John’s College • Spring 2001 }
�{From the Bell Towers}
5
The Spirit of
Philanthropia
“Knowledge is power,” wrote
Francis Bacon. And knowledge
is powerful, says Amber Boydstun (SF99). Boydstun is chair
of the Spirit Committee, part of
Philanthropia - the alumni
organization dedicated to
fundraising for St. John’s.
The knowledge that Boydstun
finds powerful is the knowledge
she gained while working as a
student aide in the advance
ment office for four years.
There, she learned how the col
lege works. She learned about
college finances and fundrais
ing. And she got to know the
men and women who have dedi
cated their professional lives to
St. John’s. It made a powerful
difference when it came to her
decision to donate money to the
college.
“I’m not the kind of person
who would normally have that
team spirit, not the kind who
normally donates. But I’m going
to be donating every year and I
already have in the two years
since I graduated,” says Boyd
stun. “Why? Because I have the
facts and information that tell
me that the college does need
my help, that tuition is not
enough to pay for the education
provided to students.”
Boydstun’s plan is to share
this information with current
students, and under her leader
ship the Spirit Committee will
meet with all Johnnies at four
critical times in their college
years: during freshman orienta
tion, at the beginning of senior
year, after essay writing, and
before graduation. The idea is
that seniors are just a step away
from being alumni, and it would
be a good thing if they could
realize how important alumni
are to the college from the very
beginning. This year, there’s
been a reception for seniors at
the President’s house in Santa
Fe and a series of dinners at the
President’s house in Annapolis.
“We ask the seniors about their
experience at the college, what
they would have liked to be dif
ferent, what they thought was
particularly good,” says
Annapolis Vice President Jeff
Bishop. “They have a chance to
ask questions about the admin
istration of the college. We also
present our case to them: that
St. John’s really needs financial
support from alumni after they
graduate; that tuition only cov
ers 75% of what it costs to edu
cate each student, and that the
rest of the money to run the col
lege must come from contribu
tions. We encourage them to
stay connected to the college
after they leave. They really
seem to appreciate the informa
tion and to enjoy the evening.”
“So many people graduate
loving the great books and
thinking St. John’s as a school is
greater than anything else in
the world, but they don’t
donate. My goal is to encourage
spirit - thumos - for St. John’s as
an institution,” says Boydstun.
“I’d like to help them under
stand that St. John’s the school
they love is the same as St. John’s
the institution that needs their
help.” >
{The College
Thomas Burke
Top Ten of
THE Favorite
Five
The fundraising brochure sent
out last fall by the alumni group
Philanthropia pictured five
Johnnies in the midst of their
daily activities - with their five
favorite books from the pro
gram. The idea was to ask alum
ni to think about how the books
had permeated their conscious
ness, about how important the
St. John’s curriculum is to the
intellectual development of the
teachers, businesspeople, par
ents, artists, computer pro
grammers, and whatever else
St. John’s alumni become.
Along with their checks, many
alumni sent in responses to
the question: What are your
five favorite books from the
program?
Here’s the tally of the win
ners. Many people answered by
listing an author (Plato) rather
than a book (The Republic).
There were many books/
authors receiving one vote:
Claude Bernard’s Introduction
.St John’s College ■ Spring 2001 }
(SFgz) poses in
HIS home office in
Baltimore
WITH HIS five favorite PROGRAM
books: Montaigne’s Essays,
Lucretius’ On the Nature of
Things, The Prince, Joyce’s
Ulysses, and Thucydides.
to the Study ofExperimental
Medicine; Tacitus; Hume;
Henry Adams’ History ofthe
U.S. In all, alumni named 87
different books or authors. The
top ten of the alumni’s five
favorites are:
• Plato (The Republic was
mentioned most often)
• Homer (equal numbers named
The Iliad and The Odyssey)
• Euclid
• The Bible
• Jane Austen - Shakespeare Aristotle (The Ethics was most
named) were tied
• Greek drama (Sophocles,
Euripedes, and Aeschylus)
• The Brothers Karamazov by
Dostoevsky
• Kant - War and Peace by
Tolstoy were tied
• Thucydides
• Dante
�6
{From the Bell Towers}
Off TO
Santa Fe
FOR Summer
Classics
Dante and Milton and
Eva Brann... Oh My!
Summer Classics, the program
that brings book and opera
lovers from across the country
to Santa Fe, will be held July 15
to August 4. Participants go to
seminars in the morning, spend
the afternoons on field trips and
other southwestern activities,
then attend the Santa Fe Opera
in the evenings. You can sign up
for one, two, or all three weeks
(one seminar topic per week),
and can either stay on campus
or arrange accommodation in
Santa Fe. The program is appro
priate as an introduction to the
college and also for those
who’ve done it before - alumni
and those who have participated
in community or executive sem
inars. For more information,
check the web site at www.sjcsf.
edu/classics/classic.htm, or
e-mail classics@mail.sjcsf.edu,
or call 505-984-6104.
Week I, July 15-21
• Opera: Donizetti, Lucia. Sem
inars led by William Fulton
and Elliott Zuckerman
• Chaucer, The Canterbury
Tales. Seminars led by Michael
Bybee and Caleb Thompson
• Darwin, The Voyage ofthe
Beagle. Seminars led by Mark
Rollins and Linda Wiener
• Milton, Paradise Lost. Semi
nars led by David Carl and
Claudia Honeywell
• Paul Scott, The Raj Quartet.
Seminars led by Eva Brann
and Janet Dougherty
• Thucydides, Peloponnesian
War. Seminars led by James
Carey and Matthew Davis
Week II, July 22-28
Week III, July 29-August 4
• Opera: Richard Strauss, The
Egyptian Helen and Mozart,
Mitridate. Seminars led by
William Fulton and Robert
Glick.
• Aristotle, Nichomachean
Ethics. Seminars led by Clau
dia Honeywell and George
Lane
• Dante, Purgatorio. Seminars
led by Basia Miller and Caleb
Thompson
• Dostoevsky, Demons. Semi
nars led by James Carey and
Frank Pagano
• Plato’s Critique of Rhetoric:
The Ion, Gorgias. Seminars
led by Jan Arsenault and
Elliott Zuckerman
• Shakespeare, Richard II and
Henry IV. Seminars led by
Judith Adam and Warren
Winiarski
• Shakespeare, Pericles and
Twelfth Night. Seminars led
by William Alba and Krishnan
Venkatesh
• Opera: Verdi, Ealstaffand
Alban Berg, Wozzeck. Semi
nars led by William Fulton
and Robert Glick
• Dante, Purgatorio. Seminars
led by Cary Stickney and
Susan Stickney
• Goethe, Theory of Colors.
Seminars led by George Lane
and Julie Reahard
• The Plays of Kalidasa. Semi
nars led by Michael Bybee and
Michael Wolfe
• The Poetry of Wallace
Stevens. Seminars led by
James Forkin and Thomas
Scally
{The College-
St. John’s College ■ Spring zoot }
India is the setting for two
Summer Classics readings:
The Raj Quartet by Paul Scott
AND The Plays of Kalidasa
(Above). Two seminarswill
read Dante’s Purgatorio
(Below).
�{From
Bell Towers}
the
One College - How to
Make It Really Work
For 36 years, St. John’s struggled
with how to administer a eoUege
with two campuses that are sepa
rated hy 1800 miles, a two-hour
time difference, at least six hours
of travel time, and hundreds of
different ways of dealing with
both day-to-day and long-term
issues. The curriculum has
always been the great unifier and under the direction of the
Joint Instruction Committee
(composed of tutors on both
campuses) it has remained virtu
ally identical in Annapolis and
Santa Fe. But administration is
another matter.
Over time, tiny management
decisions on each campus led to
more substantial policy differ
ences. The Board of Visitors and
Governors, while acknowledging
the importance of a president for
each campus, last year re-organ
ized the college’s basic adminis
trative structure, creating a
Management Committee that
includes the presidents and
deans of both campuses, who
may bring in other college
officers during their discussions.
The Committee’s purview is cer
tain college-wide functions and
its single executive (a chair) han
dles comprehensive issues with
out diminishing the responsibihties of the campus presidents
and deans for their own opera
tions.
Annapolis president Christo
pher Nelson is serving as the
“We need topre
serve the special
sense ofcommu
nity that exists on
each campus,
and we will not
take any action
that would
threaten that.
Chris Nelson, Annapolis president and chair of the Management
Committee, says,“We have a lot of work ahead of us.”
{The College.
first chair of the Management
Committee. “There is a clear
spirit of cooperation,” he says.
“John Balkcom (the new presi
dent in Santa Fe) and I are com
mitted to the notion that with
respect to certain issues, col
lege-wide treatment is essential.
We need to preserve the special
sense of community that exists
on each campus, and we will not
take any action that would
threaten that.”
During its first year, the Man
agement Committee:
• Equalized tutor salaries,
which had been less in Santa
Fe since 1994-95
• Formulated a plan for equaliz
ing tuition, which had been
different on the two campuses
• Worked out a college-wide
budget, with separate consid
eration of capital projects and
other issues specific to each
campus
• Considered differences in the
financial aid policies of the
campuses and began to work on
making them more consistent
• Re-organized the advance
ment offices to prevent dupli
cating all functions on each
campus
• Adopted an information tech
nology plan for both campus
es, including a joint web site
• Provided for a joint recruit
ment strategy and new publica
tions for the Graduate Institute
• Prepared a framework for a
college-wide strategic plan
that considers needs and
resources well into the future
• Formulated a way to resolve
inconsistent alumni databases
on the campuses
• Standardized a host of report
ing functions so that college
wide information is available
on everything from budget
matters to admissions enroll
ment
During this first year the Man
agement Committee concentrat
ed on resolving differences that
had arisen over time. The com
mittee is also beginning to make
college-wide policy decisions, for
St. John’s College ■ Spring 2001 }
example; it extended benefits to
the domestic partners (same and
opposite sex) of faculty and staff.
In the coming year the Com
mittee will complete a strategic
plan and needs assessment for
the campuses, and will help
organize the elements for the
college’s next fundraising capi
tal campaign. “I anticipate
focusing on the need to have
comparable faculty staffing,
class sizes, and faculty develop
ment programs on both campus
es,” says Nelson.
St. John’s in
THE News
An article called “Where Plato
Is Your Professor” in the Febru
ary aoor issue of Smithsonian
magazine describes the col
lege’s program, the students
and classes, and the various
extracurricular activities. Also
interviewed are several alumni,
identified as a building contrac
tor, a lawyer, a biologist, and an
editorial assistant. Written by
Edwards Park, a retired Smith
sonian contributor who lives in
Annapolis, and photographed
by Cameron Davidson, the arti
cle focuses on the intellectual
atmosphere of St. John’s.
St. John’s is also featured in a
book about investing (yes, the
financial kind). Latticework:
The New Investing by Robert G.
Hagstrom (published by Texere )
describes an approach to invest
ing that is based on a liberal
arts-style understanding, where
the interconnections between
the important ideas from a num
ber of fields are discovered.
Hagstrom, who is a senior vicepresident of Legg Mason Focus
Capital, talked with alumni in
investment fields, who cited the
importance of St. John’s in their
development as “better
thinkers.” -f-
�8
{From the Bell Towers}
Leo Raditsa
The Face of SJC Today
About the freshmen who arrived in Santa Fe and Annapolis in
September and January:
There are 319 of them, 167 men and 152 women. 8 didn’t finish high
SCHOOL (they are CLASSIFIED “eARLY ENTRANCE”) AND 52 ATTENDED
ANOTHER COLLEGE BEFORE THEY BAILED OUT, SAW THE LIGHT, AND CAME TO
St. John’s. Age range is i6 to 51. About 68% receive financial aid.
223 ATTENDED PUBLIC SCHOOLS; 93 ATTENDED INDEPENDENT OR
PAROCHIAL SCHOOLS. 6o% RANKED IN THE TOP FIFTH OF THEIR CLASS; 4%
MeRIT HONORS.
St. John’s doesn’t require SAT scores for admission, but of those
RANKED IN THE FOURTH FIFTH. 183 RECEIVED NATIONAL
THAT submitted SCORES, THE RANGE OF THE MIDDLE 50% VERBAL IS 65O
TO 750 AND THE RANGE OF THE MIDDLE 50% MATH IS 580 TO 680. 39
STATES AND 3 FOREIGN COUNTRIES ARE REPRESENTED (HIGHEST NUMBERS
ARE 32 FROM
California in Santa Fe and 20 from Maryland in
CHRIS QUINN SFGIo
Annapolis),
Within
a few weeks, the
FRESHMEN BLENDED IN SO WELL
IT WAS HARD TO DISTINGUISH
THEM FROM MORE SEASONED
Johnnies - you
had to check
WHAT they were READING TO
FIND OUT. Students are
SHOWN ON THE AnNAPOLIS
(left) and AT Meem
Library (above).
GREG WHITESELL
quad
{The College -
Leo Raditsa, a tutor at the col
lege since 1973, died February
22 in Annapolis after suffering a
stroke. He had been ill with
myeloma.
Born in Geneva, Switzerland,
in 1936, where his father, Bog
dan Raditsa, was a delegate to
the League of Nations, Mr.
Raditsa came to this country in
1940 when his father joined the
Yugoslav Embassy in Washing
ton, D.C.
He graduated from Phillips
Exeter Academy and then from
Harvard College in 1956. At
Harvard he founded and edited
i.e.. The Cambridge Review.
The grandson of the noted Ital
ian historian Guglielmo Fer
rero, he held two graduate
degrees in history from Colum
bia University: a 1962 master’s
in medieval history and a 1969
doctorate in ancient history. He
was also a University Fellow and
a President’s Fellow at Colum
bia. In 1964-65 he held a Ful
bright Fellowship at the Univer
sity of Munich.
After teaching at New York
University, Washington Square
College, from 1965 to 1973, he
joined the faculty of St. John’s
College. He was the founding
editor of The St. John ’a Review.
He was affiliated during the
1977-78 academic year with the
Hoover Institute on War, Revo
lution and Peace at Stanford,
Calif., as a National Endowment
for the Humanities fellow.
Mr. Raditsa was the author of
numerous articles and of two
books: Prisoners ofa Dream:
The South African Mirage,
which he wrote following 1991
when he was a lecturer at the
Rand Afrikaans University and
at the University of the Witwatersrand, seoA Some Sense About
Wilhelm Reich, concerning the
controversial psychiatrist. Mr.
Raditsa was also a painter whose
watercolors were exhibited at
galleries in the Annapolis area.
Mr. Raditsa was a member of
a distinguished Italian family
St. John’s College ■ Spring soot }
Leo Raditsa
and great-grandson of the crim
inologist Cesare Lombroso; he
divided his time between
Annapohs and his family home
outside Florence. Survivors
include his son, Sebastian, and a
sister, Basiljka Raditsa, both of
New York City. His marriage to
Larissa Bonfante of New York
City ended in divorce. The fami
ly requests that gifts be made to
the St. John’s College library,
P.O. Box 2800, Annapolis, MD
21404.
A memorial service for Mr.
Raditsa was held in March. A
memoriam will appear in the
next issue of The College.
�9
{Alumni Voices}
CARNIVAL IN
FLANDERS
A Pearl Harbor Day memoir
BY Peter Wolff, A44
y the time I got to St. John’s in the fall of
1940, the New Program was in full swing. A
few (less than a dozen) Old Program stu
dents still remained. The college got a
boost from an article in Life magazine that
appeared in February of 1940. It spoke
glowingly of the Program in a spread of 10 or
B
I cannot resist a swipe at American
journalism: One of the pictures
showed a student reading Horace’s
poems in Latin. A fine picture
except that the student shown was
an Old Program student; the book
he was reading was by an author
(Horace) not then being read in the
Program; the book was being read
in the original Latin instead of in
translation, whereas all of the great
books authors were and are being
read in English.
I took to the college immediately
and felt that I had found my intel
lectual home. I read the books, dis
cussed them and thought of little
else. I had little money but I didn’t
need it: $a6 lasted me through the
first semester, as I barely stepped
off the campus. I cannot remember
what I did in the summer of 1941, but I
returned to St. John’s in the fall of that
year with enthusiasm and threw myself
into reading the second year list. It includ
ed Virgil, but also St. Augustine’s Confes
sions and large parts of St. Thomas
Aquinas’s Summa The.ologica.
I had joined a film club that was being
formed by a few students. It proposed to
show classic movies to those who joined
In 194a, THE COLLEGE HELD A DANCE TO
ReLIEF. In
ATTENDANCE WERE STRINGFELLOW BaRR
(left) and Admiral Beardall, Superin
tendant OF THE Naval Academy.
RAISE MONEY FOR ALLIED WaR
the club. The movies were obtained from
the Museum of Modern Art on a rental
basis. Club members were mostly St.
John’s students but also faculty members
and a few faculty from the Naval Academy.
I can only remember two films. One was A
{The College
. St. John’s College ■ Spring soot }
Nous La Liberte, directed by Jean Renoir;
the other. Carnival in Flanders, was
scheduled for the evening of December 7,
1941. The gymnasium, an old building,
had to be prepared for the film showing.
So at a little after noon, several of us were
setting up the screen and folding chairs
for the audience.
At about r:3o in the afternoon, some
one came running into the building and
12,yelled,
pages.
“The Japanese have attacked Pearl
Harbor in Hawaii.” For a little while, I did
not fully take in what had been
said; then we all abandoned our
efforts (we were nearly finished
anyhow) and repaired to our dormi
tory rooms to listen to the radio.
The film showing did take place in
the evening. Not many of the Naval
Academy members of the club
showed up; those that did for the
first time wore their uniforms.
The next day, a radio (these were
pre-television days) was brought
into the dining hall and at noon we
listened to President Roosevelt
referring to December 7 as “a day
that will live in infamy,” regretting
the many casualties that had been
incurred, and asking the Congress
to declare war on Japan.
People of my age and generation
all remember what they were doing
on December 7,1941. For younger people,
it is just another date. For some of them,
November aa, 1963 has a similar
significance, but even those who remem
ber President Kennedy’s assassination are
now growing old. What are the mythic
dates for those who are now in their twen
ties or thirties? The first moon landing?
President Nixon’s resignation? The fall of
the Berlin Wall?
�IO
{Interview}
A CONVERSATION WITH
JOHN BALKCOM
The newpresident in Santa Fe begins
his tenure Johnnie-style—in a dialogue
with students, faculty, and alumni.
N November 7 John E. Balkcom
became the fifth president of the
Santa Fe campus of St. John’s Col
lege. A fit and athletic 53-year-old
with wide interests beyond a
career as head of a college, he radi
ates an affable, energetic person
ality and addresses the complex
challenges of his new job with
cheerful confidence. He has enjoyed a close association
with the college, having been not only a graduate student
in Santa Fe but also a member the Board of Visitors and
Governors for five years. In January the president sat down
for an interview with James Idema, a Santa Fe writer whose
affection for St. John’s stems from his participation in the
Community Seminar Series.
Q: Your background is an unusual combination ofbusiness
and academics. Your education includes an AB in philoso
phyfrom Princeton, an MBA from the University of Chica
go's Graduate School ofBusiness,and a master’s degree in
liberal artsfrom St. John’s. You have also pursued a career
as a business consultant and served as an adjunctprofessor
ofeconomics at Chicago. Is itfair to say that, with this back
ground, your visionfor St. John’s ispractical as well as ide
alistic?
JB: I would hope so. Practical in the sense of my aspiring for
this program - “this brilliantly conceived small college,” to
{The College-
quote one of our tutors emeritus. Bill Darkey - to be far
more secure financially in the future, to have the ability to
deliver this distinctive kind of education, this expensive
way of doing an education, and to give that method long
economic life through significant improvements in the
endowment. This would allow us to maintain a student
body of about 450 undergraduate and about 60 graduate
students. My feeling is that we could continue to grow
somewhat in the graduate program. We have no aspiration
to make the undergraduate program 500, 600, 700, but
rather to keep it at its current size or smaller, to serve that
population well, and to continue to sustain the intimacy
that happens at the seminar level between tutors and stu
dents. I believe that the seminar table is the locus of the
unique value of this program and I want to continue to be
able to deliver that close personal attention of our tutors to
our students, both in and out of class.
Q: More to the idealisticpoint. I’ve been reading in the local
press about the kind of epiphany you experienced in which
ethics came unexpectedly into your approach to life, per
haps gaining ascendancy over the business aspect. Can you
comment on that?
JB: One of the primary responsibilities of a partner in a
management consulting firm is to sell business, to build
new client relationships and to provide services that are
both valuable to the client and profitable to the consulting
firm. It’s a rather weak joke among consultants that when
St. John’s College ■ Spring 2001 }
�ERIC SWANSON
{The College -St John's College
• Spring 2001 }
�{interview}
one receives a call from a prospective
client asking the question “Do you do
X?” the answer is almost always
“Why, yes, of course. And, indeed, we
are deeply expert in that area. That’s
our business and we have just the
people who can help you.” I certainly
appreciate the commercial impera
tive of growing one’s business when
one is a management consultant, but
at times I found it troubling that I was
at least stretching the case for my
capability or my firm’s capability for
what we might do to help a client.
In particular, after reading Augus
tine’s Confessions for the first time in
the Graduate Institute, I had this
blinding realization of the three
white lies a management consultant
tells when a prospective client calls
him. “(i) I’m thrilled to hear from
you. (2) I’m utterly fascinated by your
problem. (3) I’m immediately avail
able to help you.” Out of the realiza
tion that none of the above is always true and in the process of
reading the Confessions, I began having much more candid
conversations with my clients and prospective clients, asking
them background questions and then, with increasing fre
quency, suggesting that I was not the right person to handle
their problem but giving them names and phone numbers of
others who might be better qualified to serve them.
JB: Sure. We have eliminated that
disparity as of January i, which, as a
board member, I wanted to see hap
pen during my five years of tenure.
So I’m pleased that we have now
taken the steps that were needed.
Q:
It took a long time.
It took a long time because
of differences in resources available
to the two campuses. And it put some
added pressure on this campus in
terms of balancing our budget going
forward. We’ve had several areas of
cost increases in the last two years.
First, the increase in salaries for fac
ulty. Fortunately, we’ve had generous
benefactors who have increased our
endowment to help us fund the need
ed increase in faculty salaries. Two
years ago my predecessor and his staff
did an evaluation of staff compensa
tion and found that it was off the mark
quite a bit. So we have had some
significant
staff compensation
increases as well. We’ve also changed the kind of retirement
plan for the staff to be similar to that of the faculty. Our health
insurance costs, like those of almost every other organization I
know, are rising rapidly. And then throw into that the recent
spike in natural gas prices, and our fixed costs have gone up
tremendously.
JB: It did.
Ybelieve the seminar
table is the locus ofthe
unique value ofthis
program...
Q: One might think you risked losing clients that way.
That was the risk I expected at the beginning of those con
versations, but I must tell you it brought clients back to me
repeatedly, clients who had appreciated my candor. More
important for me, my speaking that way proved to be hugely
liberating.
Now you’re no longer a consultant but the man in charge.
What are some ofthe major challenges youface in thisposition.
Can we start with the faculty salary disparities between this
campus and Annapolis?
{The College
Bad timing, indeed. But I must say, we’re still finding our
friends, alumni, and certain foundations quite generous. It’s
not an easy challenge to raise the money, but they’re continu
ing to be generous with us. Friends of the college are still com
ing to us with significant gifts. So, in that sense, our timing is
quite fortuitous.
JB:
JB;
Q:
Q: Also a weakening ofthe economy. Bad timing.
Q:
You ’re going to be able to increase the endowment?
The board and the capital campaign committee are just
beginning to plan for the next capital campaign. But my person
al aspiration is to see the endowment move from its current level
JB:
■ St. John’s College ■ Spring 2001 }
�{interview }
13
‘7found the... issues ofthe nature of
the soul [in the ' Phaedrus 7... quite
immediate and urgentfor every man
and woman in the room.
of just under $ioo million for the
whole college to something in excess
of $250 mUhon hy the end of this
decade. That’s not an easy task. It
takes a great deal ofwork. But I know
it can be done. Many other fine hberal arts colleges in a similar period
have raised significantly more than
that. I think we have the opportunity
to present this story to alumni,
friends, and foundations and corpo
rations in a way that wiU be com
pelling, to improve our endowment
substantially. That, by the way, will
help with our sustaining and improving the salaries of faculty and staff.
study area that would be more
friendly to students. Probably the
most notable physical change that a
number of us would like to see is an
auditorium that would house 600 to
800 at one time. Today we have no
single venue within which we can
convene the entire college commu
nity, meaning faculty, students, and
staff.
L
Q: Would this replace the Great
Hall?
Q: Willyou yourselfbe taking an active role infundraising?
JB: Oh, yes, I already have been. I am traveling some in con
nection with that task, and Robert Glick, the vice president for
advancement, has scheduled me for a minimum of three
lunches and two dinners a week with potential donors of vari
ous kinds in the Santa Fe area.
envision physical expansion of the campus, bricks
and-mortar improvements?
Q: Do you
JB: Yes, in a modest way. Again, we are at the maximum stu
dent size that we want, so we won’t be growing in that sense.
But I would like to add - and again, this is yet to be worked out
- another 60 rooms on campus, which would allow us to house
up to 75 to 80 percent of our student body.
Q:
That means new dormitories.
JB: Two new dormitories would be my guess.
Q: The dormitories arefilled up
now?
JB: To the brim. So that’s one physical change - a modest one, I
think. A second needed improvement: We have about $12 mil
lion of deferred maintenance on campus buildings and need
very much to upgrade the fire protection systems. Thirdly, I’d
like to see a project suggested, just as a possibility, by the head
of our bookstore of breaking the wall between the bookstore
and the coffee shop and combining them into a sitting and
{The College .
JB: I hope it would replace the Great
Hall. And it would do three impor
tant things for us: It would give us a venue for convening the
entire college community. Second, it would give us a more
attractive space for student productions of plays and musical
performances. Third, it would give us an opportunity to bring
the local community here for events of various kinds, to house
musical events and professional performances, and allow the
community to become even closer and better acquainted with
the college. So, I’d like to see that change. It might be the most
noticeable of the changes I would envision in bricks and mortar.
Q: I was going to ask whether St. John "s alumni,
as other college
alumni, are generally successful, well off, dependable support
ers ofSt. John's. Or does the St. John'sprogram tend toproduce
scholars who don’tpursue more remunerative careers?
JB: We produce alums who enter a great variety of careers,
from teaching at the secondary school level to advanced aca
demic careers in higher education to authors to producers and
directors and screenwriters for movies to proprietors of pri
vately owned businesses to heads of investment management
businesses. We have the variety of alums you would find in
many other colleges, and a wide range of economic success in
that population. It is an alumni body that has the capability of
providing great support for the college. During the last capital
campaign, we had a participation rate that was quite attrac
tive, compared to our other liberal arts competitors. On an
annual basis, the participation rate is modest, but growing
rapidly, and we expect to continue to see that grow. We have a
new organization of alumni called Philanthropia, and its pur-
St. John's College • Spring 2001 }
�^4
I { 1 NT E RVI E W }
'Tor sure, we could do a
betterjob ofreaching a more
diversepopulation.''
pose is to engage the alumni in their support
of the college. That holds great promise.
enjoy it newly every time. So, one aspect of a
great book is the re-readability. A second
aspect of “greatness” is the connectedness,
the pervasiveness, of the ideas of these texts
in our culture. When I read a new piece of
fiction that somebody says is a really great
book, I frequently find it enjoyable reading.
However, I’m not likely to read it again
because it’s not terribly re-readable. But it
may have three or four ideas in it that came
out of Plato or out of Aristotle, whose ideas
remain pervasive.
Q: In the category ofother changes and chal
lenges, what about the curriculum?
JB: My expectation is that the curriculum
will change very slowly, if at all. The way that
our founding document, the Polity, is writ
ten, it assigns to our faculty, to our joint
Instruction Committee of the two campuses,
and to the deans the responsihility for over
seeing the design and content of the curricu
lum. Our faculty retains to this day a very
strong commitment to what was called in
1937 “the New Program.”
£
I think one of the reasons people ask you
that perhaps frivolous question is that it’s
such a long time between Aristotle’s day and
today.
Q:
o
Q:
It's still the New Program?
is still the New Program. And I think
that’s a distinguishing characteristic of this college that will
change very little. It’ll he a little more of this and a little less of
that. Add a Platonic dialogue here and two fewer essays of
Montaigne there, or whatever. These things go through care
ful consideration and dehate at our faculty meetings and in our
Instruction Committee meetings. By design, they change very
slowly.
JB: It
JB: But the program comes to the 19th and
aoth centuries.We certainly talk about Kant, Hume, Hegel,
Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, and Yeats. And the sciences, from
Galileo to Newton all the way forward to Einstein. There are a
few Gommunity Seminars, I believe, with Richard Feynman’s
writings, in them. So we have, in some of our courses, very
contemporary authors.
Q:
“Ijust read a great
new book. Why don ’tyou include that?” That is an interesting
question, I think. What does make a great book?
Q: Surelyyou must run intopeople who say,
JB: Well, I’ve just heen re-reading the two opening essays, one
by Mortimer Adler and one by the former president of the Uni
versity of Chicago, Robert Maynard Hutchins, for the original
editions of the Great Books, as they were published by Ency
clopedia Britannica, and there are a few ideas that I found
quite intriguing. One of them is the notion that a great book is
highly re-readable. That is, it deserves to be read, not once,
and maybe not even twice or three times. Every time I read the
Iliad - and I’ve read it four or five times in the last five years I find half a dozen things that strike me as, “How could I pos
sibly have missed this?” The Iliad and the Odyssey and the
Platonic Dialogues and the works of Aristotle - there are many
others, of course, with this character.
For me, personally, I re-read the poetry of Yeats weekly and
{The College.
Notjust dead white guys.
JB: I’ve certainly heard that charge. No, I think they’re quite
alive. In my last preceptorial in the graduate program, we had
seven graduate students and six undergraduates reading
Plato’s Phaedrus. It has to do with rhetoric, with erotic love
and with the nature of the soul and with poetry. And I found
the issues of how one expresses oneself in writing or in speak
ing, the issues of the nature of the soul, the issues of the
nature of erotic love, quite immediate and urgent for every
man and woman in the room. And not at all stale by virtue of
having been written by a “dead white guy.”
Q: That naturally leads to the question ofwomen. And I know
you expressed interest in that and thefact that your wife and
daughters sometimes bug you to pay more attention to the
female gender.
Two things I should mention in that connection. In one of
my very early classes in the Summer Glassies, one of the tutors
JB:
St. John ’5 College • Spring zooi }
�{interview}
15
Y think ofthe students
as thefirst group lam
responsiblefor serving.
son we consider as a potential student is that
person’s seriousness about and capability for
studying in this particular way, reading a text
slowly and discussing it at length with col
leagues in a classroom.
put me onto the text The Book ofthe City of
Ladies by Christine de Pizan, which is quite
a remarkable story of court life in the 15th or
i6th century from a woman’s point of view.
And I’ve mentioned as well that we have had
a preceptorial in the Graduate Institute on
the work of Toni Morrison.
Q:
JB: My meetings with students are what I call
I want to ask you about the relationship
between St. John’s College and the city of
Santa Fe. Do you sense an affinity between
this comparatively new (1964) institution and
this ancient (1610) city?
Q:
JB: Yes. In the last ao years many adult learn- 2
z
ers, if I could use that phrase, have moved 5
o
into Santa Fe. These are men and women 2
cc
who may have retired or may be in the «
process of winding down their full-time pro
fessions, and who are seeking an opportunity to look with
some seriousness into matters of the quality of life and
whether or not the soul is in fact perpetual. And to examine, to
stop and lookback on what they’ve done in the last 30 or 40 or
50 years of their lives and reflect on them in a thoughtful way.
We draw many such men and women to us through our Com
munity Seminars, through our Summer Classics, even
through our Graduate Institute. So, I think that’s part of the
affinity with this town.
Q: Santa Fe has a notoriously poor public education system
itself. Many ofthesepeople you refer to arepart-time residents,
and, as you say, are retired, and they can afford to stop and
reflect on their lives. One would wish that somehow this oppor
tunity could be made available to people who have not had
thatprivilege.
Let me say that we make all of our admissions decisions at
the undergraduate and at the graduate level on a needs blind
basis. I’ve heard more than once some passing comment about
this elite program in which rich white folks come and study
the dead white guys. But approximately 70 percent of our stu
dents currently receive financial aid of one kind or another, so
we welcome a very wide variety of students. And for sure, we
could do a better job of reaching a more diverse population.
We are working on that. The biggest question about every per
JB:
Tell me aboutyour meetings with students.
“town hall meetings.” I regard the agenda as
belonging to the students.
You call the students customers, your ‘^pri
mary customers. ”
Q:
I think of them as the first group whom I
am responsible for serving. They’re here,
they are living here, they have entrusted
themselves and their education to us. I feel
responsible to them. So in that sense they are
my primary customer. And so, once every four to six weeks I
want to have a town hall meeting, invite any and all students
who would like to come, and discuss what they would like to
discuss. I don’t always have the answer, but I’m willing to take
a question and tell them I’ll get back to them.
JB:
about exhausted my question list unless you sense an
omission in what we’ve covered that you’d like to add to this
informal accounting to St. John’s alumni.
Q: I’ve
JB: My added message would be that, whereas I regard the stu
dents as my primary customers, if I can say that, I think of the
alumni as a very close second. And it’s helpful to me - I’ve
already heard from quite a number of alumni by e-mail and
have received feedback on communications I’ve sent them, on
publications we’ve put out as a college as well as articles that
have been published elsewhere about the campus.
Q:
Well received?
well received. We have listened to suggestions for
improvements, too. This is a very thoughtful alumni body and I
have a great deal to learn from them. Dialogue is the hallmark
of this school. It is vital that we continue to have a rich dialogue
with the alumni, as well as the students and faculty. 4"
JB: Very
{The College -St John’s College
■ Spring 2001 }
�{The Program}
THE LOGOS
ACCORDING TO
ARISTOTLE
Tutor Joe Sachs thinks the key to understanding Aristotle
lies in ordinary speech - whether its Greek or English.
BY Barbara Goyette, A73
o surprise: Joe Sachs, an alumnus
who graduated in 1968 and
became a tutor in Annapolis in
1975, first encountered Aristotle
in his freshman seminar, which
was led by Bob Bart and Debbie
Traynor. Slightly surprising: He
found a kind of joy in reading and
Studying Aristotle that was a deep
ening of the delight he experienced while reading Plato. His
favorite book was The Physics. “There were two things that
happened,” he says. “1 realized that what 1 thought of as sci
ence and philosophy didn’t have to be distinct. And then I
realized that the world didn’t have to be thought of the way
I’d been taught in high school. The Physics denies things I
had assumed about space, time, body, cause, and explana
tion.” Downright surprising: Sachs has spent a good part of
the past ten years translating four works of Aristotle: The
Physics, The Metaphysics, On the Soul, and The Nicomachean Ethics. The first two have been published, the oth
ers have found publishers and will appear in print soon.
Considering that Aristotle is probably the philosopher
who most permeates Western thought - from his tutelage of
Alexander the Great, to the adoption of his Latinized
vocabulary as the very speech of philosophy for hundreds of
years, to the easy acceptance of the nickname “The Big
Aristotle” by basketball’s superstar Shaquille O’Neal - why
{The College-
would there be need for more translations? Because the
translations out there are inadequate, says Sachs. The prob
lem with the translations dates to the i6th and 17th cen
turies when scholarly work that had previously been avail
able only in Latin began to appear in modern languages.
The Latin versions of Aristotle established a vocabulary
that carried over into the modern languages, a vocabulary
that included such familiar philosophic staples as “acci
dent,” “substance,” “essence,” “actuality,” and “priva
tion.” Not only did the Latinized versions of these words
become a jargon, but that jargon disguised much of what is
important in Aristotle, Sachs thinks. “The twists and turns
of the tradition that got lost from view led to mistakes and
misunderstandings of Aristotle,” he says.
Here’s an example of how the words used in the scholar
ly tradition don’t really capture the Greek: The phrase kata
sumbebekos became, in Latin translations of Aristotle,/>er
accidens, and then in scholastic English the Latin word’s
descendent, “accidental.” “The Latin is a good translation
for the Greek, and the English is cognate with the Latin,”
says Sachs. “But the original Greek meaning doesn’t come
through when you make kata sumbebekos into ‘acciden
tal.’” He renders kata sumbebekos as “incidental” rather
than “accidental.” In his Glossary to The Physics, he
explains, “The word ‘accidental’ is appropriate to some,
but not all incidental things; it is not accidental that the
housebuilder is a flute player, but it is incidental. To any
St. John's College • Spring 2001 }
�{The College -St John’s
College ■ Spring 2001 }
�{ThePkogram}
''LikePlato 's dialogues, Aristotle's
writings lead us onfrom untested opinions
- those expressed in ordinary speech toward more reliable ones. "
thing, an infinity of incidental attributes belongs, and this
opens the door to chance (196 b).”
Nineteenth and aoth century English translations of Aristo
tle include those found in the Loeb editions and in the huge
beige McKeon edition that Johnnies of the 1970s and 1980s
relied on. Loeb translations are loose by design. McKeon’s edi
tion contained parts of a series of Oxford translations made
early in the aoth century. Some were very graceful, but they
relied entirely on the Latinized vocabulary carried over from
the earlier translations. Beginning in the 1960s, Hippocrates
Apostle produced a set of translations that attempted to stan
dardize Aristotle’s vocabulary in English - Apostle always used
the same English word for each Greek term, but he still relied
on the adopted Latinized words. During the course of many
years’ worth of classes, study groups, and advising sessions,
Sachs found himself having to say to students “it doesn’t really
mean that” about many of the words they were wrestling with.
He would give long explanations of each such word, and wish
there were some better way to translate it.
Behind Sachs’ resolve to try to render Aristotle into English
more effectively lies a deeper reason than being discontent with
the use of the fossilized Latin vocabulary. Aristotle looks at
ordinary speech and the thought behind it, and he “puts
together the most ordinary words in unaccustomed combina
tions. Since the combinations are jarring, our thinking always
has to be at work,” says Sachs. Here’s the paradox of Aristotle
for us today: He’s at the same time the most referred-to thinker
whose ideas form the very foundation of all Western philoso
phy, from Locke, Kant and Hegel to Whitehead and Husserl,
and yet - according to Sachs - he’s the freshest because he
makes us examine the most simple assumptions about our lives
and what they might mean. Getting to the root of this fresh
quality of Aristotle’s work was Sachs’ aim in translating the the
oretical books with the resources of “ordinary English.”
Gertainly this is an enterprise characteristic of how the
Greeks are treated at St. John’s. “[Jacob] BClein is the main
source of my thinking about Aristotle and Plato,” notes Sachs.
He cites Klein’s essay “Aristotle, an Introduction” (which
appears in Jacob Klein: Lectures and Essays, St. John’s College
Press) as something he’s read many times. But Sachs calls his
translations an appropriate entry point for any educated reader
- not just Johnnies - into the world of the ancients.
{The College
Turning The PHYSICS wyg English
rom 1990 to 1992, Sachs held the National Endow
ment for the Humanities (NEH) chair at the col
lege. This fellowship enables tutors to spend their
time studying a topic in depth for two years; dur
ing the second year they also lead a faculty study
group on their topic and give a lecture. He used the tim
begin a translation of The Physics. “At first I didn’t know
was practical - whether I knew enough Greek, whether there
were solutions to the difficult problems I saw,” he says. But he
began to work with the aim of making Aristotle’s sentences
real by getting rid of the jargon and using instead everyday,
common words that exist in both English and Greek.
“Aristotle respects ordinary speech more than most modern
philosophers do. We use a lot of important words in inconsis
tent ways. For Aristotle that is an indication of something
deeply true,” explains Sachs. For example, take the Greek
word kalon. Sometimes it is translated as “beautiful,” some
times as “noble.” But the English word “noble” loses most of
the vividness and power of the Greek. Aristotle considers the
linguistic usage as a clue that leads to an understanding of
moral virtue as something for its own sake, that hits a mean. In
English we might also say, “That’s a beautiful thing you did.”
We all know what that means, and it somehow tells us some
thing about that action. “Ambiguities in speech that are deeply
revealing about the thing referred to can arise in similar ways
in more than one language,” says Sachs.
“The trouble with ordinary speech for the purposes of phi
losophy,” says Sachs, “is that it carries too much meaning. We
are so accustomed to its use that it automatically carries along
all sorts of assumptions about things that we make without
being aware of them. ..Like Plato’s dialogues, Aristotle’s writ
ings lead us on from untested opinions - those expressed in
ordinary speech - toward more reliable ones.”
Getting something out of The Physics depends on how will
ing people are to let go of their assumptions. “It’s full of things
that people laugh at when they encounter them - take his
notion that bodies falling in a void would speed up without
limit. But reading Aristotle is a way of getting back to the ques
tions. Sometimes to get that fresh look you have to uproot
things that stand in your way. The Physics has everything to do
with living in the world.”
F
St John’s College • Spring 2001 }
�{TheProgram}
19
''The argument is on the way
somewhere and things are changing.
Things get revised.
Progress on the translation was sometimes slow - a sentence
in a day - and sometimes faster. Sachs found that he couldn’t
leave a decision half-made. “So many things that I hadn’t paid
attention to turned out to he very interesting and important,”
he says. But at the end of the second year he had a draft. Find
ing a publisher was a real-world challenge. His translation
wasn’t favored hy the classicists because “it wasn’t good Enghsh,” meaning that it read like philosophy instead of litera
ture. The philosophy departments, on the other hand, didn’t
like Sachs’ translation because it wasn’t consistent with the
other works in the tradition - no “substance,” “essence,”
“accident,” etc. Sachs wound up using Rutgers University
Press, and his Physics appeared in 1998 as part of their “Mas
terworks of Discovery: Guided Studies of Great Texts in Sci
ence” edited by Annapolis tutor Harvey Flaumenhaft.
been obscured by technical jargon the same way they had been
in the theoretical works. But there were enough ways that I
thought those translations fell short that I decided to try doing
my own,” says Sachs. All of the books reflect the basic aims of
recapturing the original focus of Aristotle’s thinking.
What’s Aristotle Doing?
hat has Sachs learned about Aristotle
after spending so much time with him?
Not a few St. John’s students and alumni
have trouble reading Aristotle because of
his style - it’s so densely packed, the sen
tences are opaque, and it lacks the drama of the dia
step-by-step explications of Kant, or the perverse
Nietzsche. Sachs doesn’t exactly buy the commonly accepted
story that Aristotle’s writings are transcriptions of lecture
The Other Translations
notes. “I think they may have begun as lecture notes, but they
he year following his second spent holding the
got written down and polished,” he says. He compares the
method to that described frequently in Plato’s dialogues, when
NEH chair, Sachs had a sabbatical, which he used
a character says “I heard this from so and so, and then I wrote
to begin working on a translation of The Meta
it down and checked it with the source.”
physics. That book was published in 1999 by Green
“I think you can feel the movement in the classroom,” says
Lion Press, an independent pubhshing house con
Sachsofabout the writings. “An objection outlined is something
centrating on primary texts in the history of science, history
someone brought up in one of the classes. Or there might be a
mathematics, and history of ideas and run by St. John’s alumni
joke about the educated person being pale - that would refer to
Wdham Donahue (A67) and Dana Densmore (A65).
someone in the room. A lot of the things we puzzle about would
Even more than The Physics, The Metaphysics has been mis
have
been obvious to Aristotle’s hsteners.” The movement of
understood, thinks Sachs. It’s commonly criticized as not
the
arguments
is dialectical - that’s the structure that prevails
being cohesive, because it appears to make new beginnings
in The Physics, The Metaphysics, and even in The Ethics. “The
over and over again, as well as covering the same ground
argument is on the way somewhere and things are changing.
repeatedly. Sachs found an underlying order as he worked
Things get revised,” says Sachs. This flowing structure to the
through the translation; rather than becoming so enmeshed in
works is another reason the accepted notion of Aristotle laying
details that a sense of the whole is obscured, the opposite hap
down the law or offering a series of set answers is so wrong.
pened - he came to a clearer understanding of the differences
“Instead, I find it a record of careful thinking,” says Sachs.
between demonstration and dialectic.
Aristotle’s record of careful thinking is something that has
At the urging of tutor Brother Robert, Sachs also translated
kept
Sachs busy translating for about ro years. Although he
On the Soul over the course of a few summers; it’s currently
says the efforts never turned into a chore, he’s finished with
being prepared for publication by Green Lion. And, during a
translating, at least translating Aristotle and at least for now.
second sabbatical, almost 10 years after working on The
But the thoughts are still alive for him: “Every time I pick up
Physics, he translated The Nicomachean Ethics. That transla
one of his books or sit down with people to talk about Aristo
tion is being prepared by The Focus Philosophical Library in
tle, I find new things.”
Massachusetts.
“The Ethics is a book that I love. The translations seemed
good enough because the things Aristotle was saying had not
W
T
{The College -St John's College
• Spring 2001 }
�{Johnnies
on
Parenting}
THE EDUCATION THAT IS
PARENTHOOD
From birth to the empty nest, raising a child
means learning to deal with each new challenge.
BY Sus3AN Borden, A87
OR ALL WE LEARN FROM THE GREAT ROOKS,
they don’t seem to answer parent
hood’s most pressing questions: What
did Penelope do to make Telemachos
sleep through the night? Would
attachment parenting have saved
Oedipus? If Desdemona and Juliet had
been allowed to try “group dating,”
could tragedy have been averted? Pedi
atric rheumatologist Jim Jarvis (A75) agrees that there are
limits to the insights on parenting to be gained at St.
John’s. “Will studying Apollonius make you a better par
ent?” he asks. “I don’t think so.”
He suggests more intimate sources for learning how to
raise children. “You learn from your parents, you learn
from your children, and you learn from your heart, if you
leave your heart open and attentive to all the wonderful
things your child is trying to teach you,” he says. And that,
he explains, is where St. John’s comes in.
“St. John’s prepares your heart to be open,” he says. “I
remember tutors Michael Littleton and Elliott Zuckerman
teaching me that it’s okay to love something because it’s
beautiful. I remember seeing the look on Michael Little
ton’s face when he was listening to Beethoven’s Eroica Sym
phony. I realized that I was watching not only a man who
found this piece of music intellectually satisfying hut who,
in the very core of his heart, found it beautiful. If you let it,
your St. John’s education can prepare your heart for accept
ing the incredible beauty and mystery of childhood.”
Granted, Piaget and Montessori are not on the St. John’s
reading list. And there’s no manual for raising children that
{The College-
provides an answer for every troubling situation. But in this
inaugural issue of The College, six alumni who work with
parents and children offer their insights into the education
that is parenthood.
I•Convocation
Birth
Parenting studies - like college studies - begin with a sud
den immersion into a completely different kind of life. Eor
both experiences, it’s a change you’ve been waiting for for
months, mainly with excitement, but also with anxiety. You
pack your bag, climb into the car, and the adventure
begins. One key difference: when you’re heading for col
lege, it’s just butterflies in your stomach. One similarity:
you’re beginning a new life with a journey into the
unknown.
Midwife Laureen Sutton-Borgilt (SP86) says that,
because she works mainly with home births, the couples
she works with have a high sense of responsibility. But, she
says, taking responsibility can be confused with taking con
trol, and when it comes to childbirth, control is an illusion.
“One of the biggest jobs in preparing for birth is accepting
what it means to deal with uncertainty. You don’t always get
to choose how things are going to come out. You can
choose the little things, like to stay home or to have the
baby in water, hut birth doesn’t always give you your
choice. Parenting doesn’t always give you your choice
either,” says Sutton-Borgilt. “Parenting plunges us into an
unknown over which there is no control and pregnancy is
definitely a first step into this realm of the unknown.”
St. John’s College • Spring 2001 }
�ai
their own temperaments, their
own way of dealing with the
First year oflife
“God Creating Adam”
world,” she says. “The best a
FROM Chartres Cathedral
parent can do is help them learn how to
Sure you studied virtue at St. John’s,
make good judgments and accept
but these days you’re modeling good
themselves with whatever limitations
behavior at home. Of course you read
and strengths they have.”
about beauty during college, but par
Friehling offers a Johnnie-like
enthood leaves you marveling at your
approach to child-raising: “Just like
baby’s perfect features. And while love
tutors are not professors but are there
was once a subject for discussion and
to guide students in dialogue, I see par
contemplation, it’s now something
ents as guiding their children in a dia
that overtakes you every day. Like
logue. From the time the child is six
freshman year, early parenthood fasci
months old, parents should set up a dia
nates us with its subject matter. But
logue
to help the child figure out this
there’s a lot to learn and a world of
world on his or her own. By the time
adjustments to make.
Jim Jarvis [A75]
they are adolescents, children are very
“There’s no bigger transition in the
much participants in the dialogue and
world than becoming a parent,” says
they
don’t have the same kind of rebel
pediatrician Melissa Sedlis (A73). “No
lion issues as children whose parents set themselves up as
matter how old you are, you’re just someone else’s child
arbitrary authorities.”
until you become a parent yourself. There’s a great divide
II- Freshman Year
J.
''Ifyou let it, your
St. Johns education
can prepare your heart
for accepting the
incredible beauty and
mystery ofchildhood. ”
you cross.
“Everyone has watched a child misbehave, seen how the
parent handles it, and thought, ‘I’ll do it so much better. My
child will never go to McDonald’s. My child will never want
sugar cereals.’ There are a lot of illusions that parents have
to lose. What we often have in our minds during pregnancy
is an idealized version of what our child will be like. We try
to fit the child into our idea of what the child should be.”
Pediatrician Linda Friehling (SF71) warns parents not to
impose such ideas onto their children. “Children have
{The College-
III-Sophomore Year
Toddler andpreschool years
More than any other year, sophomore year seems to focus
on a single book: the Bible. Parents of toddlers and
preschoolers, their faith tested by temper tantrums and toi
let training, can find themselves haunting bookstores’ par
enting sections, praying for a divinely inspired source of
wisdom. Some find a favorite - a parenting “Bible.” Among
St. John's College - Spring 2001 }
�2,2,
{JoHNNiES
ON
Parenting}
‘7sometimes have to remind
parents that the ape at which you
first eat preen beans is not on the
applicationfor Harvard. ”
Melissa Sedlis [A73]
today’s most popular are T.
means and interest to support
Berry Brazleton’s Touchpoints,
good daycare.”
Penelope Leach’s Your Baby
But what about intellectual
and Child, Arlene Eisenberg’s
enrichment? Wouldn’t a top
What to Expect the Toddler
notch daycare offer children a
Years, and Dr, Spock’s Baby and
head start in the academic
Child Care.
world? Berkowitz doesn’t think
Steve Berkowitz (A8i), associ
so. “You can get your kid to read
ate professor in child and adoles
earlier, to know the capitals ear
cent psychiatry at Yale Medical
lier, to do math earlier, but what
School, says he likes some, but
has been demonstrated is that it
not all, of these works. “Throw
all evens out in the end,” he says.
Brazleton out the window,” he
“The important factors in pre
says. “He’s a nice guy but all too
school are the social and nurtur
easy.” Berkowitz says that Bra
ing elements. While formalized,
zleton’s “let it happen natural
rigid education in reading, writ
ly” approach is too hands-off for
ing, and arithmetic is becoming
most parents and children. “For
more popular, this might be at
instance, toilet training,” says
the cost of something very
Berkowitz. “I don’t think you
important to children: the use of
just sit there and tell a kid ‘you
their imaginations, working
can potty train whenever you’re
things through, and learning
ready.’ I don’t think you have to
and understanding through play
demand it when they’re i8
and imagination.”
months old, but at 3 years, when
Sedlis says that this rush to
they’re not potty trained, you
academics is particularly a prob
An icon of parental affection - a madonna and child
can say ‘we want this, you have
lem in New York City, where she
to do it, it’s what kids your age
lives and practices. “Children
do.’” Berkowitz thinks parents should be more directive than
begin to apply to nursery schools at the age of one or two. They
Brazleton advises. “I don’t think young children want a mil
go on a round of interviews and many of them get rejected.
lion choices,” he says. “They want comfort, nurturing, direc
There’s enormous anxiety over this and parents beheve if you
tion. They wantyou to make choices for them. That’s what par
don’t get into the right nursery school, you won’t get into the
ents do.”
right ongoing school, then the right college, and then the right
While he’s not so crazy about Brazleton, Berkowitz does like
job. I sometimes have to remind parents that the age at which
Penelope Leach. “I think she’s great and has a lot to offer,” he
you first eat green beans is not on the application for Harvard.”
says. “Like anybody else, there are things I disagree with her
about, like her strong stance against daycare. Studies show
IV • Enabling
that good daycare is very good for children, there’s just very
Are youfit to continue?
little of it.”
What is good daycare? Berkowitz points to the daycare cen
It’s the end of your sophomore year. You go to your mailbox
ters affiliated with Yale. “Theyhaveverylowchild/staffratios,
and find a letter from the dean. You’re either in or out. But as
highly trained staff who are well paid and have the benefits of
a parent, it’s not that simple. There are many points in a
being in an academic environment, and parents who have the
child’s life when you find yourself scrutinizing your perform{The College
- St. John’s College ■ Spring 2001 }
�{JoHNNIESOnPaRENTING}
2,3
JOHNNIES RECOMMEND...
great books on parenting
Touchpoints: Your Child’s Emotional and Behav
ioral DevelopmentYyY. Berry Brazleton
Toddlers and Parents: A Declaration ofIndepen
dence by T. Berry Brazleton
Infants and Mothers: Differences in Development by
T. Berry Brazleton
The First Twelve Months ofLife by Frank Caplan
ance, uncertain if you’re really
V • Junior Year
and Theresa Caplan
qualified to proceed. And like tutors
Elementary school
How To Talk So Your Child Will Listen, and Listen
at an enabling meeting, there are
So Your Child Will Talk by Adele Faber
plenty of people who seem ready
During junior year, you read Hume
and willing to judge your fitness as a
and Rousseau. As the parent of a
The Magic Years by Selma H. Fraiberg
parent. Certainly you can ignore
schoolage child, a visit to the play
First Feelings: Milestones in the Emotional Develop
onlookers at the grocery store when
ground
reminds you that life can
ment of Your Baby and Child by Stanley Greenspan
your child is having a tantrum. But
still be nasty, brutish, and short.
The Course ofLife by Stanley Greenspan
what about your mother, your
The temptation to tighten control
spouse, your adolescent who
is strong as your child learns to
Your Baby and Child: From Birth to Age Five by
screams “I hate you,” your in-laws,
Penelope Leach
negotiate the social contracts of the
or your child’s pediatrician or
school yard, soccer team, and
Punished by Rewards by Alfie Kohn
teacher?
scouts. But even as the outside
The Emotional Life ofthe Toddler by Alicia F.
When daycare director Karen
world claims more and more ofyour
Lieberman
Shavin’s (Aya) son was diagnosed
child’s time and interest, the
The Interpersonal World ofthe Infant: A Viewfrom
with a learning disorder at age
experts agree: it’s time to loosen
Psychoanalysis and Developmental Psychology by
three, she was devastated by his
your grip. “Most of my peers from
Daniel N. Stern
prognosis. “They told me he would
St. John’s will remember that I’m a
never go to college and never have
rabid baseball fan,” says Jarvis.
. The Toddler Years: A Practical Guidefor
Parents & Caregivers by Irene Van De Zande
friends. And they said that all his
“And yet I know that my son’s
problems were related to an overfavorite sport is not baseball. He’s a
protective mother.”
good player, but he’s not as excited
Shavin says that, being in the child development field her
as he is about soccer. One of my most important jobs as a par
self, she tried to follow the advice of the experts she periodi
ent is to share his excitement about soccer and not push base
cally consulted. However, she saw that even professionals
ball on him. “When we lived back east we saw parents trying to
don’t agree and noticed they can fall into the trap of giving
live vicariously through their children through their academ
one-sided advice, influenced more by their training than by
ic and artistic endeavors. In Oklahoma, it’s through football
the needs of the child. “I needed to hear the experts’ recom
and cheerleading. I call it child abuse by sports.”
mendations,” she says. “But then I needed to analyze what
“Some parents wrongly view their children’s accomplish
they said to see if their method really applied to my child’s
ments as their own,” says Friehling. “That’s where distance
needs.” Shavin recommends that parents in similar situations
becomes necessary. You’re there as an enabler. You can nei
learn as much as they can from professionals, but then think
ther reap the accolades nor accept the blame for what happens
about what they know about their child and be willing to do
to your children as they move through school. There’s a differ
what the child needs, regardless of anyone’s advice.
ence between encouraging and pushing.”
This approach worked well for her son, who has made great
progress despite a significant auditory processing disability.
VI- Senior Year
“He’s 18 now, just finished his first semester of college, got all
Adolescence
As, and has a steady girlfriend,” she reports. “When he makes
friends, they’re friends for life.”
It’s not unusual to be intimidated by senior seminar readings.
What is this phenomenology, this theory of parallels, this
Beaute that Baudelaire seems so taken with? Fortunately, a
second reading and some careful reflection often reveal that
{The College
St John’s College ■ Spring 2001 }
�“4
{JohnniesonParenting}
''The adolescent is like Socrates,
asking the tough questions, forcing
parents to examine themselves and
how they ve lived their lives.
Linda Friehling
{SF71)
these are the questions of freshman,
VII "Graduation
sophomore, and junior years dressed
Empty nest
up in fancy clothes. So too with adoles
cence.
Like commencement, the empty nest is
“Parents of adolescents constantly
both a beginning and an end. “It’s won
pull their hair out, forgetting that they
derful and painful, letting go,” says
are struggling with the same issues
Friehling. “When my first child was in
with their children at 14 as they were
the middle of college I was cleaning out
with their children at 3,” says
a room in the basement where a lot of
Berkowitz. “The difference is that you
the toys were. I kept going up to him
can’t pick up a 14-year-old and say no.”
and saying, ‘Mattie, do you want this
Parents can find themselves regret
any more? What about this? Is this
ting this difference when it comes to
important to you?’ He was very gentle,
issues like sex. “Sexuality exists from
but finally he said, ‘Mom, do you think
very early on, but adolescents are actu
I’m going to play with any of my toys
ally able to do something about it that
again?’ I had a tear in my eye because I
they couldn’t do when they were 3,”
realized no, I suppose he’s not.”
Berkowitz says. He adds that this is
Friehling says that, while the vision
more troubling to parents of girls. “It’s
of a grown child can provoke tears, it
an issue of biology. Boys don’t get
can also bring joy to a parent: “Ifyou let
pregnant.”
Sibling interaction depicted by Rembrandt
yourself enjoy each phase, you can look
In her practice, Sedlis offers adoles
back at it with pleasure.”
cents a safe place to talk about sex,
drugs, and alcohol. And she gives them at least one important
Steve Berkowitz (A81) is an assistantprofessor in child and adoles
piece of information. “With older teenagers. I’ll say, ‘have you
cent psychiatry at Yale University's School ofMedicine as wed. as the
medical director of the New Haven Child Development-Community
ever heard of the morning after pill?’ They look at me like I
Policing
Program and the Yale Child Study Center Intensive Home
have two heads,” she says. “But every four to six months, a girl
based
Child
and Adolescent Psychiatric Services. He is also thepsychi
will come to me for this, a girl you would think of as a good
atric consultant to the National Centerfor Children Exposed to Vio
girl, who is a good girl, who has made a mistake.” While Sedlis
lence. He is thefather oftwo daughters.
encourages teens in such difficult situations to leave the hnes
Linda Friehling (SF71) is a pediatrician and the mother ofthree sons.
of communication with their parents open, she says that there
She lives in Great Falls, Virginia.
are some thing a child needs to keep private.
liM Jarvis {A75) is director ofpediatric rheumatology at the Children’s
Fortunately, the world of teenagers isn’t all about risky
Hospital of Oklahoma, Oklahoma City, and a clinical associate pro
behaviors. Friehling is energized by the intellectual and moral
fessor ofpediatrics at the Oklahoma University Health Sciences Cen
challenges teens constantly pose. “Adolescents are wonderful
ter. He is thefather oftwo daughters and one son.
because they are thinking, idealistic, and energetic. They keep
Melissa Sedlis (A73) is a pediatrician in private practice in New York
you on your toes and don’t take any nonsense,” she says. “The
City. She and her husband, Steven Sedlis (A7;j), have three daughters.
adolescent is hke Socrates, asking the tough questions, forc
Karen Shavin (A73) is the executive director ofBright Beginnings, an
ing parents to examine themselves and how they’ve lived their
infant-toddler and preschool Head Start program for homeless chil
lives. You have to back up what you say and give reasonable
dren in Washington, D.C. She and her husband, Jeff Crabtree (A72),
arguments. They’re not going to take things at face value;
are theparents ofone daughter and two sons.
they’re going to question everything.”
Laureen Sutton-Borgilt (SF86) is a midwife and the mother of two
daughters. She lives in Ashland, Oregon.
{The College -
St. John’s College ■ Spring 2001 }
�as
{Campus Life}
CHORAL
KALEIDOSCOPE
BY SuS3AN Borden, A87
he Great Hall of McDowell has seen many Odysseus,” says David. “When they have
finished their performance with Demodsights in the past 200 years: the schooling of ocus of the tale of Ares and Aphrodite,
Francis Scott Key in 1796, a hall honoring Gen two youths are singled out to make a solo
display of their gymnastic prowess, throw
eral Lafayette in 1824, and the treatment of ing and catching a ball in mid-air.”
Following Plato’s formulation, David’s
Civil War casualties in 1863 and 1864. In recent
group began with a bardic rendition of the
years, it has been the site of college registra opening of Homer’s Catalogue of Ships
with the singer in the middle (like
tion, Fehhie convocation, and G.I. commencement.
It has
Demodocus) circled by dancers. Then two
of the students,
hosted coffee houses, rock parties, and waltz parties.
PlaysJohann du Hoffman (A04)
and Danae Marshall (A03), performed a
have been staged and freshman choruses have sung within its
carefully choreographed gymnastic dance.
Next, Sarah Frost (A04) gave a solo per
walls. And one chilly afternoon this past February, it was the
formance of a short Sappho poem, and
setting for a spectacle rich and strange.
finally the group presented a full choral
T
Drawing inspiration from the figures on
GrEEKVASES, AmIRTHANAYHGAM
David (center, left photo) leads stu
ANCIENT
dents IN A recreation OF A CHORAL DANCE.
Annapolis tutor Amirthanayagam David
(A86) and Miriam Rother, a choreographer
from Switzerland (and mother of sopho
more Noam Gedalof), led eleven students
in a two-week workshop reconstructing a
Greek chorus. When the group presented a
“workshop-performance” in the Great
Hah, about 150 students and tutors showed
up to watch.
David explained that the first part of
their presentation was a reconstruction of
a gymnastics lesson described by Plato in
the Laws. “It is likely not a coincidence
that the two types of dancing Plato pre
scribes, one imitating the language of the
Muse, the other more gymnastic and ath
letic, correspond to the two types Alcinous has his Phaeacian youths display for
{The College.
St. John’s College ■ Spring 2001 }
rendition of the “Ode to Man” from
Antigone. A key to the reconstruction was
David’s theory of Greek prosody, which
allowed the dancers to know where to
stress their words.
Since the main floor of the Great HaU
was packed, many onlookers saw the per
formance from the second floor balcony.
From on high, the movement of the
dancers looked like the jewels in a kaleido
scope moving through a set of comphcated
but orderly symmetrical patterns.
�2,6
{Letters}
Editor 's Note: Thanks to those who wrote
in with information about thephotos in
the calendar. We were hoping that thepho
tos would elicit memories and waitedfor
the e-mails and letters to come in telling us
who waspictured in each shot. We weren i
sure about the date ofthe staircasephoto
(hence the ''ca. uj7O ”). But we are sure
about thephotographer because his name
is stamped on the back ofthephoto: Mari
on Warren, an Annapolis artist who took
manyphotos ofthe college—on both cam
puses—from the late tgsos through the
mid-iQ’^os.
E-Zine Proposal
Photo Recollections
For the record, the picture accompanying
the month of March in the aooi
“Founders & Foundations” calendar is
Brother Robert’s freshman (not sopho
more) geometry class in the fall of 1973.
Since we aren’t wearing heavy jackets (and
Lauren has her shoes off) it must be early
in the semester and we’re all sweating.
Sweating because we’ve each been given a
proposition to demonstrate; judging by
the models on the table we’re proving the
existence of the regular solids. I had to
prove the existence of the cube. Sara
Anastaplo did the dodecahedron (better
her than me) That’s Leslie Combiner at
the blackboard. Clockwise from Leslie are
Carolyn Wade, Sara Anastaplo, Paul
Rneisl, Janis Popowitz, Louis Eckler, Jean
Murdock, Lauren Ballard, Brother Robert,
Michael Levine, Eric Salem, Charlie Bor
ders, Rick Smith (I think) and Elizibeth
Hennessy. I seem to remember Ann
Browning and Pam Lobdell in this class
also. Once I hit Pam in the face with a
snowball thrown from the fire escape right
next to this room (three stories up...do the
physics) and she didn’t cry even though
she wanted to. Don’t think I’ve forgotten
that I owe you, Pam!
me an impression he had about the photograph on the back cover. John and I con
curred that the picture of six students sit
ting on the stairs is not from 1970, but
from 1965-66. The students are from the
Santa Fe class of 1969, in order, clock
wise, beginning on the left: Robert
Rosenwald, Karen Jurgensen (feet),
Helen Smith (with cigarette in hand), Jim
Pipes (next to the rail), Ted Propeck (at
the bottom of the picture), and Jim Walk
er (in the center). My hunch is the photo
was taken by Carl Bostek, SF68, who took
a number of pictures around campus dur
ing that period.
If someone out there has a different
“perspective” I would certainly welcome
correction. But, as John noted, some
shoes you never forget!
— JoE Reynolds, SF69
As profound as most of the content of The
Reporter may be, isn’t it about time to
move away from consuming the natural
resources of our planet, i.e. trees, for the
manufacture of paper, and energy to print
and to disseminate it by mail? Isn’t it time
to put The Reporter on-line and distribute
it as an E-zine?
At the very least, let alumni choose the
printed version or the web version. If
some tidbit inspired by divine madness
tickles the fancy of an E-alum, he or she
can print it, or save it on a diskette. There
needn’t be concern over losing E-articles.
If a magnetic pulse occurs in the manner
in which is predicted, there will be neither
college nor alumni left to lament the loss.
— William Malloy, SF77
Editor’s Note: Currently weput the Class
Notes—the mostpopularfeature—from
The Reporter (and nowfrom The College)
on the St. John’s web site (www. sjca. edu click on “Alumni”). Weplan to include
articles, letters,
and other sections
p/The College on
the redeveloped
St. John’s web site
in thefuture.
— Paul Kneisl, A76
Two
PHOTOS FROM
“Founders &
Foundations” cal
THE
I enjoyed receiving the new “Founders &
Foundations” calendar, poring over the
pictures, and reliving memories. Regard
ing memories, I had dinner with John
Strange (SF69) and his wife, Carol, recent
ly. John pulled out the calendar to run by
endar INSPIRED rec
ollections; THE
FRESHMAN MATH
CLASS (above) AND
THE STAIRWELL
STUDY GROUP (lEFt).
{The College.
St. John ’5 College ■ Spring soot }
�{Letters}
Seminar Dynamics
To the tutors - Consider whether this is a
fair description of what happens in semi
nar: Jane is making a point. The instant
her mouth shuts, John launches in on his
own topic. Or he may not even wait for
Jane to stop, or he may have to drown out
several others who are equally ready to
jump in. John makes his point, and the
instant he stops, somebody else jumps in
without the slightest pause. In my experi
ence, this was how it went two nights a
week for four years. But in order to be
ready to start talking as soon as Jane
stopped, John must have ceased listening
to Jane and begun formulating his answer
long before she was finished. Some or
most of what Jane said, John didn’t hear,
because he was busy composing his own
speech. The result is not a discussion, but
a series of monologues. The opening
question is a jumping-off point, and for
gotten by 8:05. Those students who plan
their own speeches instead of listening
are rewarded with air time; those unfortu
nates who can’t help listening and trying
to understand what’s being said never get
a word in.
Yes, I was one of those. But I’m not
writing to complain. I love St. John’s.
A lot of the best of what I am I got at
St. John’s. Even the seminar was valuable
to me, although I wasn’t very valuable to it.
I got a lot of good thinking done in there.
I’m writing to talk about teaching lis
tening. When I was a student I heard that
the tutors keep to the background in sem
inar because their job is not to teach what
the books say, but to help students find it
for themselves. But because you’re not in
seminar to teach the correct interpreta
tion of the book doesn’t mean you’re not
there to teach. In the seminar setting, you
are in the perfect position to teach hstening - an important part of learning,
maybe the most important. Imagine this
alternate scenario: John gets halfway
through his speech and you, the tutor,
interrupt: “John, how does this relate to
Jane’s point? Are you agreeing or dis
agreeing?” With a few such words inter
jected, you would completely change the
nature of the seminar. If you were to con
sistently enforce relevance, the students
would have no choice but to listen before
talking. We would be in a real discussion.
We would be forced to take each other
seriously, to really come to grips with the
fine points of what the other person is try
ing to say. After two hours of that careful
listening, two nights a week for four years,
we would graduate with a life skill as
important as anything the college can
give. And on the way we probably would
learn a lot more about the books.
— Jack Armstrong, A83
In Defense of a Telescope Maker
I find Duncan North’s expressed disdain
for “pansy philosophers” and telescope
makers shocking. Although Galileo was
not mentioned by name in the article
“The Tao of Duncan” [The Reporter,
Fall/Winter aooo), he was clearly implied
by Mr. North’s reference to telescope
makers. How can anyone say Galileo did
not live his philosophy! For goodness’
sake, he stood trial before the Inquisition
for it! For what? For believing that reveal
ing the truths about the natural world
could only benefit mankind and give
greater glory to God. Galileo walked a
precarious line, balancing on one side his
incredible insight and vision, and on the
other the salvation of his soul. Although
the Church at the time felt that he lost his
balance in favor of his own vision, Galileo
maintained his innocence until his death,
denying that he had violated the tenets of
the Church.
Galileo believed that the workings of
the universe could be explained, especial
ly with the aid of mathematics, in terms
that could be comprehended by the
human mind. These might not reflect the
means God used to accomplish these phe
nomena, but they are no less useful for
man’s purposes. In so doing he replaced
otiose theorizing about causes with quan
titative observation of phenomena, and
essentially created modern science. His
emphasis of the practical application and
value of science set Galileo apart from
most philosophers of his time. He was
interested in the physical world, from tel
escopes and the moons of Jupiter, to the
laws of falling bodies and the creation of
the pendulum clock. His vision was star
tlingly clear, his mind was never idle, even
through his frequent illnesses. And how
can anyone in this modern day and age
deny the results of his efforts? We may be
concerned with limiting the scope of mod
ern science, but we certainly cannot do
without it!
{The College.
St. John’s College ■ Spring 2001 }
2,7
Perhaps most important to remember,
yet also most difficult to comprehend
given the conflict between his insight and
intellect and his treatment by the Church,
Galileo was a believing Catholic. Not just
paying lip service to those more powerful
than he, but a believer in Holy Scripture
and the preciousness of his soul. Believ
ing that unveiling the truths about the
natural world could only give greater
glory to God, he published his Dialogues,
incurring scientific jealousy and the
wrath of Pope Urban VIII. Tried, convict
ed, and imprisoned (under house arrest)
by the Court of the Inquisition, Galileo
thought that his works would no longer be
valued and his reputation would be forev
er stained. Yet, in the wretchedness of his
confinement, at a time when most of us
would be bitter or frightened or at best
cautiously unproductive, Galileo wrote
Two New Sciences. Galileo lived his phi
losophy literally until he died.
— Janette Fischer, SF85
Remembering Robert Bart
For me, the most memorable character in
my time at St. John’s was Robert Bart; we
might grieve his passing, but delight in
the full life and years he had.
I have always thought of myself as an
“Athenian;” no Spartan naked-on-theground sleeping for me. But Bart could
outdo me: once, during a counseling ses
sion with him, I mentioned that I always
needed cold water on the face first thing in
the morning. “How can you DO that?” was
his astonished reply. What a dear softie!
— Jerry Milhollan, A58
The College welcomes letters on issues of
interest to readers. Letters maybe edited
for clarity and/or length. Those under
500 words have abetter 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, 1160
Camino Cruz Blanca, Santa Fe, nm 87501.
Letters can also be sent via e-mail to:
b-goyette@sjca.edu, or via the form for
letters on the web site at www.sjca.edu click on “Alumni,” then on “Contact The
College Magazine.”
�2.8
{Alumni Notes}
1938
With the birth of Grace Townsend
Mullaney, Francis Townsend, Jr.
now has nine grandchildren.
1939
At age 83, Malcolm Silver is in his
58th year of practicing dentistry.
1947
John Brunn has retired, but is still
taking classes at the Fromm Insti
tute in San Francisco. “A Johnnie
never graduates!” he writes.
er as well as an author of books in
five or six different genres. Twenty
to thirty times a year, I amuse
myself by visiting schools around
the country to perform my stand-up
comedy/poetry assemblies and
workshops. I also speak at confer
ences for reading teachers and
librarians, where I show them how
to make learning a lot more appeal
ing and fun for their students.
(Amazingly, I get paid for this mis
sionary work.)” Bruce’s books have
sold more than 12 million copies
overall. More of his poetry as well as
poetry lessons and contests to enter
for kids 6 to 13 can be found on gigglepoetry.com.
David Schiller recently delivered
papers on Confucius at four confer
ences.
songs, chant, or dance from the
Baha’i, Hindu, Islamic, Jewish, Lat
ter-day Saints, Protestant, Roman
Catholic, and such faith communi
ties. I’ve directed the InterFaith
Conference since 1979, just after it
was founded. Learn more about its
work at www.interfaith-metrodc.org
or 202-234-6300.”
1968
During a sabbatical from teaching,
Bart Kaplan (A) spent seven
months cruising the Caribbean in a
32-foot sailboat. He visited Cuba
twice. His wife and two daughters
visited him in the Bahamas several
times.
Charles Watson’s (A) eldest son is
1964
1951
Tom Williams writes: “This past
July I moved after 43 years in the
same apartment. What to do with
some 2,000 books? I gave my
favorite, Euclid’s Elements, to my
grandson who has a real feel for
mathematics, sold some, threw
away some, and boxed others for
donation. Others, mostly from
St. John’s, I took with me to our
new address, and will feel at home
with them in their new bookcases.
They are indeed old friends - and
the reason I went to St. John’s.”
1959
Barbara Tower is still living in
downtown Annapolis and still in
real estate. Her children, Elizabeth,
John, and Alex, all live locally. She
has eight grandchildren, including
triplets.
1962
Lenke Vietorisz reports that she
and her cousin’s son, Richard
Repasy, have put out a book useful
and handy for those learning Hun
garian: A Guide to Hungarian Verbs
(525 pages, including conjugations
of 300+ verbs), which may be
viewed (and acquired) at
accessi.net/lenkev.
Jeremy Leven is prepping in Paris,
Prague, and Italy for a film on the
theft of the Mona Lisa in the 1920s.
He’ll be directing stars Robin
Williams and Antonio Banderas
from his own script.
“I have taken the Harvard Negotia
tion Course and now, though
still/always a student, I am giving
workshops on this ever-useful
skill,” writes Cecily Sharp-WhiteHILL.
Calvin Byles (who now uses the
name Leif Smith) co-owns a research
and training business with his wife,
Pat Wagner, in Denver. “I run a
think tank with mostly technology,
business, and research clients - indi
viduals who care about exploring
new ideas (check out the web site at
www.pattern.com),” he says.
1966
Penn State Press has published
Postfoundational Phenomenology:
Husserlian Reflections on Presence
and Embodiment by James R. Men
sch. Mensch teaches philosophy at
St. Francis Xavier University.
1967
Bruce Lansky’s publishing compa
Clark Lobenstine writes: “The
ny, Meadowbrook Press just pub
lished IfPigs Could Fly, his seventh
book of children’s poetry and his
“70th, 80th, or goth book overall I forget,” he writes. “I’m a publish
InterFaith Conference’s 21st Annu
al Interfaith Concert at Washington
Cathedral featured a world pre
miere of the five-part setting of an
ancient Hebrew text, as well as
{The College.
now NPR correspondent to West
Africa after a two-year stint as pro
ducer for CNN in Moscow. “Our
baby is looking at colleges with
Russian languages and marine biol
ogy,” he writes.
Donald J. Schell and Marilynn
(Wills) Scott (both SF) report
that their daughter. Patience
Alexandra Schell, was married in
September to Arturo Costillo. “The
wedding guests included almost
10% of the class of’68,” they write.
Their daughter is a research fellow
and lecturer at University of Lon
don; her Oxford DPhil is in Latin
American history.
1970
Edward Macierowski (A) reports
that his latest publication, which
came out in October, is his English
translation of Henri de Lubac’s
“Medieval Exegesis, Volume 2: The
Four Senses of Scripture.”
Hudi Podolsky (SF) writes: “I am
the executive director of the Coali
tion of Essential Schools - a great
mission and a great team to work
with. Bringing some of the wisdom
of the St. John’s design to public
schools-small schools and depth
over breadth. Having a blast! ”
Ken Joseph (A) was the subject of a
column in the Pittsburgh Post
Gazette. Brian O’Neill reported on
Joseph’s circumnavigation of
Allegheny County (Penn.) by bus,
lightheartedly comparing his
accomplishment to that of Magel
lan. Joseph dates his love of public
St. lohn’s College ■ Spring 2001}
transportation to when he was ii
and his parents sent him and a
friend downtown with specific
instructions about which streetcar
to take. “Of course,” he says, “we
didn’t take that one. We saw anoth
er and said ‘Let’s see where it goes.’
It was really a feeling of freedom.”
1971
George Elias (A) writes that his
wife, Deborah Nikkei, has finished
her 40-chapter novel based on the
takeover of Bank of America. His
oldest daughter, Ingrid, will be
studying in India this summer and
fall as part of her undergrad work at
UC Berkeley.
1972
SusannW. Rogsdale (SF) reports:
“After 27 years in technology, we
left it all behind and moved to the
beach to pursue our first love books. We have a small used and
rare bookstore in Cannon Beach,
www.jupiterbooks.com. Our son is
pursuing the liberal arts at Reed
(the next best choice) although cur
rently taking a break doing techni
cal support - the job experience!”
Evan Dudik (A) has been spending
his time since last June publicizing
his new book. Strategic Renais
sance: New Thinking and Innova
tive Toolsfor Creating Great Corpo
rate Strategies... Using Insights
from History and Science, which
was published by the American
Management Association. He
claims major business schools and
consulting firms are mired in the
Middle Ages and says it is one of
the few recent business books that
starts with an auto defe. “Jay Leno
hasn’t called yet,” says Evan, “but
I’ve given 4 radio interviews, sever
al print interviews, and had a num
ber of speaking engagements. The
book has made a steady climb up
Amazon.com’s charts from their
1,437,936th to their 8,913th most
popular, but who’s counting. Harry
Potter watch out.”
Alvin Aronson (A) submits this
report about himself: “He has been
writing a comedy for many years
called Dr. Feelgood, based on the
life of the famous Dr. Max Jacobson,
who treated John F. Kennedy for his
back problems. Jacobson was later
disbarred by the American Medical
�{AlumniProfile}
2,9
Lisa Simeone:
Our Woman at NPR
By Roberta Gable,
A78
t’s not just the voice. But the voice is
unmistakable: rich, intimate, memorahle - and intelligent, hut neither
wiseacre nor world-weary. Perfect for
National Public Radio (NPR), which
has suited Lisa Simeone (Aj^g just
fine: recently she became the host of NPR’s
Weekend All Things Considered.
Simeone’s post-St. John’s radio odyssey
began with a focus on classical music. She
had first discovered her passion for it while a
student (at one point early in her enthusi
asm rushing down to the music hbrary to
ask Liz Bolotin, then the music librarian, if
she had “anything by Brandenburg” on
hand); then, after graduation, she volun
teered at the ten-watt station at Anne Arun
del Community College near Annapolis for
three hours a week, the lone voice of classi
cal in a sea of rock. She landed a job at
WBJC, the classical station in Baltimore, in
1983, stayed there for a year and a half, then
moved over to WETAin D.C., alarger, more
important station, but a helluva commute
from Baltimore. Two years was about
enough of that, and she quit, not sure of the
future, but meanwhile tiny WJHU in Balti
more was about to upgrade from its humble
status as a ten-watt station to something
more substantial. Simeone became part of
the original professional team, and stayed at
WJHU (which, like WBJC and WETA, was
an NPR affiliate) for ten years, from 1986 to
1996, hosting the afternoon classical music
program.
That’s a lot of classical music, even for an
aficionado. She made things more interest
ing for herself (and, as it turned out, for her
audience) by running short interviews right
before All Things Considered, the NPR
evening news show. Her first interviews
were with people having to do with music,
and were four minutes long; gradually she
extended the interview segment to 10, then
30, then 60 minutes, and the interviews to
any topics that interested her, from music to
health to science to social issues. She did
the whole thing herself, editing, producing,
and cutting the tape for the segments.
In 1996, burnt out, she left WJHU to go
freelance. She joined AFTRA, the American
Federation of Radio and Television Artists,
and worked doing voiceovers and narration
Lisa Simeone
Y didn "t want to talk
aboutJust music. I
wanted to talk about a
lot ofstuff.''
both on-camera and off. She also enrolled in
the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins Uni
versity, getting an MA in non-fiction writing
in 1997. But public radio was far from
finished with her.
The NPR documentary show Soundprint
was looking for a new host in 1997, and they
called Simeone to see if she was interested.
She was, especially since it was a regular
gig, but not full-time. She hosted the pro
gram for the next three and half years, pro
duced three documentaries herself, and also
filled in as the perennial guest host of NPR’s
Performance Today. (“I was always leaving,
and every time I did they threw a cham
pagne party.”) She turned down an offer to
become the permanent host of the program,
because she wasn’t interested in re-niching
herself back into classical music. “I didn’t
want to talk about just music. I wanted to
talk about a lot of stuff! ” She had that
{The College. Si. John’s
College . Spring 2001 }
opportunity when she began filling in occa
sionally for Liane Hansen on Weekend Edi
tion Sunday.
Then one day Weekend All Things Consid
ered (WATC) gave her a call. They wanted to
know if Simeone was interested in audition
ing for the host job. “I told them, ‘No! I’m
not working weekends!’” But they finally
persuaded her to audition, and she got the
job. Her first show was October 14, aooo.
Most NPR affiliates air WATC Saturday
and Sunday evenings, from 5:00 until 6:00
(and most NPR listeners will be chagrined
to learn that, in-house, “WATC” is pro
nounced to rhyme with “Yahtzee”).
Simeone’s show ranges from hard news to
cultural pieces, from the ephemeral to the
substantial, from soup to nuts, giving her
the opportunity to talk, as she wished, about
a lot of stuff. And although the ideas about
what stories to do on the show come from
her daily meetings with the producers and
editors, Simeone’s preferences are influen
tial. “This job is a generahst’s dream,” she
says, “and I became a more thoughtful, wellread generalist thanks to St. John’s....! loved
St. John’s, and the truth is there isn’t a day
that goes by that I don’t thank my lucky
stars that I went there, or that I don’t call
upon what I learned there. Just this morn
ing I did an interview with the two transla
tors of a new edition oiAnna Kareninawhat could be more St. Johnnie than that?! ”
Remembering her one-woman interview
show on WJHU, where she was interviewer,
editor, and producer, Simeone revels in the
luxury of not having to cut her own tape.
She reads, she looks at books and CDs, she
writes up questions, she conducts inter
views, she writes introductions and leads,
and she loves it when it’s live rather than on
tape. Early on in her WATC career she start
ed her show at 5:00 one fateful Sunday,
when Katherine Harris was expected to cer
tify the presidential vote count in Florida.
She stayed on the air five until 10:00. The
producer saved her some cold pizza.
Working at National Public Radio is a
pleasure for Simeone. “I love the environ
ment - I spend my time with creative, inter
esting people, with rich lives, who are burst
ing with ideas.” Sounds like a talking
college, with fewer books and more micro
phones.
�{AlumniNotes}
3°
Association for his unorthodox
practices, and this play is in defense
of his methods. Archie Smith, the
83-year-old brother of the late Winfree Smith, has been an actor for ao
years with the Denver Reperatory
Company. He is going to stage a
reading of the play in Denver the
week of February 15. Alvin has
many claims to fame: he was stage
manager for Kennedy’s last birthday
party at the Waldorf Astoria in
1963, when Audrey Hepburn sang
‘Happy Birthday.’ He had a talk
with Louis Armstrong that night
and told him how much he admired
him, to which Armstrong replied,
‘Thank you. Pops.’ He shook hands
with Marilyn Monroe, had lunch
with James Dean, acted with Geral
dine Page, and was once put down
brilliantly by the late Jacob Klein
(who was quite right).”
1973
Peter Ellison (A) is now Dean of
the Graduate School of Arts and
Sciences at Harvard University. His
new book. On Fertile Ground, was
due to be published by Harvard
University Press in March.
1974
2000 marked a year of big changes
for Roger Burk, USAF ret., (A)
and Robin Kowalchuk Burk
(A72). In July Roger left his posi
tion as a senior consultant/analyst
with the Aerospace Corp, and
joined the faculty of the U.S. Mili
tary Academy (West Point). He now
teaches optimization and decision
theory within the Systems Engi
neering department, drawing on
his doctoral degree in operations
research and his experience in the
use of computer models and deci
sion analysis to guide the selection
and evaluation of complex national
security systems. In addition to
teaching, he mentors junior facul
ty, assistant-coaches the crew and
fencing teams, consults, and con
tinues research activities.
Accepting the position entailed a
move to a few rural acres in the
mid-Hudson Valley, where Robin
keeps busy raising and training
champion show dogs (English
Cocker Spaniels, a hunting breed).
She reports that the sight of an out
standing dog standing with unself
conscious grace or moving with
perfect intensity through the fields
takes her breath entirely away.
Indoors, her weaving studio houses
several looms and a not-yet-bigenough stash of linen, cotton and
woolen yarns. She says that dogs
and weaving provide some solace to
the right hemisphere of her brain,
sadly neglected during 25+ years in
the computer industry, during
which time she also perpetrated
several technical books on unsus
pecting Amazon.com customers. In
her spare time and on the principle
that her MBA should probably be
put to some use even if there wasn’t
a single right-brain course in the
whole degree program, Robin con
tinues to consult to companies try
ing to figure out how to use all this
new Internet stuff in their busi
nesses.
1975
Kristin R. Lucas (SF) is working in
downtown Houston in the IT
department of an energy commodi
ties trading company. Her older son
is a junior at Carnegie Mellon Uni
versity and her younger son is a high
school senior.
extraordinarily different wants and
needs, and they let you know
it. Since I never did/will father a
child, this work is very satisfying
to me, and a shock to the nurses,
since many babies who don’t stop
crying for relatives, never cry when
‘Uncle Bill’ holds them. I recom
mend volunteerism for any and
all. Children and youths can con
tribute as well. Find something that
is energizing, and ‘just do it.’”
1978
Caroline (Charlie) Allen (A)
writes: “My occupations in life
since graduation have been music
(both classical and rock), software
engineering, and writing, pretty
much in that order. I got married in
1990 to Christophe (Kokou) Dossou, a master drummer from Togo
whom I met while I was living in
Germany and touring with various
bands. I co-own a small but sophisti
cated studio (24 tracks digital, 30
tracks HDR) called Dos Gatos in
Los Angeles with my business part
Diane Lamoreux Ciba (A) has
finished her course work for a PhD
in marketing at the University of
Connecticut. She is currently
teaching and has the research and
dissertation writing ahead of her.
Quantum Leaps
1976
van Canter (A81) writes: “When reading the last
Peter Clark (A) writes that he’s
still alive and well, living in Ranches
ter, Wyoming. “Not the end of the
world, but close enough to see it.”
1977
Carol Highshaw (SF) has left the
academic world and moved back to
the Washington D.C. area, where
she’s working as a researcher and
writer.
William Malloy (SF) writes:
“Although discussing ideas found
in books and films can be very satis
fying, I have found something at the
other end of the spectrum of activi
ty to be very wonderful as
well. Since late 1999,1 have been a
volunteer at a children’s hospital in
Houston. One evening a week, I
work giving respites to parents, by
talking/playing with older children,
or holding/rocking infants. On Sat
urday afternoons, I hold, rock, or
just comfort premature babies. They
are not just ‘smaller newborns.’
Since preemies ‘aren’t supposed to
be here yet,’ they have many
{The College.
ner, also my bass player. Like me, he
works a lot in software, particularly
digital signal processing. We have a
band called BushTaxi which has one
independent CD out and is about to
release a second. Apart from that
I’ve played on about five
records/CDs for other bands, and
have credits on a number of movies
(for writing special effects code) the one I’m most proud ofis/a/nej
and the Giant Peach, for which I
was Sony’s CG software supervisor.
Lately I’ve been focussing more on
biotech and digital audio than on
computer graphics. I can’t help
think of Mr. Golding when I consid
er my own dislike of telephones, but
I’m very good with e-mail (it is,
after all, one of the bases of my cod
ing life since about 1986) and would
love to hear from folks. My e-mail
address is caro@nwc.net.”
issue of The Reporter, I was reminded of a moment
in my first day of junior French with Mr. Littleton.
He was leading us in reading the first paragraph of
Baudelaire’s ‘Recueillement’: ‘Soi sage, o ma
doulour, et tiens-toi plus tranquille...’ We could hear
the Freshman Chorus singing ‘white sands and gray sands, w
buy my white sands.’ Mr. Littleton, who had been our Freshm
Chorus tutor two years before, told a story. He was visiting
Switzerland when he learned a local song about the change of sea
sons and the level of the snowcaps in the mountains. ‘When the
snow caps go up, I can roll up my shirtsleeves’ or something like
that. He said it was remarkable to him because it showed that you
can see time. He said sitting in that room with us as juniors, hstening to the song we sang as freshmen wafted up the staircase of
McDowell, showed him that he could hear time, as well. We sat
stunned, astounded at this quantum leap.
“And now, reading The Reporter each time I have discovered a
new phenomenon. I start with the class notes from the present
graduating class and turn backward to find the news of my class
mates, the class of 1981. And each year our class recedes farther
and farther. It is as if we are retrograding into the past, soon to
take our place next to the hero generations of the college. And so
now as I turn page after page, I know I can feel time, as well.
“My wife Ellen, five-year-old Taha, new baby Emma, and I hve in
Chicago. I am now a course developer for Unext.com, an online grad
uate and executive education university. I have been a lawyer, ele
mentary school teacher, school administrator, and web developer.” ->■
E
Sf. John’s College ■ Spring 2001 }
�{AlumniNotes}
Michael Ciba (A) continues as pas
tor of Mill Plain Union Church in
Waterbury, Conn., and is enrolled in
a spiritual formation program with
the Shalem Institute in Washington,
D.C. Their daughter Rachel is a jun
ior at UConn, majoring in anthro
pology. Their son Daniel is a fresh
man at Adelphi University in
Garden City, N.Y., majoring in
drama and dance. Connecticut is
the twelfth place they’ve lived since
they were married, and it seems to
agree with them. Anyone who
remembers them is welcome to con
tact Michael at RevCiba@aol.com or
Diane at DiCiba@aol.com.
1979
Gregory R. Cowell ( SF) writes:
“With my second child on the way I
thought I would send in an update
of my life, not having done so since I
drove away 31 years ago. My wife
Jeannine and 1 have been married
for eight years. We have two future
St. John’s candidates at our house:
our daughter Cathryn is three and a
half, and we are expecting a son in
the next month. I have been practic
ing medicine for 16 years and cur
rently I am the medical director of a
medium-size emergency room in
llhnois. Music is my passion, but I
have yet to figure out how to make a
living as a musician. My e-mail is
gcowelled@aol.com. Regards to all,
but especially to old E and F dorm
ers who might be reading.”
1980
News from Tony Waters (A): “I live
in Auburn, Calif. My wife, Dagmar
Waters, and 1 have two children,
aged 12 and 9.1 am currently an
assistant professor of sociology at
California State University, Chico,
and recently published a book.
Bureaucratizing the Good Samari
tan: the Limitations ofHumanitari
an Relief Operations (Westview
2001). It is in part based on my work
in the Rwanda Relief operation in
Tanzania, in 1994-6. In terms of
teaching responsibilities, I do the
crime classes (criminology and juve
nile delinquency), population, eth
nic relations, and ‘macro-sociology’
in general.”
in November in Columbia, Md. “Email me at Nhrosen@aol.com for
any good reason,” he says.
1981
“I was married to the lovely SherryAnn Jhingai in June 2000,” writes
Joshua Berlow (SF). “Sherry con
vinced me to move back east from
Santa Fe, where I had been living.
We were married in St. Thomas, in
the U.S. Virgin Islands, where Sherry
has a lot of friends and family. The
wedding took place on the famed
North Side of St. Thomas, in a very
dramatic villa (Villa LeMcAi) over
looking the sea. My best man was
Eric Quinn (A82). Sherry is origi
nally from Trinidad, in the south
Caribbean, so after the wedding it
was off to her home village of
Cumuto in Trinidad. I’ve never seen
anyplace so lush and green! What
seemed like the entire village
turned out for a wedding party held
in our honor. We are in the process
of buying a house in Baltimore, and
will be moved there by the time the
magazine comes out. Anyone inter
ested can check out my web site at
www.joshuaberlow.com They can
purchase my newly-published book
Insanity Factory: A Psychiatric Mem
oir on the web site, as well as view
various articles, and some papers
written for classes at St. John’s.”
Joe Roach (A) e-mails: “My wife BJ
(Sisson) (A) and I dropped off our
daughter Katie at St. John’s - Katie
matriculated with the new January
Freshmen class. Our two other chil
dren, Molly (15) and Nicholas (ii)
helped move Katie in. After
Nicholas was introduced to Peter
Kalkavage (who was a freshman
tutor when I was a freshman), he
asked me, ‘Was he your college
roommate?’ The cruelty of children.
“I am in my sixth year as a staff
member at The New School in
Newark, Del., which is a democratic
(or liberty-based) school. Melanie
( Jago) Hiner (A80) asked me to
give her some help when she opened
the school in the fall of 1995. At that
point we had 7 students - now we have
over 50. Nick and Molly have been
at the school since the opening.”
1982
Nathan Rosen (A) and his wife
Roberta Babbitt announce the birth
of Brina Tamar Rosen on July ii.
“Yes, that’s six children, for those
who are keeping score,” he notes.
His production of The Crucible ran
{The College.
1983
After 13 years in the practice of law,
Michael Henry (A) recently
opened his own law office in center
city Philadelphia. He has been mar
ried for 13 years and is living in
Media, Penn. His wife Lorie and he
have three children: Michael, age
II, Devin, age 10, and Daniel, age 7.
“We are actively involved in our
parish and children’s school, St.
Mary Magdalen,” Michael writes.
“My practice consists mainly of civil
trial work and immigration. I have
organized a Lawyer’s Retreat group
under the auspices of the Cathedral
Ministries for the Diocese of Cam
den, N.J. We meet four or five times
a year to discuss faith issues and the
practice of law. I would love to hear
from old classmates and other alum
ni.” Michael’s address is i Gordon
Drive/Media, Pa. 19063.
Robin B.G. Laylin (SF) and his
wife, Laura, report the birth of their
daughter, Catherine, on June 26,
2000.
31
ness law at a big firm in Miami. I’m
married to a beautiful and brilliant
woman who hails from North Dako
ta and Seattle, and who is a lawyer as
well. We have two babies, Allegra
(just two) and Ethan (6 months).
Have visited with Mitch Buroker
(SF84) in L.A. recently, and gotten a
nice letter from Jack Armstrong
(A83). Would love to hear from any
St. John’s friends. E-mail at
whill@steelhector.com.”
1984
ALUTHA JAMANCAR (BRAD WEST-
gaard) (SF) says that he’s reached
three milestones this pastyear: “I
celebrated my six-year wedding
anniversary with Daniela Chiapella,
a native of Northern Italy; I
changed careers from print to web
publishing; and I changed my name
from Brad Westgaard to Alutha
Jamancar. Drop me aline at
alutha@alutha.com or stop by my
homepage atwww.alutha.com. I’d
love to hear from old classmates,
especially my freshman core group!
Visitors to our home in Silicon Val
ley are welcome, but had best not
have any cat allergies! ”
David Walworth (A) has finally
While Scott Fitzpatrick (A) does
do freelance web design, as reported
in the fall issue of The Reporter, he
has also been the Principal Site
Architect for Computer Sciences
Corporation for several years. He
has designed all the classified
intranet sites for the Ballistic Mis
sile Defense Organization and is
now currently creating the web sites
and the Director/Flash interactive
CD ROM demo disks for CSC’s elec
tronic knowledge management
group. “In other words,” he writes,
in reference to our omission, “I do
have a full time job.”
Darrel Moellendorf (A) writes:
“Last year, in my 40th year, my wife
- Bonnie Friedmann - and I became
parents for the first time. Our son’s
name is Marino Arnold Friedmann.
I am still living in South Africa, and
teaching philosophy at the University
of the Witwatersrand. My book. Cos
mopolitan Justice, will be published
this year. And I’d love to hear from
old friends.My e-mail address is
103dar@muse.wits.ac.za.”
A note from William Hill (A) says:
“I’m alive and well, practicing busi
St. John’s College ■ Spring 2001 }
gotten his yacht design business up
and running: Walworth Yacht
Designs, P.O. Box 3792, KingshiU
VI00851.
Karen Tourian (A) completed her
first Gentury (100 mile) bike ride on
Labor Day.
Peter Green (A) writes; “Still in
Prague, though probably not for
much longer. Spent a week in
August sailing in Groatia with Jason
Walsh (A85). Then found myself in
Belgrade in October to cover the
demise of Slobodan Milosevic.
Arrived in New York in time to expe
rience the unending madness of
Election 2000.”
Connie Bates (A) writes: “My hus
band and I are proud to announce
the birth of our first child. Dean
Calvin Calloway, on November 16,
2000.”
�{AlumniNotes}
3^
1989
1985
1987
Bonnie Bishop Stark (SF) is finish
ing her third year of a nurse-mid
wifery program at Case Western
University in Cleveland, Ohio. She
will complete the program next
year.
“In December I completed my first
(and probably last) marathon,”
writes Marjorie C. Kaplan (A).
“My mother died of lymphoma in
June 3000, and in her memory I
joined Team in Training, a
marathon training program that
benefits the Leukemia and Lym
phoma Society of America. After
four months of training that
required 30 to 45 miles a week of
roadwork, I completed the Honolu
lu Marathon the same day I started
it, crossing the finish line smiling
and under my own power, and NOT
dead last - there were about a dozen
elderly tourists behind me, but they
may have strayed onto the course by
accident.”
1986
“My life has completely changed in
the past two years,” writes Lucy
Duncan (SF). “My business partner
and I closed the Story Monkey
Bookstore in Dec. ’98. We were
growing but not fast enough to war
rant continuing. It was a sad loss for
me and for the community
(Omaha), but we were able to walk
away without significant financial
scars. I took a job in January of ’99
with the Friends General Confer
ence of Religions of Friends (Quak
ers) in Philadelphia as their book
store manager. I really love the
place and the work. FGC is by far
the healthiest organization I’ve ever
worked for. We do primarily a mail
order and Web business (quakerbooks.org). In Oxfordshire, Eng
land, in April of ’99 I met my fiance,
Graham Grarner, at a conference of
Quaker publishers and booksellers.
We will be married in April of aooi
at the London Grove Meeting House
outside Philadelphia. Sheila Virgil
(A88) will play flute at the wedding.
We plan on settling in Philadelphia,
though Grant is keeping his house
in England so who knows about the
future. I see Amy Murphy Bianco
(SF86) regularly. She is an editor at
McGraw Hill launching a science
trade division. I’d love to hear from
anyone else. My email address is:
lucyd@fgquaker.org.”
Erik Mueller-Harder (A) e-mails
this report: “My wife Karen and I
are extremely pleased to announce
the birth of our daughter Clara Jean
in October of 2,000. Our son Timo
thy is about to turn four, and he’s
promising to be a great older broth
er for Clara. There’s lots of news and
photos on our family web site,
www.praxisworks.org. I’m stiU
spending most of my time building
Praxis News Digest, at pnd.praxisworks.com.”
1992
Susie Attar Antebi (A) is living in
Michael Stevens (AGI) writes:
Panama City, Fla. with her two kids,
Daniela and Isaac, and husband
Alberto. “Miss the Johnnies and
would love to hear from long-lost
friends,” she says. Her e-mail is
danisa@sinfo.net.
“We welcomed a daughter, Juba
Linda, into our home on April 22,
2000. We tried a homebirth this
time around - quite a wonderful way
to have a baby. The midwife was a
dynamo - no ‘windeggs’ such as
beset Socrates! Julia joins brother
Ethan, three.”
Chris Tegeler (A) e-mails: “At the
end of January, I moved to Athens,
Greece to work in our land agent’s
office in Piraeus, Arete Tours. A
rather appropriate name for a com
pany employing a Johnnie, I must
say. My address: Xenokratous 42,
10676 Athens, Greece. My e-mail is
StiU the same, ctegeler@yahoo.com.
Looking forward to hearing from
anyone passing through.”
Mark Hentz, III (A) is attending
Northeastern University School of
Law while working full-time at
Northeastern in the office of enroll
ment management. “Jack Gunther
and I were very happy to be in Ted
Hanratty’s wedding party this past
October,” he writes.
Bryan Dorland (A) e-mails: “I
Brett Heavner (A) writes: “My
1988
Kim Paffenroth (A) has just been
hired as an Assistant Professor of
Religious Studies at Iona College in
New Rochelle, N.Y. His book yfz/gizjtine and Liberal Education (Ashgate
Publishing, 2000) has just been
favorably reviewed in The Heythrop
Journal, and his next book, Judas
through the Centuries, will be pub
lished next year by Westminster
John Knox Press. As a gratifying
part of his last days teaching at Vil
lanova University, one of his stu
dents has again been honored with
the highest writing award given to a
first year student at ViUanova.
John Lavery (A) is still in London
and working in the commercial
banking world, despite Leo’s
advice. “Have developed a weak
ness for skiing,” he writes, “and
will take any invitation offered in
that regard.”
Erin Milnes (A) writes: “I’m still
living happily in San Francisco (five
years now - can you believe it?!) I
continue to freelance edit and write,
but I’ve added some video work to
my repertory. In the past year I
worked on a documentary shoot in
Nepal and one in Death Valley
(where temperatures soared to 120
degrees in the shade). I’ve also been
sea kayaking a lot lately and heartily
recommend it. Life is good.”
{The College.
wife Christine and I proudly
announce the birth of our son,
David Graham Heavner, on January
31, 2000.”
Garfield Goodrum (A) writes:
“We have adopted two thorough
breds from an equine rescue group
in Pennsylvania, and I just compet
ed in my first horse show - dres
sage, to my wife’s chagrin (she’s
into jumpers!). We’re loving the
horses, whose names are Turtle and
Clem, and young Graham Heavner
has even ridden them! Don’t forget
to spay/neuter your companion
animal!” ■
David (A) and Cherie (A90) Reese
live in Vienna, Vir., with Sam and
Lydia Reese, ten and three years old.
Their St. John’s education, they
write, allows them to live lives of
total and constant bliss.
1990
David Marquez (SF) says that he
“escaped the slavery of the Star
bucks Corporation” and now works
for Arch Wireless Corporation. “I
look forward to receiving survival
tips from any and all,” he says.
Ken Turnbull (A) is now an associ
ate at Piper, Marbury, Rudnick &
Wolfe LLP in Baltimore, where he is
in the litigation department.
5r. John’s College ■ Spring sooi }
received a Master of Science in
physics from the University of
Maryland in August 2000. In Janu
ary 2001,1 passed the PhD qualify
ing exams in physics at Maryland,
and I am set to begin thesis
research this semester. Anyone who
wants to contact me can reach me
at dorland@physics.umd.edu. ”
Leah Ankeny (SF) is enjoying a
challenging new position as an
admissions counselor for Cornish
College of the Arts, a private, fouryear visual and performing arts col
lege located in Seattle, Washington.
“Despite the rumors of my impend
ing marriage, I am living on my own
and revisiting a more independent
life.” she says. “I am thrilled at the
arrival of my beautiful ‘niece,’ Ema
(Cooney) Bargeron, daughter of my
dear friend and fellow alumna
Joanna (SF). I continue to study
yoga and search for my path spiritual
ly, setting aside performing and writ
ing for a while. I look forward to see
ing all the ’92 Santa Fe folks at our
tenth reunion in Spring 2002.1 can
be reached at: Lankeny@yahoo.com
and I always welcome visitors to the
Peaceful Pacific Northwest.”
Judah M. Domke (SF) writes: “I
just appeared as a lead actor in a
movie called ‘Whipped’ that came
out this past November. If you
missed it on the big screen, John
nies can rent it when it comes out
on video in February 2001. It’s an
R-rated sex comedy that isn’t for the
faint of heart.”
�{Alumni Profile}
33
Shopaholic by Profession
Heather Moore (SFoo) landed a dream ofafirstjob:
she getspaid to revel and shopfor the coolest circus around.
BY SuS3AN Borden, A87
eather Moore’s been
buying quite a lot
these days, going from
city to city, picking up
an odd assortment of
goods: nuts, bolts,
earphone antennas, eye makeup
remover, marine antifreeze, used CDs,
a ping pong table, even mail-order
sequins. But she’s no itinerant shopa
holic. She’s hard at work - as the assis
tant buyer on tour with the Cirque du
Soleil, the avant-garde circus that’s
much closer to The Matrix than it is to
Dumbo.
Moore lucked into the job this summer,
after a post-graduation move to Denver with
her boyfriend, Joey Chernila (SFoa). A
temp agency sent the couple to Cirque du
Soleil, where they worked as runners,
acquiring the products purchased by the
buyers. When a permanent job opened up,
Moore applied, won the position, and head
ed to Montreal for training. Since then,
she’s been to Minneapolis, Washington,
D.C., Atlanta, and Miami. New York, Chica
go, Boston, and Philadelphia are slated for
the coming months, and by the time the
tour’s over in 2002, she’ll have hit Houston,
Dallas, and Phoenix. She says the travel is a
dream come true. “For the last four months
of school I kept telling my roommate, ‘If I
could just get a job where they would pay me
to travel I would never complain.’ It’s exact
ly what I wished for,” she says.
Although Moore travels within the United
States, her co-workers come from 52 coun
tries and include Chinese acrobats, Russian
jugglers, and all manner of Canadian col
leagues. Most business is transacted in
Heather Moore (above) is an assitant buyer
ON TOUR WITH DrALION, WHOSE ACTS ARE
ENHANCED BY HIGH-TECH EFFECTS (bELOw).
French, which Moore says is difficult
even after Phedre and Fleurs du Mai.
“I’m working on speaking French,
which is a big challenge, especially
since it’s not really French, it’s Quebe
cois,” she says. “Speaking French will
be integral in my later career with
Cirque.” Later career? How long can a
first job last?
Moore, who knows a good thing
when she falls into it, says that while
her job lasts until the end of the tour in
another year and a half, she’s already
exploring different departments and
thinking about different opporutinites
within Cirque, which has headquarters
in Montreal, Amsterdam, Singapore,
and Orlando. Her current fascination is the
tech department. “Our show has a lot of
effects - lighting and rigging - to facilitate
some of the acts. There’s an aerial ballet
with two dancers on a long silk rope doing a
series of acrobatics in the air. The behindthe-scenes tech stuff helps make the show
spectacular.”
Moore is also considering working with
Cirque’s development of a permanent com
plex in London consisting of a hotel, a
restaurant, a retail area, and a show. In the
meantime, she’s enjoying the Cirque du
Soleil life, which she says resembles her justbygone undergraduate days.
“Who would ever think they could get a
first job like this?” she asks. “It’s been so
exciting, and it’s come at such a great time. I
didn’t even get good and used to being out of
college before I joined up with Cirque. You
live with these people, you work with them,
you eat with them. You the get chance to
develop intense relationships with every
body around you while you’re on a constant
road trip. It’s like college on wheels.” 4"
Michael Deutsch (SFGI) has been
Jonathan Secora Pearl (A) writes
Aaron Mason (SF) reports: “I am
promoted to vice president of Wad
dell & Associates, Inc., a provider of
investment and financial counsel
located in Memphis, Tenn. He
earned his CFP (Certified Financial
Planner) license in 1997 and served
previously as assistant vice presi
dent at the firm.
that after leaving St. John’s in 1990
he studied music at Indiana Univer
sity, then received a Master of Music
in Vocal Performance from Rice in
1997. He is currently pursuing a
PhD in musicology at the University
of California, Santa Barbara, with
an emphasis on the cognition of
speech and song.
alive and well, living in Manhat
tan’s Upper West Side with my
boyfriend of nearly five years. Still
an aspiring actor, I have taken a
‘dayjob’ with a large architectural
firm writing and editing for their
marketing department. In March, I
am acting in a ten-minute play that
I wrote; it’s a dark comedy called
‘Mr. Oedipus.’ Looking forward to
1993
Alex Ellerman (AGI) is a flight
instructor with Navy Training
Squadron 29. VANESSA Ellerman
(A) is practicing law with Hornblow
er, Manning & Ward, and they’re
both still celebrating the birth of
their son Ian on April 20, 2000,
(The College.
St. John’s College ■ Spring 2001 }
�{Alumni Notes}
34
JohnnyXpress
1994
An Unofficial Bulletin Board/E-mail List
for the St. John's Community
Hallie Leighton (SF92) has started a new yahoo “eGroup” to
function as an unofficial hulletin hoard for the St. John’s commu
nity. On johnnyXpress, members of the SJC community worldwide
can post and read announcements and queries (e.g., “Moving to a
new city - looking for area Johnnies/alumnae chapter/contacts”
or “Whatever happened to Johnnie Doe, class of ‘__, A/SF?” or
“Hey, I have a gallery opening...”). These announcements are
received in the e-mail boxes of all Johnny subscribers. Subscribing
is free and easy - just e-mail johnnyXpress-subscribe@egroups.com.
For more information about johnnyXpress, e-mail johnnyXpressowner@egroups.com or go to http://www.charm.net/~bfant/
johnny/bulletin.html, part of the unofficial alumni site run by
Bill Fant (A79).
The purpose of johnnyXpress is to enable members of the St.
John’s College community to get and/or share information with
other Johnnies as quickly as possible. Thus it is for announce
ments and brief queries. Though the list is not moderated, meta
physical meanderings or idle banter will not be allowed. (The rea
son for this draconian rule: there is already an e-mail list for
conversation, “the Johnny List.” To subscribe to the high-volume
Johnny list, send an e-mail to majordomo@charm.net with the
words “subscribe johnny” or “subscribe johnny-digest” in the
body of the e-mail message.)
Why is this bulletin board “unofficial”? Because it’s not run by
the college. The college is working on a new web site that will have
more features for alumni but it won’t be online until next fall at the
earliest.
warmer weather and hearing from
long lost Johnnies!
Aaronious@earthlink.net. ”
reads them, though upside-down,
rather than eating them, we know
she is headed for SJC class of
2030.”
John Markos O’Neill (SF)
reports that he is in his fourth
happy year of “bicycling, singing
(in Schola Cantorum, a local cho
rus), dancing (swing), and coding
in Silicon Valley. I would love to
hear from Johnnies in the SF Bay
area or elsewhere! E-mail me at
Jmo@ipsmedia.com.”
Jim and KRISTEN (Riddlespurger)
Litsinger (A) happily celebrate the
first twenty-four months with their
daughter, Emily Golden Litsinger.
“Born in April 1999, she is a true
delight with curly (can’t explain
that one!) blond hair. Her eyes
always smile and she is quick to gig
gle. Big brother Nathaniel (31/a),
also adores his sister, particularly as
long as she doesn’t play with the
toys he might want to play with.
Emily already shows a great love of
books and now that she actually
Ethan Schoonover (SF) is e-business director for Lowe Lintas and
Partners (an international marketing/communications agency) in
Southeast Asia, currently based in
Bangkok. He oversees online mar
keting, web site development, and
internet strategy for multinational
clients. “I get to travel frequently
throughout the region, which is
enjoyable as I continue to be a stu
dent of the many cultures I
encounter. I do miss the mountains
and beauty of Santa Fe, but the year
’round tropical beaches in SE Asia
go a long way towards assuaging my
homesickness for the USA. And of
course, ever true to St. John’s, I am
obligated to occasionally quote
Homer in meetings with clients. I’d
love to hear from friends/enemies.
Here is my e-mail address: ethan.
schoonover@lowehntas .com.”
{The College.
A note from Emi Ima-Kohn and
Colin Ray (both A94): “We met at
St. John’s. Emi was living in the
U.S. although she was Japanese.
Colin had been hving in Nigeria
although he was American. We
both had Mrs. Maschler for Fresh
man Greek. Although we were in
the same Greek class, we did not
really get to know one another until
late in the spring of our Freshman
year when we took a clowning class
together. Cohn exceUed at jugghng;
Emi excelled at falling-down. By the
end of the year, we were very close
friends. During the summer of 1991
Emi taught at a camp in Vermont
and Colin returned to Nigeria to
visit family and friends.
“After spending part of sopho
more year in Santa Fe, Emi moved
to France and put herself through
the French university system by
being an au-pair for a French fami
ly. After completing St. John’s,
Colin went to Cameroon as a Peace
Corps volunteer to teach math in
French. For nine years, we kept in
touch-sometimes more frequently,
sometimes less, hut always as close
friends. After completing a mas
ter’s degree in Russian studies at
the Sorbonne, Emi was accepted
into the D.E.A. (a degree between a
master’s and doctoral degree) pro
gram at the Political Science Insti
tute in Paris, where she focused her
studies on the new Independent
States of the former Soviet Union.
After the Peace Corps, Colin
returned to the U.S. to study law
and business at Willamette Univer
sity in Salem, Oregon.
“In 1999 we started keeping in
touch more and more. In March
3000 Colin traveled to Paris to see
Emi. In May, Emi came to the U.S.
for Colin’s graduation ceremony.
On graduation day, we became
engaged. After announcing our
engagement, we hopped on Colin’s
motorcycle and seven days and
3800 miles later we arrived in New
York. In June, Emi then had to
return to Paris to complete an
internship at the OECD - Organiza
tion for Economic Cooperation and
Development. At the end of July,
Colin took the New York bar exam.
At the beginning of November,
Colin happily accepted a position as
an Associate Attorney with a smaU
international law firm in Amster
Sf. John’s College ■ Spring 2001 }
dam. He will primarily work in
international corporate and inter
national tax law. And ... at 11:00
on November ii, 3000, in Linlith
gow, Scotland, we were married.
The best way to reach us is by
e-mail at: Emikocolin_ray@hotmail.com.”
Johnny Metelsky (A) and Lydia
Rolita (A96) were married on June
17th in their backyard in the San
Bernardino Mountains in Southern
California. Johnnies in attendance
were: Muneet Rakshi (A94), Hope
DelCarlo (SF94), Jen Donnelly
(A96), JOELLA KLINGHOFEER (A96),
Aimee Lalone (A94), Sundance
Metelsky (AGI90), Paul More
(A94), John Williams (A96), and
Ron Wingate (A94). Honorary
Johnnies John Metelsky and Ethan
Billotte were also in attendance.
Lydia and Johnny plan to move
back East in a couple of years when
Lydia finishes medical school at
Loma Linda University and Johnny
finishes his masters in astrophysics
atUC Riverside. E-mailjmetelsky@hotmail.com.
Bill Kowalksi (SF) writes: “I am
happy to announce that my second
novel. Somewhere South ofHere, is
finally finished and will be pub
lished by HarperCollins in March of
3001. Most of the action takes place
in Santa Fe, and readers of this pub
lication will probably recognize a
certain small liberal arts college
which plays a minor but noticeable
role in the story - though of course
any similarities to colleges either
living or dead are purely coinciden
tal. In addition, Eddie’s Bastard,
my first novel, is out in paperback,
and is now being translated into 12
languages - including Finnish,
Hebrew, Czech and my grandmoth
er’s personal favorite, Polish. No
word yet on Tagalog or Urdu. So far
nobody has bought the film rights,
either, but hope, as they say,
springs eternal. Another piece of
good news is that HarperCollins
has also purchased the rights to my
third novel, which is still in its very
early stages, and my fourth, about
which I have no clue. After two loud
and smoggy years in Brooklyn I’ve
moved to Toronto, where I live with
my non-Johnny companion and
freaky consort, Alexandra. I wel
come email from friends and class
mates, so please write to wilham.
kowalski@CIMteration.com.”
�{AlumniProfile}
35
La Vie Parisienne
Phil Wood, owner ofParisfixture the San Francisco Book Co., is afrancophile success story.
BY
Sus3AN Borden, A87
or much of his adult life,
Phil Wood (A67) knew he
wanted to live in Paris. He
had first visited the city
when he was in the army
in ighr, stationed in Ger
many. The charm of the culture, the
intellectual bent of the people, and the
beauty of the country attracted him from
the start.
In 1986, he rented an apartment on
the lie St.-Louis but ended up spending
most of the year working at his job in
California. Undaunted, he continued to
study French. Ten years later, when he
was working for Parallax Press in Berke
ley as comptroller/computer systems
administrator, he found himself in Paris
for several weeks.
“I had very little hope of extricating
myself,” says Wood, who was at the time a
devoted employee. “Then my boss, who
knew I wanted to move and who’d been
interviewing people to take his place, told
me on the phone that someone he’d inter
viewed was not suitable for his job but could
do my job quite well. He said, Tf you’re ever
thinking of leaving, now might be the time.’
I remember the moment when I came out of
that phone booth on Rue Monge in the fifth
arrondissement and realized that I might
actually be able to move to France.”
Wood decided to take the leap. He signed
up for the Cours de Langue et Civilisation
Frangaise at the Sorbonne, found an apart
ment on the lie de la Cite, and began to
investigate starting a business. Learning
about the French educational system and
about the French business world, he says,
was an adventure in the French way of doing
things.
Having always admired the intellectual
disposition of the French, Wood enjoyed
learning how to write the French disserta
tion, a composition with a strict form: the
question, the thesis, the antithesis, and the
synthesis. “I realized, here is a very power
ful cultural difference. They’ve gone
through this process throughout their edu
cation and they all know how to do this.’”
But when it came to starting a business.
Wood was not certain that the intellectual
approach was best. Planning to open a book
store on the left bank, he took a weeklong
Phil Wood didn’t do a market survey, as his
French business advisers dictated; he
STARTED THE BOOKSTORE AND WAITED TO SEE IF
ANYONE WOULD COME IN.
workshop on French business practice and
found that much emphasis was placed on the
etude de marche, the market study. “Every
one kept asking me if I had done one. I said
no. My feeling was, the way I’m going to do
my market study is by starting the store and
seeing if anybody comes in,” says Wood.
“The etude is an intellectual approach, but it
can be counterproductive, at least for an
American. You can think a lot and do studies
and in the end never do anything.”
As it turns out. Wood was not hampered
by skipping the etude. His English-language
bookstore, San Francisco Book Co., does a
fine business, selling used books to a clien
tele about half French-speaking and half Eng
lish-speaking. Wood says that the French are
careful about what they read and tend to buy
serious books, especially history and good
literature. “Books that are somewhat criti
cal of America or a little offbeat sell well,
books by Bill Bryson and Hunter Thomp
son,” says Wood. “The French also like con
spiracy-type works about JFK.” Wood’s Eng
lish-speaking customers include a tourist
trade with an appetite for paperback edi
tions of literature and modern fiction.
Although Wood deals with the business
rather than the retail side of the store, he is
not deprived of encounters with the public.
{The College.
Sf. John’s College • Spring 2001 }
He and his principal book buyer, Dick
Toney, spend many afternoons looking
through books, often in private collec
tions. The advantages of such excur
sions, says Wood, go beyond the com
mercial: “You get to meet interesting
people and see their apartments in
Paris, go to parts of town you’ve never
been to and see how people live.”
Wood remembers one picture-perfect
afternoon when he and Toney visited
two sisters, “respectable old ladies,” at
their house near Fontainebleu. “It was
like something out of a movie: a beauti
ful village, nothing moving, no cars, a
little river. The house was right across
from the church. Two elderly women
answered the bell and the first thing
they wanted was not to talk about the
books, but to sit down and have drinks
in the garden. There we were, Dick and
I, two old guys from California sitting with
two elderly spinsters, drinking apple juice.
The sun was out and the birds were singing
and the church bell was ringing and finally
we had to say, ‘what about the books?’ ”
But it’s not just respectable old ladies that
Wood has met. In 1999, he married Anouk
Malaquin, whom he met through mutual
friends. “Our first ‘date’ was actually the
result of a misunderstanding on my part
about the time I was supposed to show up to
help some friends,” he says. “When they
said to come at ‘six-thirty,’ it never occurred
to me they meant 6:30 a.m., so when I
arrived at 6:30 p.m. - i8h3o French time Anouk was there and my help was no longer
needed. I said, ‘I guess I’ll go to the movies,’
and she said ‘What a good idea! ’ and off we
went. We saw Breaking the Waves, which I
had been intending to see but probably
wouldn’t have chosen for a first date! ”
Today, Wood’s vie Parisienne is complete.
He lives in an apartment in Montmartre,
has married into an old bourgeois family,
and runs a bookstore on the left bank. And
he’s enough of a Paris fixture that the guide
book Paris Access published a list of his city
favorites, including the Jardin du Luxem
bourg, the market in the Rue Mouffetard,
the city lit up at Christmas with concerts in
the churches, watching the boulistes around
Montmartre, and - appropriately enough for
a bookstore-owning Johnnie - the reading
room of the Bibliotheque Ste. Genevieve.
�{AlumniNotes}
3®
Amanda Dulin (A) writes that she is
happy in Charlottesville with
Dominic.
Delsen) Flynn (A). “We are scuba
diving and changing lots of dia
pers!”
Nathan Humphrey (A) has a piece
Alice Brown (A) writes: “Greg and
in the Fall 2000 issue of re:generation quarterly about how sophomore
year at St. John’s - in particular his
reading of the Confessions - led to
his spending the summer at a
Catholic Benedictine monastery. As
the son of an Evangehcal Christian
minister, Humphrey was taught to
file “Cathohcism” under “cults,”
along with Mormonism and Scien
tology. But at the monastery “the
false dichotemy between the
‘sacred’ and the ‘secular’ disap
peared.” His piece is a plea for
understanding among the various
Christian denominations.
I are in Columbus, Ohio, where
Greg is earning a PhD in classics at
OSU and I am teaching at a charter
school. Life is grand. Best wishes to
all.”
1995
October 29, 2000 saw the wedding
of China Williams (A) and Matt
Baum (A). The ceremony was held at
Sigmund Stern Grove in San Fran
cisco, Calif.
A report from Carrie Sager (A):
“In the fall, I spent three great
months in China studying acupunc
ture and traditional Chinese medi
cine. The experience was fantastic.
Surprisingly, I grew to really love
China and was sad to leave. After
China, I visited Hong Kong - a nice
return to civilization. Then it was
six weeks of travelling around Thai
land. One of the funniest things on
my trip - there I am standing on a
pier in the middle of Bangkok and
who do I run into... a fellow John
nie, Diedre O’Shea (A97). In all,
an awesome trip although my body
was really ready to come home and
eat good old North American food
by the end. I would love to offer
what little advice I can to anyone
travelling to those countries. For
now, I will keep my e-mail address at
carrie_china@yahoo.com. My other
news is that I am getting married.
My boyfriend proposed the week
before I left - guess he wanted to
make sure I came backNow I
have just nine months to get ready
for the big day - Sept. 28, 2001.
Knowing my timing, it will conflict
with Annapolis homecoming
again!”
“My husband, Ethan, and I are
doing a two-year tour of duty in
Guam,” writes Sarah (Van
Cheryl Heneveld (AGI) is still in
1996
Adrienne Jakowski Rukensiein
married Peter Rubenstein (both A)
in July of 1998. They are currently
living in Arlington, Vir. After gradu
ating, Adrienne got an MA in Teach
ing Secondary English, taught for
two years with Denver Public
Schools, and is now getting another
MA in Deaf Education at Gallaudet
University in Washington, D.C. She
was recently offered a job teaching
English to high school seniors at a
deaf school in D.C. Peter has been
exploring technical jobs with
USwest and an Internet company in
DC called Covad. He enjoys eating a
bowl of Lucky Charms while watch
ing the Powerpuff Girls or Dexter’s
Laboratory on Cartoon Network.
His favorite philosopher is still
Leibniz and his favorite color is
green.
James Cromer (AGI) is going back
to school - to Skidmore College - to
learn how to design web pages while
he completes his ninth year of teach
ing.
Joy Pope (AGI) and Miguel Alandete have welcomed a daughter into
their lives. Maya Lucia Pope Alandete was born on October 3, weigh
ing in at an astonishing 9 lbs., ii oz.
Sid Ranck (AGI) has accepted the
role of godfather. The new family is
doing beautifully in Eugene, Ore. their home now - and they’d love to
hear from classmates or Johnnies in
the area. Alandete@oregon.uoregon.edu.
Melissa Cate (A) and Darcy
Christ (A94) were married on
October 7, 2000.
Douglis Beck (AGI) and Susan
Allen are thrilled to announce the
birth of a beautiful daughter named
Veronica Vandenberghe Beck on
December 22, 2000. Says Douglis,
“She has brought not only joy to our
{The College -
world, but also a good number of
sleepless nights, a small amount of
chaos, and general mayhem for all
concerned. I continue to work as an
architect at Cannon Design in St.
Louis, while Susan is a manager for
Borders Books & Music. Veronica is
currently unemployed and search
ing for a position in waste manage
ment.”
New Delhi. “I have not found any
Johnnies here yet, and I miss the
Washington, D.C., alumni discus
sions,” she says. Her e-mail address
is cheryls@vsnl.com.
1997
John Carle (SF) reports that he
and Cheryl are alive and well in
metro Atlanta. After a short stint
with CNN, he’s working as a web
developer with a consulting firm.
E-mail is welcome at jcarle@newtousbaby.com.
Juan Villasenor (A) will graduate
from Vanderbilt Law School in May
2001 and has accepted a clerkship
with a federal judge in Nashville,
Tenn., for one year beginning in
September.
1998
my husband Chris and I just had our
first child on November i6th, 2000.
Her name is Rosalyn Ophelia.”
Kathleen (Tinning) Connelly (A)
writes: “Patrick Connelly and I were
married June 12,1999, and have
been living in Vicenza, Italy, ever
since. Italy is beautiful.”
Susie Lorenzini (AGI) and Jason
Salinas (AGIoo) were married in
June 2000, in San Diego.
In the summer 1999 issue of The
Reporter, an unknown perpetrator
sent in a false report about Eve Gib
son (A) and Todd Pytel (A). Here’s
a correction from Eve: “Todd will
not be ‘working closely with the
Warner Brothers Network in the
upcoming months’ because he is too
busy teaching high school math at
Senh, a Chicago public school, nor
am I teaching fifth graders science
at a Catholic school in New York. I
have been playing rugby for the
Chicago Women’s Rugby Football
Club and tutoring at Literacy Chica
go, and toiling in an office.”
2000
Valerie Whiting (A) reports that
she got her Peace Corps assignment:
She headed to Panama in January to
be an environmental educator.
Max R. Fink (SF) reports: “Work
ing in Chicago as a corporate
recruiter (probably for something I
did in a past life!). Just returned
from a vacation to the rainforests of
Costa Rica. Thinking of becoming a
tour guide in South America.”
Heather (Miller) and Nate
Greenslit (both A) are the proud
parents of Emily Ruth, born March
25. Heather taught middle school
math and science in a private school
outside Baltimore until Emily’s
arrival. She’s now a stay-at-home
mom and a private tutor. Nate got
his master’s degree in cognative sci
ence at Johns Hopkins and will
begin a program in the history and
sociology of technology at MIT. The
Greenslits now live in Worcester,
Mass.
1999
Erin Gage Bates (A) writes: “I was
married February 5th, 2000, and
St. John’s College • Spring 2001 }
Calling All Alumni
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 tvill be published in
July; copy deadline is May 20.
In Annapolis:
The College Magazine, St. John’s
College, Box 2800, Annapolis, MD
21404; b-goyette@sjca.edu.
In Santa Fe:
The College Magazine, St. John’s
College, Public Relations Office,
1160 Camino Cruz Blanca, Santa Fe,
NM 87501-4599;
classics@maiLsjcsf.edu.
Alumni Notes
on the
Web:
Read Alumni Notes and contact
The College on the web at:
www.sjca.edu - click on “Alumni.”
�{Student Voices}
Through a Photographer’s Eye
The Transfer Experience
A
Imost 30% of St. John’s students have spent a year or more
as transfers, making them true hi-campus members of the
/
college community. Whether their “year abroad” is spent in
Santa Fe, after some time in the brick-clad East, or in
/
Annapolis, after a year or two in the mountain air, transfer
students almost universally enjoy the experience.
Sylvaine Rameckers, Aoi, spent last year in Santa Fe. An avid photogra
pher, she fell in love with the landscape of the southwest. Although St. John’s
students generally rate the location of the campuses low on their list of why
they chose the college, Santa Fe and Annapolis are nevertheless both beauti
ful places-each in its own way. Here are some of Sylvaine’s favorite photos
that capture the flavor of each location.
{The Colleges?. John’s
College • Spring 2001 }
37
�38
{Alumni Association News}
From the Alumni
Association President
Greetings!
Thanks to you all for giving me the opportunity to lead the Association as its
new president. You have a dedicated and creative Board of Directors, who will he
focused on maintaining tradition and building new opportunities for alumni to
connect with each other and the College. For example...
I wish you could all have joined us for a delightful evening on January ay.
Eighteen groups of alumni and current St. John’s seniors met at Santa Fe
restaurants for Senior Dinners. The dinners, which have
become tradition on both campuses, are designed to wel
come soon-to-he alumni into the Association. As you can
imagine, the conversations are lively and varied, ranging
Electing Alumni
Representatives to the
St. John’s and Alumni
Association Boards
Election ofAlumni Representatives
to the St. John's College Board of
Visitors and Governors
In accordance with Article VIII, Section II
of the By-Laws of the St. John’s College
Alumni Association, notice is hereby given
that the following alumni have been nomi
nated by the Alumni Association Board of
Directors for election to the St. John’s Col
lege Board of Visitors and Governors.
from essay topics, to career possibilities, to current pic
tures of student life, to news of tutors and mutual friends,
to life after St. John’s, to activities of the Association. Mem
Glenda Eoyang
ories, hopes, and fears are traded and relished across time
and geography.
This is one of my personal favorites among the many Association activities. It is
Notice is also given that nominations may
be made by petition.
The rules governing submission of nomi
nations by petition are as follows:
I. Petitions must be signed by at least fifty
members of the Alumni Association in good
standing.
a pleasure to revisit that invigorating time in my life. I am always surprised to see
how similar the experience of today is to that of the mid-yos, when I made my
transition from student to alumna-and also how different it is. The current crop
of seniors are so bright and curious and verbal and excited as they come to terms
with integrating their Johnny experience with the rest of their lives.
If you live in the Santa Fe or Annapolis area and would be interested in hosting
a dinner, let the Alumni Directors know. Usually, two alumni co-host eight seniors
at a local restaurant. The college Alumni Directors select the sites, but they also
take suggestions. The cost is shared by the hosts, the college, and the Alumni
Association. You’ll be asked to distribute some information about the Association
and explain the benefits of staying in touch with other alumni. It is a wonderful
opportunity to connect and see what’s happening in the world of St. John’s!
For the past, the present, and the future.
ST. JOHN’S college
alumni association
Whether from Annapolis or Santa Fe,
undergraduate or Graduate Institute,
Old Program or New, graduated or not,
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 Alumni
Association news and events of interest.
President - Glenda Eoyang, SFy6
Vice President - Jason Walsh, A85
Secretary -Barbara Lauer, SFy6
Treasurer - Bill Fant, Ayg
Getting-the-Word-Out Action Team ChairTom Geyer, A68
Glenda Holladay Eoyang, SFy6
Eoyang@chaos-limited.com
Web site -www.sjca.edu/aassoc/main.phtml
Mailing address - Alumni Association,
St. John’s College, Box 2800, Annapolis,
MD 21404 or 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca,
Santa Fe, NM 87501.
{The College-
St. John’s College • Spring 2001 }
�39
{Alumni Association News}
2. Nominations must be accompanied by a
biographical sketch of the nominee.
3. The consent of all persons nominated
must be obtained.
4. The petitions must reach the Directors
of Alumni Activities NO LATER THAN
DECEMBER i, 2001.
c/o Alumni Office
St. John’s College
P.O. Box 2800
Annapolis, MD 21404
If nominations by petition are received,
there will be an election conducted by mail
ballot. If there are no such nominations,
the nominees listed below will be consid
ered elected. Terms will begin in July of
2002.
Eor his second term:
Jason Todd Walsh, A85
New York, N.Y.
MBA, Harvard Business
School, 1989; entrepreneur-in-residence, McKin
sey & Company, 2000present; executive vice
president/ start-up gener
al manager,
Oncology.com, 19992000; vice president of business develop
ment of Quest Diagnostics, Incorporated,
1998-1999; vice president/general manager.
Long Island Region of Quest Diagnostics,
1996-1998; associate director for strategy and
development for the Opto-Electronics Group
of Corning Inc., 1993-1995; business manag
er, television components. Corning Asahi
Video Products Company, 1990-1993; mem
ber of the St. John’s College Alumni Associa
tion Board of Directors, 1990-1996; Treasurer
of that Board, 1998-2000; Vice- President of
that Board, 2001-; Lady Liberty Regatta
chairman. New York Harbor Sailing Founda
tion, 1998 & 2001; member, St. John’s Col
lege Board of Visitors and Governors, 1999-.
For his first term:
Mark Middlebrook, A83
Oakland, Calif.
Mark is a rabid liberal artist in sheepish techno-geek clothing. After earning his BA from
St. John’s in 1983, he completed a Master’s
degree in structural engineering at the Uni
versity of California, Berkeley. Since 1988,
Mark has been the sole proprietor of
Daedalus Consulting in Oakland, Calif. In
this guise, he fools around with computer
aided drafting (CAD) software for money.
Seeking moderation in all things-especially
time spent with computers-Mark remains
active in the liberal arts and the St. John’s
College community. He has participated for
many years in the Northern California alumni
chapter and the Alumni Association’s Board
of Directors. Since 1999, he has taught St.
John’s-style seminars at St. Mary’s College in
Moraga, Calif. Mark’s other avocations
include music, languages, and cooking. He
currently is working on perfecting his tortilla
espanola, Andalusian Spanish, and flamenco
bulerias.
For his second term:
Clinton Dale Lively, A78
Princeton Junction, N.J.
MS, Mathematics, University of Virginia;
MBA, Finance, University of Chicago. Man
aging Director and Head of Portfolio Risk
Management, Merrill Lynch, NY; directing
firmwide event analysis, process risk manage
ment, country risk assessments, internal risk
capital allocation, and oversight of market
risk taken within the Private Client, Asset
Management and Merrill Lynch Treasury
divisions. Managing Director and Partner in
charge of the Corporate Risk Management
Group for the Bankers Trust Company, 199799; previously for Bankers Trust: joined the
bank in r984 in Sales, Trading and Funding
Department; in 1987 a member of the team
that developed the Global Market Risk Man
agement function; in 1989 transferred to
Tokyo to set up the Global Market Risk group
for Asia, Australia, and New Zealand; in 1992
returned to New York as head of the Global
Risk Analytic group and was appointed head
of market risk globally in 1995; in spring of
1997 chosen to manage the Corporate Risk
Management function overall. A member of
Bankers Trust Asset Liability Committee
(ALCO) and Management Committee on
Controls. On the Board of Directors of
Bankers International Corporation and LongTail Risk Insurance, Ltd.
Election ofOjftcers and Directors
ofthe St. John ’a College Alumni
Association
In accordance with Article VII, Sections I
and II of the By-Laws of the St. John’s Col
lege Alumni Association, notice is hereby
given that the following alumni have been
nominated to serve as officers and direc
tors on the St. John’s College Alumni Asso
ciation Board of Directors.
Notice is also given that nominations for
the positions as officers and directors of
the Association may be made by petition.
{The College-
St. John’s College ■ Spring 2001 }
The rules governing submission of nom
inations by petition are as follows:
1. Petitions must be signed by at least thirty
members of the Alumni Association in
good standing.
2. Petitions must be presented to the Sec
retary of the Alumni Association prior to
the Annual Meeting at which the election
is to be held. Petitions should be sent to
Barbara Lauer, c/o Alumni Office, St.
John’s College, P.O. Box 2800, Annapolis,
MD 21404.
3. The election will be held at the Annual
Meeting on Saturday, July 7 at 1:30 p.m. in
Santa Fe.
4. The candidates for Officers and Direc
tors receiving the highest number of votes
for those offices shall be declared elected.
Terms will begin on January i, 2002.
For his first term:
William Tilles, A59
Rockville, Md.
William R. (Bill) Tilles is
an Organization Develop
ment consultant specializ
ing in the planning and
facilitation of processes
that enhance organiza
tional performance.
Before he retired from
IBM in r992, he held man
agement and staff positions working with
government and commercial clients. He was
a principal in Collaborative Decisions, Inc., a
small, women-owned business focusing on
decision support technology. Currently, as an
associate of CI International, based in Den
ver, Colorado and Washington, D.C., he pro
vides facilitation and planning services to
government and commercial clients. He is
also an active participant in the DC Cultural
Alliance Business Volunteers for the Arts pro
gram, where he was honored as Business Vol
unteer of the Year in 1999. Tilles is in his
third term on the Board of Visitors and Gov
ernors, where he is the Chair of the Visiting
Committee and member of the Executive
Committee.
For her first term:
Valerie Pawlewicz, A89
Annapolis, Md.
Currently designs educa
tional trips for the Smithsonian-the largest, most
diverse, museum-based
travel program in the
world (1998-). She organ
izes performing arts, fine
arts, culinary, history and
�40
{Alumni Association News}
literature seminars, working directly with
such organizations as the Santa Fe Opera,
Toronto International Film Festival, and the
Spoleto Festival USA, and with such individu
als as Ken Burns, Holly Mondavi and Gian
Carlo Menotti. Prior to the Smithsonian
(1996-98), she worked as an independent
folklorist on community oral history projects,
including a St. John’s College oral history
project (over ao interviews were collected
from faculty, alumni, staff at both campuses).
She was the Senior Resident for Student
Activities at St. John’s College, Annapolis,
Md. (1994-96), at the same time serving as in
house substitute teacher at the Key School in
Annapolis. From 1992-94, she completed
graduate work at UNC Chapel Hill in folk
lore, taking on oral history projects as diverse
as furniture factory workers and Southern
funeral directors. She served as a class leader
for The Campaign for Our Fourth Century
(1993-95). She is married to Leo Pickens
(A78), Director of Athletics on the Annapolis
campus.
For her first term:
Martha Black Jordan, SFGI86
Mexico City, Mexico
Jordan was born in Mexico
City and educated in the
U.S. She holds a BA from
Sweet Briar College, an
MA from St. John’s, and an
MFA from Vermont Col
lege. She is the founder of
the Tramontane Poets of
Mexico City, a collective
dedicated to being a bridge between the poet
ry worlds of Mexico and North America,
which has sponsored visits to Mexico City and
readings by Reginald Gibbons, Joe Somoza,
William Merwin, Grace Schulman, Mark
Strand, Naomi Shihab Nye, William Snod
grass, and others. She has read her own work,
as well as translations, on National Public
Radio and at various organizations around
the country. Her poems have appeared in IfI
Had My Life to Live Over, Latitudes, The
Tree is Older Than You Are, California Quar
terly, The Texas Observer, the eleventh
MUSE, Grand Street, and Tameme. She has
also published many translations from Span
ish to English, some from English to Spanish,
and has edited two bilingual books. She has
served on the board of the Junior League of
Mexico City; Christ Church Episcopal, Mexi
co City; National Board Medical College of
Pennsylvania/Hahnemann University,
Philadelphia; Women’s Auxiliary American
British Cowdray Hospital, Mexico City.
For his first term:
Rohert A. George, A85
Brooklyn, N.Y.
Currently Associate Edito
rial Page Editor for the
New York Post. He is also a
columnist for National
Review Online. Previously,
George served as Director
of Coalitions for the
Republican National Com
mittee. Reporting to the
RNC Co-chairman, he
acted as party liaison to diverse business, eth
nic and interest groups. From January 1995
through May 1998, George served as Special
Assistant & Senior Writer to the Speaker of
the U.S. House of Representatives. In 1994,
he was a Legislative Assistant to former Con
gressman Michael Huffington (R-CA). From
1988 to 1993, he served as Communications
Director for the Republican National Finance
Committee. Contemporaneous with his pro
fessional full-time career, George has held
sideline occupations as a researcher, disk
jockey and free-lance writer. His work has
appeared in The Washington Post, The Wash
ington Times, National Review, New Repub
lic, Billboard, Diversity & Division, The
Weekly Standard, CRISIS, San Francisco
Chronicle, Intellectual Capital, com. Salon',
and he was a contributor to Generations
Apart: Xers vs. Boomers vs. the Elderly and
Black & Right: The Bold New Voice ofBlack
Conservatives in America. He is an Adjunct
Fellow with the Center For New Black Lead
ership, a national African-American advocacy
group exploring entrepreneurial and freemarket issues, and Third Millennium, an
organization dedicated to multi-generational
public policy issues.
George was born on the Caribbean island
country of Trinidad and Tobago and raised in
Great Britain and the United States. His
interests include reading, jogging, cultural
analysis, and a proclivity for withering puns.
as the Director of College Placement for the
school, the only college preparatory school
for Native Americans in the country. Origi
nally from Boulder, Col., Boydstun chose to
attend St. John’s instead of going to a per
forming arts school to pursue her love of act
ing. She remained active in theatre at
St. John’s, however, and since her gradua
tion has performed with Shakespeare in
Santa Fe (Measurefor Measure and A Mid
summer Night’s Dream) and as the title role
in Queen Elizabeth I at Santa Fe Stages. She
recently auditioned for several graduate act
ing programs around the country, and she
hopes to spend the next three years pursuing
an MFA.
CHAPTER CONTACTS
Call the alumni listed belowfor information
about chapter, reading group, or other alumni
activities in each area.
ALBUQUERQUE
Bob & Vicki Morgan
505-880-^134
PHILADELPHIA
Bart Kaplan
315-465-0344
ANNAPOLIS
Roberta Gable
PORTLAND
410-295-6936
360-883-9058
AUSTIN
Jennifer Chenoweth
513-483-0747
SACRAMENTO
Helen Hobart
916-453-1083
BALTIMORE
David Kidd
SAN DIEGO
Stephanie Rico
410-738-4136
619-433-4353
BOSTON
Ginger Kenney
617-964-4794
CHICAGO
Dale Mortimer
SAN FRANCISCO/
NORTHERN CALIFORNIA
Jon Hodapp
831-393-9496
Lorna Anderson
SANTA FE
For her first term;
847-467-3069
John Pollak
Amber Boydstln, SF99
DENVER
Santa Fe, N.M.
Elizabeth Pollard Jenny
SEATTLE
Amber Boydstun
has spent the two
years since she
graduated from
St. John’s teach
ing at the Native
American
Preparatory
School (NAPS) in
Rowe, N.M. Last
year she taught Advanced PreCalculus and
Geometry at NAPS, and this year she serves
303-530-3373
Jon Bever
{The College-
St. John’s College ■ Spring 2001 }
LOS ANGELES
Elizabeth Eastman
563-436-1934
MINNEAPOLIS/ST. PAUL
Carol Freeman
613-833-3316
NEW YORK
Fielding Dupuy
313-974-3933
NORTH CAROLINA
Susan Eversole
919-968-4856
505-983-^^144
306-739-1163
WASHINGTON, DC
Bill Ross
301-330-4594
ISRAEL
Emi Geiger Leslau
15 Aminadav Street
Jerusalem 93549
Israel
973-3-6717608
boazl@cc.huji.ac.il
�{Connections}
How Can Alumni
Stay Connected
TO THE College?
Let us count the ways.
For alumni from lacrosse-loving days of the
r93os to the most recent of the 1990s,
St. John’s occupies a special place in their
consciousness. There are many ways alumni
can be involved in the life of the college, or
stay involved with the college from afar.
Indeed, the proliferation of new kinds of
activities has some alumni confused. Here’s
a short version of the activities of different
alumni groups.
The St. John’s College
Alumni Offices
College staff and resources devoted to
encouraging alumni connections to the col
lege. The Offices of Alumni Activities plan
and carry out Homecomings, Summer Alum
ni Programs, and Croquet Weekend; take
care of the database of alumni names and
addresses; coordinate the Alumni Register;
staff Alumni Association projects; work with
current students to foster continued relation
ships with the college; serve as touchpoints
for all alumni dealings with the college.
Contacts:
Annapolis: Roberta Gable, Director and
Dolores Strissel, Assistant. 410-626-2531.
alumni@sjca.edu
Web site: www.sjca.edu, click on “Alumni”
Santa Fe: Tahmina Shalizi, Director.
505-984-6103; tshalizi@mail.sjcsf.edu
Web site: www.sjcsf.edu, click on “Alumni”
St. John’s College
Alumni Association
Non-profit association independent of
St. John’s College; Alumni Association dues
help support Association projects-dues are
not a contribution to St. John’s College. All
alumni are automatically members of the
Alumni Association.
The Alumni Association mission is: To
provide an active place for alumni in the life
of the college; to promote the continuing
association of alumni with one another; and
to serve, preserve, and advance St. John’s
College as one community of and for liberal
education.
Usually held the last Saturday in April, the St. John’s-Navy Croquet Match draws
HUNDREDS OF ALUMNI BACK TO AnNAPOLIS. ThIS YEAr’s DATE: ApRIL 28.
The Alumni Association, through its Board
of Directors, helps plan and sponsor Homecomings and Summer Alumni Programs in
cooperation with the college offices of
Alumni Activities; helps sponsor the Alum
ni Register; awards Honorary Alumni status
and presents Alumni Association Awards of
Merit; coordinates Alumni Association
chapters in cities around the country; pub
lishes the Alumni Association News (a pages
in The College, formerly The Reporter).
Contacts:
Glenda Eoyang, SF76, President
Web site: www.sjca.edu/aassoc/main.phtml
Philanthropia
A subcommittee of the Development Com
mittee of the Board of Visitors and Gover
nors, comprised of alumni volunteers inter
ested in encouraging financial support of
the college by alumni. Philanthropia’s main
efforts are centered on the Alumni Annual
Fund, direct contributions to the college
which provide the campuses with operating
expenses.
Philanthropia volunteers help plan
fundraising strategies in cooperation with
the college development staff; build aware
ness of the college’s financial needs and
alumni’s responsibilities for support
through publications like the “Founders
and Foundations” calendar; encourage class
reunion organization for the purposes of
fundraising; help plan phonathons, “meet
the president” receptions, and other activi
ties in various cities.
{The College -St. John’s
College ■ Spring 2001 }
Contacts:
Leslie Jump, A84, President; Alex Fotos or Mary
Simmons in the Annapolis Advancement Office,
410-626-2507; Ginger Roherty in the Santa Fe
Advancement Office, 505-984-6109.
Web site: www.sjca.edu/advance/philan. phtml
Alumni Admissions Representatives
Alumni who volunteer to help the Admis
sions Offices with various recruiting proj
ects, such as hosting prospective student
receptions; interviewing or answering ques
tions from prospective students, parents, and
high school counselors; answering e-mail
questions from prospective students; helping
to represent the college at college fairs.
Contacts:
Annapolis: Dorcey Rose, Associate Director of
Admissions, 410-626-2527; d-rose@sjca.edu.
Web site: www.sjca.edu/admissions/representative.phtml
Santa Fe: Ana Alvernaz, Associate Director of Admis
sions, 505-984-6003; aalvernaz@mail.sjcsf.edu
Alumni Placement Office Contacts
Alumni who volunteer to help the Place
ment Offices on each campus. Placement
Office contacts provide information and
networking advice to current students look
ing into graduate programs and career fields.
Contacts:
Annapolis - Karen Krieger, Director of Place
ment, 410-626-2500; k-krieger@sjca.edu
Web site: www.sjca.edu/placement/office. phtml
Santa Fe - Margaret OdeU, Director of Place
ment, 505-984-6066
Web site: www.sjcsf.edu/placement/
�{Obituaries}
Albert Patterson Close
Class of tgsS
Retired Judge Albert Patterson
Close, Sr., an administrative judge of
the Circuit Court for Harford Coun
ty (Md.) for many years, died in
December. Judge Close served for
more than two decades on the local
bench, where he presided over some
of the highest profile criminal and
civil cases in Harford County history.
Born near Bel Air, Md., and the
youngest of seven children, he grad
uated from St. John’s in 1938 and
received a degree from the Universi
ty of Maryland School of Law. Dur
ing World War II, he served in the
Marine Corps in China, attaining
the rank of major. After the war, he
practiced law for many years in Bel
Air, served as People’s Court judge
for eight years, and was appointed to
the Circuit Court bench in 1967.
The following year he was elected
for a 15-year term. Rather than
retire in 1984, he sought a second
15-year term, which he won.
Judge Close was active in the
Republican Party, volunteered with
the Boy Scouts, and was a member of
the Susquehanna Law Club, the Jar
rettsville Lions Club, and the board
of directors of Upper Chesapeake
Health System. He is survived by his
wife, five sons, three daughters, two
sisters, and six grandchildren.
Patrick D. Davis,
Class oftgs^
Patrick D. Davis, a member of the
class of 1950, died January 32 in
Seattle. He was born in Dewey,
Okla., and grew up in Washington,
D.C., where he often worked as a
child actor. He served three years in
the Navy in World War IL After St.
John’s, he attended the University of
Maine, Orono, and Canterbury Col
lege in New Zealand. He lived, trav
eled, and worked for 13 years over
seas, mostly in England, France, and
Turkey. He was employed as a civilian
with the U.S. Air Force as an educa
tion officer and regional director of
adult eduction affiliated with the
University of Maryland. He subse
quently was a federal employee and
regional administrator in Washing
ton, D.C., and Seattle, both with the
Office of Economic Opportunity and
Health & Human Services’ Head
Start Program, working to improve
opportunities for disadvantaged chil
dren and mothers.
His love of traveling, history, for
eign affairs, theater, archeology,
politics, art, music, and great books
led many to call him a Renaissance
Man. He will be remembered for his
love and caring for people, his gen
erosity and sense of humor, and his
devotion to social justice and envi
ronmental causes. He is survived by
his wife, Verrelle “Susie” Davis and
son, Justinian A. Davis.
Beach, and Vermont College. Gifts
in Michael’s memory may be made
to The Vermont Respite House,
99 Allen Brook Lane, Williston,
VT 05495.
—Sapna Gandhi, Agi
Michael Kraemer, A93
In his short life, Michael Kraemer
touched and influenced more than
most people do in their entire lives.
He spent most of his free time volun
teering at animal shelters, tutoring
students of all ages in their school
work, and helping new immigrants
adjust to life in America. It was his
approach that made him special: he
approached every task and every per
son with love and kindness. And at
the young age of 19, Michael knew he
wanted to spend the rest of his life
serving humanity and protecting ani
mals. Michael was one of those peo
ple who truly had no enemy.
After leaving St. John’s in 1991
after his sophomore year, Michael
moved back home to Miami to five
with his family. Still a Johnnie,
Michael loved learning so he contin
ued to study on his own-learning
Spanish and Portuguese, before set
tling on holistic studies. He was
inspired after treating his own health
with alternative medicine. He began
a correspondence course at Vermont
College’s School of Holistic Studies.
After several trips to Vermont to
complete his coursework, Michael
and his sister eventually moved there.
Michael had always loved good
music and over the last several years
had acquired quite a collection of
reggae, bossanova, funk, African,
salsa, and other groovy music. One
of his gifts was making music tapes
for his friends. So it was not a sur
prise that Michael taught himself
rocar and drums and became part of
a performing samba group.
Michael was diagnosed with can
cer in early April 3000. He had a very
shm chance of treating the cancer
successfully with Western medicine.
Instead of compromising his faith in
Eastern healing arts, Michael chose
to try acupuncture and Chinese
herbs to heal. For a while, it seemed
to be working and making him
stronger. The last two months of his
life were spent in a hospice, where
he was surrounded by family and
close friends. For the first time,
Michael let himself be loved and
nurtured, instead of always being
the strong and generous one.
Michael passed away on Novem
ber 25. He will be loved and remem
bered by his friends from St. John’s,
the Annapolis Society for the Pre
vention of Cruelty to Animals, the
Jewish Community Center in Miami
{The College-
William Allen Ruhl, Jr.
Class oftg44
William A. Ruhl, Jr., a bank execu
tive in Salisbury, Md., died in
December. He was a member of the
St. John’s class of 1944 and served in
the 83nd Airborne Division during
World War IL Mr. Ruhl was the first
managing officer of First Shore Fed
eral Savings and Loan Association
when it was founded in 1953, and
was named executive vice president
in 1964, the position he held until
retirement in 1984. He served as a
member of the board of First Shore
Federal from 1969 to 1998, when he
was named director emeritus. Mr.
Ruhl was active with the Salisbury
Chamber of Commerce, the Mary
land League of Financial Institu
tions, scouting, the Salisbury
Rotary Club, St. Peter’s Episcopal
Church, and the American Field
Service exchange student program.
He is survived by his present wife, a
son and three daughters, five grand
children, a brother, and a sister.
Adolph W. Schmidt
Member ofthe Board
Adolph W. Schmidt, a longtime sup
porter of the college who served on
the Board of Visitors and Governors
since 1949, died December 17 in
Pittsburgh. He was 96.
Mr. Schmidt was active in many
spheres during his life: in the busi
ness world as a banker and financier
for various Mellon family business
es, in the city of Pittsburgh as
founder of the Pittsburgh Playhouse
and the Pittsburgh Symphony, in the
international sphere as a diplomat
who served as ambassador to Cana
da from 1969 to 1974 and also found
ed organizations dedicated to stabi
lizing the world’s population and
resources, and at St. John’s-which
he once called “the finest under
graduate liberal arts program in the
United States today, barring none.”
A native of McKeesport, Pennsyl
vania, Mr. Schmidt graduated from
Princeton and the Harvard Gradu
ate School of Business Administra
tion. He served as an intelligence
officer in the Army during World
War II, and after the war he was
active in developing political unity
among the countries that eventually
formed NATO.
Professionally, he worked with
the Mellon National Bank and its
St. John^s College - Spring 2001 }
affiliated institutions and organiza
tions beginning in 1929 until his
retirement in 1969. He was a presi
dent and trustee of the A. A. W. Mel
lon Educational and Charitable
Trust, and a trustee of the Old
Dominion Foundation.
Mr. Schmidt’s interest in St. John’s
began when he read the February
1940 article about the college in Life
magazine while on a flight from Pitts
burgh to Washington. He felt the St.
John’s curriculum represented much
that was lacking in his own educa
tion. He called the college and spoke
with Stringfellow Barr, who invited
him to come for a visit. After attend
ing a seminar and then a mathemat
ics tutorial the next day, Mr. Schmidt
began to think about taking the year
off to enroll. Back in Pittsburgh, he
showed a copy of the Life article to
Paul Mellon; about a week later, the
two discussed the college and Mr.
Mellon told Mr. Schmidt that he
should remain in Pittsburgh since
there was so much work to be done.
In fact, Mr. Mellon had decided to
enroll at St. John’s himself.
Mr. Schmidt was elected to the
St. John’s Board of Visitors and Gov
ernors in 1950; he became chair in
1954 and again in 1962. From r969 to
1974, he served as U.S. Ambassador
to Canada and did not participate on
the Board, but upon his return he
again joined. In 1980 he was made a
member emeritus.
The Adolph W. Schmidt Endowed
Thtorships were estabhshed with a
gift from Mr. Schmidt in r985. Alter
nating between the campuses, the
tutorship enables a faculty member
to take release time from teaching for
further study and the leading of a fac
ulty study group, either in the areas
of pohtics and economic and mone
tary theory, or in some other area of
importance to the program.
Mr. Schmidt was named an hon
orary alumnus of St. John’s in 1987,
and was given the Alumni Associa
tion Award of Merit in 1989.
ALSO NOTED...
Gretchen L. Berg, A75, died in
June 3000
Patrick D. Davis, A50, died in
January 3001
John D. Edinger, A34
Vincent W. McKay, A46
Ben Moskowitz, A50, died in June
2000
Col. Frederick L. Smith, Aa7, died
in November 1999
Robert Arne, SFG83, died in
November 2000
Theodore A. Buder, SF94, died in
August 2000
�{Obituaries}
In Memory of Robert Bart
Remarks delivered by Nancy Buchenauer at a
memorial servicefor Robert Bart, tutor in
Annapolisfrom ig4Q to ty~7 and in Santa Fe
from
to 2000.
Robert was my friend. And he was a great and
terrible friend. I first met him in 1979 when I
went down the hill from Los Alamos to apply
to be a tutor. He was the Dean in Santa Fe in
those days, and for me he embodied what a
dean had to be. Really, he embodied the col
lege. When I was appointed he told me that he
had serious reservations about whether any
one who lived 40 miles away could be a tutor.
My response was to form the determination
then and there that I would never miss a class
or Friday lecture, and I would never let my
students down in any way. I would show him
what I could and could not do. He had planted
in me an expectation that made me demand
more of myself than I ever had before.
That was the beginning of my education
from him in what the college was. He made
me desire to show him that I too was capable
of giving myself completely to something that
was valuable and difficult. In effect he was
asking me to be more than myself. I didn’t
know then what I later came to know from
watching what he did as well as hearing what
he said, that only in giving oneself to some
thing greater, outside oneself does one have a
chance to find out who one really is and so
really to be something.
From his love of art he taught me to see.
From childhood my mother had taken me to
museums and said, “Look, isn’t that beauti
ful?” But when Robert took me to Michelan
gelo’s statue of Moses he asked me a question.
Pointing out the curl of the upper lip, he
asked, “Is he feeling contempt?” Robert
taught me intelligent looking. He showed me
that the best paintings and statues demand a
response from our innermost selves. Just like
poets, artists use the tricks of their trade-per
spective, rounding, color, light, shape-to
express a meaning, to show us what is impor
tant about their subjects for human beings.
Painting technique is a language as much as
written words or musical notes, and one can
learn to read and understand from it the truth
of being a human being. A building in the
hands of a great architect becomes an organic
whole designed to satisfy our craving for
wholeness: our lives are elevated by it and
made more orderly and purposeful. If one
looks at Manet’s painting, “Le balcon,” one
sees the artist Berthe Morrisot looking out
Robert Bart
and down, with ferocious intensity: perhaps
above all, artists by looking are teaching us
that it requires effort to look and that no part
of the world we inhabit is just present for us
without our labor.
Nick Maistrellis, by mentioning to me what
he was thinking about saying here today,
helped me to understand that the key to what
came to be my friendship with Robert is learn
ing, that is, my learning. That was an
inevitable consequence of how Robert did
everything and of who he was. He was posi
tively unable to keep anything at a “safe” dis
tance, from which one might think or talk
about it as if one were not involved. To every
thing and everyone he had an immediate, vis
ceral response. Never for him was the life of
the mind divorced from our personal relation
ships to one another, and the one always
importantly informed the other.
He taught me that taste is absolute and that
people of integrity have to judge. His judg
ments often made me terribly uncomfortable,
but I also learned from them that to stay alive
and awake and questioning, to encounter peo
ple and ideas genuinely, one has to make judg
ments. Part of why Robert was such a holy ter
ror to many students and colleagues was
because in his presence everything one said
and did was constantly and relentlessly judged.
There could be no off-hand, unthinking
remarks, because he was thinking all the time,
and he was unscrupulously honest about what
he thought. At times he would take enormous
offense at a chance remark, unable himself to
believe that the words were not intended,
because for him everything was intentional.
But he suffered also from staircase self-hon
esty. He would go through paroxysms of
remorse over what he had said to people. He
also had the peculiar quality of frequently
{The College -Sr. John’s
College ■ Spring 2001 }
43
doing more justice to people behind their
backs than he could do to their faces. It was
not uncommon in Instruction Committee
meetings for him to speak in praise of people
whom he only bristled at face to face, and at
such times nothing of what one might call per
sonal feeling clouded his ability to evaluate.
This intellectual generosity was accompa
nied by a truly remarkable generosity in other
ways. AU his life he lived by a standard of
extreme ascetic economy while giving prodi
gious amounts of money to the college and to
his friends. In the last years of his life he
became friends with a young woman he hoped
would help him to remain in his home a little
longer, but when he learned of her desire to go
to graduate school in Washington, he made up
the difference between her scholarship and
what she needed to be able to attend. When he
had first come home from the hospital after his
second heart attack, I was spending seminar
nights staying in his house, and I woke up one
morning finding him sweeping the snow off
my car with a broom, hardly able to walk. For
him it was easy to give to and to spend on oth
ers and next to impossible to spend on himself.
He was terribly lonely and often agonized
by a sense that he had driven away some of the
finest friends he had had. He told me once on
one of the rare occasions that he spoke of his
past and his childhood that in school he had
never had a friend. I came to see how coming
to the college meant so much to him personal
ly as well as intellectually. At the college he
made the first real friendships of his life. He
needed others around him constantly, and his
life was best for him when he could spend two
meals a day in conversations with one other of
those he cared about. Once someone became
his friend they were a part of him forever,
even though there were few with whom this
did not take the form of a constant struggle.
Bill O’Grady once said of St. Paul that just
exactly a man who found it hard to love would
have to struggle to come to know (and to say)
what love is. Those words could just as well
have been said about Robert, for because love,
the most intense and close relationship of one
human being to another, was so hard for him,
he devoted his life to trying to see it, to learn it,
to say it, to do it, and to give it to others. Such
was Robert. I think he was a great man. 4"
The college has established the Robert Bart
Endowment Fund, to be usedforfinancial aid
for students. Contributions can be sent
c/o Advancement Office, St. John's College,
1160 Camino Cruz Blanca, Santa Fe, NM
87501-4599
�{St. John’s Forever}
he King William Players
“girl trouble” as a result of his effort. Al
staged the American pre
Sugg (A54) played the Skeleton, a mysteri
miere of Thomas Cranmer of
ous spirit figure who offered counsel to the
Canterbury, a verse drama
embattled Cranmer. Jo Thoms, wife of
about Henry VIII’s archbish
tutor Bert Thoms, played Anne Boleyn
op who suffered martyrdom
(third from left in the photo) and also
as a result of his stance on the kingdesigned
’s
the set and the costumes, which
divorce from Catherine of Aragon.included
Two
a medallion necklace for the king
productions took place-February 9 and 10,
that was fashioned from tin can lids.
1951-in the Great Hall. A group of students
Richard Edelman (A51) produced and
had read and discussed Charles Williams’
directed. In his quest for authenticity,
difficult, disturbing work the previous
Edelman tried to rent furniture appropri
spring and vowed to put on the play. Talk
ate to the period but was unable to find it.
about a production: this one took nine
When
he spotted some pieces that looked
months of preparation and involved a hun
like
they
’d work in the lobby of Lowe’s
dred students and townspeople.
Valencia Theater in Baltimore, he wrote
Tutor Hugh McGrath played Cranmer;
the owners, who allowed the KWP to bor
his dramatic bearing and resonant English
row the furniture. Always avant garde, the
accent must have been perfect for the part.
King William Players employed unusual
Paul Rickolt (A52) was Henry VIII (second
three-leveled staging and at times they
from the left in the photo). According to
played their roles standing-or racingnews accounts from the Annapolis paper.
among members of the audience. And, in
The Evening Capital, Mr. Rickolt spent
the St. John’s spirit of trying to get to the
months growing a beard so that his looks
would be authentic. 1951 was not a big year
root of every issue, tutor Winfree Smith
for the popularity of facial hair, and he
gave a lecture before the play on the
reported being stared at and experiencing
British Reformation period.
T
{The College -
St. John’s College . Spring 2001 }
From the college archives
COMES THIS 1951 photo OF AN
elaborate King William
Players production.
V
► ■'
�{Alumni Events Calendar}
Croquet Match St. John'’s vs. U.S. Naval Academy
Saturday
atj, 1 p.m.,
(Rain date; April 29)
CLASS OF
Summer Alumni Program, Week 1
Section I - The Art ofLiving Well
Readings from Montaigne’s Essays and
Chuang-Tzu
Led by Mark Rollins and Krishnan
Venkatesh
If to philosophize is to learn how to die, by”
what can we learn how to live? These semi
nars will constitute an imagined conversa
tion between one of the greatest Taoist
sages and the i6th century Frenchman who
first wrote the personal essay. Although the
cultural roots of these two men are quite dif
ferent, both share a deep suspicion of
human claims to know, and both draw from
huge treasuries of story and anecdote in
their nimble interrogations of life. They
engage many of the same issues-among
others: dying, illness, disability, ambition,
thought itself, and even the value of doing
nothing-and introduce us to some surpris
ing teachers. Lord Wen-Hui said, “That’s
good indeed! Ting the cook has shown me
how to find the Way to nurture life.”
Section II- Two Dialogues With God
Readings from The Bhagavadgita and
The Book of Job
Led by Phil LeCuyer and Michael Wolfe
Participants will explore two conversations
with God, one from the Hebrew scriptures
and the other from an Indian epic. Morning
seminars will revolve around Job’s
encounter with the Lord in the Book of Job.
Afternoon seminars will be devoted to Arju
na’s exchange with Krishna in The Bha
gavadgita.
7
A
,
Informal mini-reunions happen at the
Croquet Match. Last year, the class of
’89 MET on the lawn; they brought new
<*•
All-Alumni Art Show
in Santa Fe
BABIES, SPOUSES, FRIENDS, AND LOTS OF
FOOD AND WINE.
lecoming aooi - Annapolis
o' tiuii lecoming aoor
■ ® ' it'
- Santa Fe
Frid!
Reunion classes: 71, 76, 81, 86, 91, and 96
September 30
Reunion Classes: 36, 41, 51, 56, 61, 66, 71,
76, 81, 86, 91, and 96
JT
Summer Alumni Program, Week
^unudy) JLLiy xo j?ixuHy, j
fflta Fe
Mysteries and the Law:
The Nature ofEvidence
Led by Eva Brann, Grant Franks,
and Barbara Lauer
Who done it? How do you know who done
it? How does the polity justly deal with he or
she who done it?
This week of mixed media and conversa
tion addresses questions of crime, investiga
tion, and punishment. Through the eyes of
modern filmmakers and both contemporary
and ancient playwrights and authors, we
will examine the influences of perception
and judgment in relation to mysteries. Texts
include Billy Budd, Eumenides, Twelve
Angry Men, and Pirandello’s So It Is (IfYou
Think So).
{The College
- St John's College • Spring 2001 }
For information on events,
contact the Offices of Alumni Activities:
Tahmina Shalizi,
Director of Alumni and Parent Activities
Santa Fe - 505-984-6103;
tshalizi@mail.sjcsf.edu
Roberta Gable,
Director of Alumni Activities
Annapolis - 410-626-2531;
alumni@sjca.edu
�STJOHN’S COLLEGE
ANNAPOLIS > SANTA PE
Published by the
Public Relations Office
Box 2800
Annapolis, Maryland 21404
ADDRESS CORRECTION REQUESTED
Periodicals
Postage Paid
�
Dublin Core
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Title
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<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
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thecollege2001
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paper
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44
Dublin Core
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The College, Spring 2001
Description
An account of the resource
Volume 27, Issue 2 of The College Magazine. Published in Spring 2001. Misnumbered as issue 3.
Creator
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St. John's College
Publisher
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St. John's College
Coverage
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Annapolis, MD
Santa Fe, NM
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2001
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St. John's College owns the rights to this publication.
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text
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pdf
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Goyette, Barbara (editor)
Borden, Sus3an (assistant editor)
Behrens, Jennifer (graphic designer)
Mulry, Laura J. (Santa Fe editor)
Johnson, David
Hanlon, Erin
Wolff, Peter
Balkcom, John
Eoyang, Glenda H.
Language
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English
Identifier
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The College Vol. 27, Issue 3 Spring 2001
The College
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